Remaking Filipinos: Race, ethnicity and the culture of U.S. imperialism, 1898-1946

Kimberly Alidio

During the fellowship tenure, I will research the culture of Filipino teacher training by focusing on travel between Manila and U.S. schools of education at Columbia University, University of Iowa, and Ohio State University. I plan to visit Columbia's Butler Library in New York, and several repositories in Manila: the Rizal Library at the Ateneo de Manila University, the National Library, and the Library of the Philippine Normal University. This project will shed light on the complex cultural and intellectual politics of U.S. imperialism by investigating Filipino progressive educators during a critical juncture in the American colonial administration of the Philippines following World War I. At this time, new policies of "Filipinization" encouraged Filipinos to assume the directorships of most colonial government agencies. While American officials would continue at the helm of the Bureau of Public Instruction until the end of U.S. rule in 1946, as they had done so since the initial military occupation of the Philippines in 1898, a greater number of Filipino teachers began to train as future administrators and supervisors. Their training signaled a complex shift in colonial politics. Because Filipinos gained professional degrees in American schools, they continued U.S. policies of benevolent assimilation and progressive education reform of the previous Spanish colonial-era schooling. At the same time, their professionalization represented a possible break in educational policy and in colonial relations as a whole. If Filipinos trained in progressive education assumed authority over Philippine classrooms, they could disrupt educational "reforms" designed to develop Filipino children as Americans saw fit. Educators such as Pedro Orata and Camilo Osias advocated the spread of child-centered and community-oriented schooling into rural barrios and mountainous regions. To solidify their authority in educational administration and research, did people such as Orata and Osias redefine the racial and cultural analyses of childhood education? How did their appropriation of theories about racial educability and developmental psychology help Filipino teachers address the larger social problem of who would wield power in the Philippines? Investigating Filipino teacher training will facilitate a closer understanding of the political transitions in U.S. colonial rule during the interwar period.

About Kimberly Alidio

Kimberly A. Alidio is an assistant professor of History and Asian American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research and teaching interests include U.S. imperialism, progressivism, ethnic and immigration studies, and gender/sexuality. Her forthcoming manuscript is entitled Remaking Filipinos: Race, Ethnicity and the Cultural Politics of U.S. Imperialism.