Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1902 — PORTO RICAN SCHOOLS. [ARTICLE]

PORTO RICAN SCHOOLS.

There Are 1 ,'JOOof ThcniOpcnThroiighout the Island. Twelve hundred public schools were opened throughout the entire islnml of Porto Rico on the morning of Sept. 29. The trews is surpassingly important because it means that 50,000 Porto Rican children hnve been started on the road toward worthy American citizenship. The news means that the youth of Porto Rico are being given a chance in life that they never could liuve had under the Spanish flag. We have curried to them the opportunities that Europeans have to come to us to get. The fifty thousand boys nnd girls who assembled in the 1,200 public schools of Porto Rico on that Monday will lx* the fathers imd mothers, the educated fathers aud mothers, of the next generation. And the next generation of Porto Ricans will be the citizens of un American Htate, a sovereign member of the American Union. Without the education imparted Ip her public schools Porto Rico would never be fit for statehood.