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.

128 EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE PHILIPPINES

He learns the meaning of number and develops skill in manipulating
numbers in a foreign language. He learns to write from dictation in
a foreign language. He learns to spell, to compose ideas, in a foreign
language. His notions of the social world in which he lives, his relations to his neighbors, the economic and political problems of his
people, the world situation, especially the critical Far Eastern phase,
of which his people form an important element-all these must be obtained in a language not only new and strange but one in which the
spirit and mental attitude of the Malay people have never been expressed. If he is to come from the school a well trained thinker, he
must be taught to think in a foreign language. The handicap of
translation must be overcome.
If the problem is difficult for the pupil it is correspondingly so for
the teacher and for those who organize methods of teaching. From
the day the pupil enters the school, his progress is handicapped by
the absence of a common oral means of communication. All instruction
must be carried on in a foreign language. At the very beginning of the
educative process, the development of skill in speaking and reading
is blocked.
The instructional situation in the Islands therefore, stated baldly
in the foregoing paragraphs, is dominated by an all-pervading foreignlanguage problem. The difficulty of solving this problem is even greater
when we consider that during the very time that the school is trying
five hours a day to teach the child in English, all of his out-of-school
hours are spent in non-English surroundings. In not more than two or
three per cent of Filipino homes is English used in any way outside of
school. Only when confronted by the necessity of speaking to some
one of another nationality or language group will even the school child
resort to English outside of the classroom.
2. THE SYSTEM Is HANDICAPPED BY LACK OF TRAINED
TEACHERS.-To overcome such a handicap one might expect the Bureau to possess a personnel of highly trained teachers. But in Chapter
IV, it is shown with perfect clarity that on the contrary the teaching
staff of the Islands is inadequately trained for even a moderate educational task. Its unpreparedness for the almost superhuman task imposed
upon it is almost tragic. It consists nearly altogether of Filipinos of
less than complete high-school education. To the foreign language
handicap, therefore, is added the enormous one of a teaching staff predominantly uneducated and untrained, and unskilled in the intricate
art of teaching.
3. THE HANDICAP OF LACK OF FUNDS To EMPLOY EXPERT
LEADERS.-But added to these difficulties, the Bureau of Education