DUE to absence of schools, parents were the first and only
teachers. Boys were trained by their fathers, girls by their mothers. All
learned little reading, writing, arithmetic, native music, pagan rites and
ceremonies and their traditional laws and customs. On the practical side, the
boys were taught the rudiments of farming, fishing, carpentry, hunting, a
little mining and even shipbuilding This probably explains why early
Leyteños had their system of handwriting.
Morga in his Sucesos wrote: "The natives throughout these islands can write excellently with certain characters almost like the Greek or the Arabic. These characters are fifteen in all. Three were vowels, which are used as our five. The consonants number 12, and each and all of them combine with certain dots or commas; and signify whatever one wishes to write, as fluently and as is easily done with our Spanish alphabets. Almost all the natives , both men and women, write in this language."
Chirino in 1604 said:"They have adopted the Spaniards' way of writing, by writing from left to right, horizontally, while before, they wrote from left to right from bottom upwards."
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However, manuscripts were known to have been written by ancient Filipinos about a 100 hundreds before Magellan. Leyte was in Chirino's mind when he stated, after he had spent some weeks around the settlements in Carigara, Abuyog and Dulag, that there were books and book-educated Filipinos at the time of the Spanish conquest. Missionary zeal, Chirino noted, marked these as works of the devil and therefore had to be destroyed.
Their writings were not however voluminous. Citing Chirino, Fr. Colin wrote: "We cannot find that these people had in the past anything written about their religion, government and ancient history. All we know on these subjects is taken from their traditions related from parents to children and kept viva voce in songs they learned by heart, and which they kept repeating at the oars while shipping, or during their festivities, funerals and daily occupations when they come together.. In these songs and tales they narrated their fabulous genealogies and inane deeds of their gods."
Writing in defense of the early missionaries, Bazaco said :"In the 17th century a great number of pamphlets and paper manuscripts in the old system of writing were in circulation; and in all parochial schools (Manila excepted) primary instruction, including religion and music, was being taught in the Filipino dialects, with emphasis on the primitive alphabet.
"Together with the primitive alphabet, the religious educators taught the Latin way of writing, and, as advanced students noticed the simplicity of the latter, they soon adopted it. Once adopted, the natives had little difficulty in writing and pronouncing correctly certain Spanish words that were necessarily introduced into the Filipino vocabulary." This happened in the first quarter of the 18th century.
As for arithmetic, Fr. Juan Delgado related that natives used units of measure. For capacity measures they had such terms as kaban, gantang, talop. For measures of length they had dupa (fathom in English), dangao (distance between the tip of the thumb and middle finger when extended), barangit (distance between the tip of the thumb and the forefinger when extended) and the dapal (width of the palm when fingers are pressed together).
Counting up to thousands was also known among the pre-Spanish Leytenos, said Delgado. One hundred was usa ka gatos, a thousand usa ka yukut, ten thousand usa ka malara and one hundred thousand usa ka muraburaan.
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