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

149

The relation of these Bulacan methods to the future development of
language in the Islands is very important. The methods and the results in the tests have convinced the Commission that, even under the
severe handicaps of instruction carried on in a foreign language which
is almost never used outside of school, English as a common language
can be taught successfully in the Philippine Islands. What is needed
is clear: The installation in each of the provinces, generally, of a system
of instruction that will focus attention on training in silent reading;
that will stress meaning, as the great objective; that will provide daily
practice in thought-getting; that will be based on a carefully graduated
vocabulary; that will give children power of phonic analysis of words
which will be a definite means of adding to their grasp of meaning.
In this section, little emphasis has been placed upon phonic analysis
because a fuller treatment of it is found in the section dealing with
primary instruction. The two sections should be considered together.
The recommendations of one supplement those of the other.
In summary, then, the survey of reading has constituted definite evidence on two matters: First, that the rank and file of Philippine schools
are falling far short of producing needed results; second, that enough
schools are reaching a relatively high level of attainment to give promise
that the desired command of English can be developed even under the
handicaps of having to teach in a difficult foreign language. The
survey has pointed to better methods of teaching silent reading as the
real road to success.
Why Are Filipino Achievements in Reading Relatively Poorer in the
Higher Grades?
Chart I, Chart II, and Chart IV show that there is a significant
flattening out of the Philippine achievement curves in paragraph reading, in sentence meaning, and in general ability. The lag in achievement behind American results increases in the higher grades. We
may anticipate our later discussion to say that this is not true of
vocabulary development. Through all the grades of the school system,
Filipino children continue to add steadily to their vocabularies. They
build up these vocabularies at about the same general rate as do
American children. Although their grasp of words lags about a year
and a half behind that of American children, it is significant that the
lag does not increase through six years of the elementary school. From
the shapes of the two curves, we can predict that the lag does not
increase during the high-school careers of the two groups. This is of
the greatest significance to the student of mental growth. We shall
recur to it later. That the lag in achievement does not increase in the
higher grades in arithmetic computation (no reading involved) is also