A survey of the educational system of the Philippine islands by the Board of educational survey, created under acts 3162 and 3196 of the Philippine Legislature.

BOARD OF EDUCATIONAL SURVEY REPORT

99

ideals rather dimly conceived and without sufficient basis in experience.
There is a tremendous amount of talk about self-government but there
is no actual training in the art itself. This art is the art of good citizenship and its exercise forms a large part of morality. Even in the
primary grades the school should definitely seek to give the children
abundant practice in everyday forms of good citizenship and morality.
Pupil self-government should be widely extended in the schools, but if
the procedure is too much formalized, the aim sought will be largely
defeated.
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Closely related to the subject of moral education is that of religious
education. The main fact to be borne in mind in this connection is
that such a school system as existed in the Islands before the American
regime was one in which religious instruction played a dominant part,
and the influence of the priesthood was everywhere prevalent. Into
this situation the Americans brought their ideas of a public-school system
without any religious instruction and with the influence of the Church
wholly excluded.
The facts pointed out above in regard to the difficulties and defects
of moral education have here in the Philippines as elsewhere created a
demand among many for the reestablishment in some form of religious
instruction in the schools. This view is held by so many in the Philippine Islands that this proposal must be given consideration. So
universal is this problem of religious education that experience with
almost every type of attempt at its solution is at hand. The long
period of experimentation in the American public school, now nearly a
century old, proved that religious instruction in the public schools of a
democracy was only productive of religious dissensions and antagonisms,
and that it developed anything but a true religious attitude among the
children and in the community. The solution reached as a result of
this long experience is that religious instruction was fundamentally the
function of the Church and of the home and that the public schools
should give no religious instruction whatever. This is substantially the
view today of the great mass of American educators and of the
American public. The American personnel of this Commission all
received their elementary and high-school education in the public schools
and their higher education in institutions on private foundation. And
yet all hold this common belief regarding religious instruction in the
public schools. It is generally believed that a democracy can with
justice follow no other policy.
The reverse side of this situation may be seen in the common-school
systems of almost any of the Continental European countries. At least