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.

MEASUREMENT OF INSTRUCTION

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residue of ability. The experiments in Bulacan and our knowledge of
conditions in America have convinced us that either children must stay
in school five years, or methods of language instruction must be installed
generally throughout the Islands that will accomplish in three to four
years what present procedures accomplish in five to six years.
Both methods of meeting the present impasse are difficult and costly.
To keep children in school longer will increase school expenditure.
Radically to improve language methods will be both difficult and expensive. To prevent present expenditures from being wasted, however,
both steps must be taken.
The Fundamental Cause of Filipino Deficiency in Reading: Inefficient
Methods of Instruction
Emphasis on meaningless oral pronunciation in the primary grades
prevents training in thought-getting. The members of the Survey Commission are unanimous in their judgment that Filipino children cannot be
taught to read connected English discourse well by the present methods
of instruction. Methods diametrically opposed to those used now must
be inaugurated throughout the system. Current reading instruction in
the Philippine schools consists almost totally of oral pronunciation of
words and sentences. It should consist largely of practice in getting
thought from the printed page. Getting thought, perceiving meanings,
is closely akin to reasoning. Recent scientific studies of reading have
emphasized the similarity between the two. The art of getting
meaning from the printed page is a very difficult one to acquire. It has
to be practiced, not occasionally and incidentally, but systematically
and deliberately. The eyes of both teacher and pupil must be focussed
on meaning-not on mechanical pronunciation as at present. The
scheme of instruction from the first grade onward must have as it
crux-silent meaningful reading.
In particular, this means three things. It means, first, a very large
increase in the amount of silent-reading material. One of the crying
needs of Filipino children is reading matter. The schools are now attempting the impossible feat of teaching to read without reading matter.
That the total number of pages now read by a child who stays through
the four primary grades is insufficient, is shown with clearness in the
sections on primary and intermediate education.
American practice has many lessons for the leaders of Philippine
schools. During the past twenty years, reading instruction in American
schools has improved slowly but surely. The chief objective of primary
instruction has more and more tended to be that of developing silent-reading ability. Correspondingly, the amount of reading done by a typical
primary child has increased tremendously. In the more progressive