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.

154 EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE PHILIPPINES

periences in the home education of children illustrate vividly the complications involved in forming the vocal habits which underlie oral language.
In evaluating oral English in Philippine schools, we must not forget
the influence of seven to nine years of habit forming of the type we have
just sketched. Especially pertinent is the character of the habit forming in learning the Malay tongues. When the child enters the school
his vocal apparatus is already rigidly set to the characteristics of the
guttural, unstressed language of the native monotone. With the first
school day the process begins of trying to flex this partially rigid vocal
apparatus to fit the needs of a very different tongue. Gutturals of the
gk, ndt, nyk types, which have been learned by being naturally called
into play countless times in the home, on the street, and in the market,
must be put aside for the learning of even more difficult language elements. These elements, furthermore, are the vowel and consonant elements of language which are characterized by more complex sound
reproduction.
At this point we must take into our analysis of the oral English task
confronting the schools the most focal factor of all-the speech of Filipino teachers. The oral speech of school children can be not one whit
better than that of the teachers from whom they learn by direct imitation.
It is the judgment of the Commission that the crux of the whole spoken
English problem lies in the oral speech of the Filipino teachers. Of
the 27,305 teachers in the teaching personnel 26,980 are Filipinos. The
influence on the spoken English of the Islands of the 325 American
teachers who are now in the schools is practically nil.
The chief fact for all to observe is that Filipino children, copying
the models presented by their teachers, are learning to speak a kind of
English which is characterized by the language features of the Malay
tongues. Of the thousand and more teachers who were observed and
tested by the Commission not one speaks the kind of English spoken in
the United States, and naturally, therefore, we found that of the 3,500
children tested not one spoke American-English. Like teacher, like
pupil, fairly describes the results of oral language instruction.
In the first year of school the child is addressed by his teacher in
strange words, words clothed, however, in the same familiar unstressed
monotone of the Malayan dialects. Be their native tongue Tagalog,
Ilocano, Bicol, Visayan, Pampangan, what not, the teachers of the Islands are passing on to the children partial English enunciations set
in the rhythm and unstressed cadence of their own tongues. It is our
judgment that this setting of Malay rhythm, accent, and syllabication
is the chief source of unintelligibility, not the enunciation of words, different though that is from the American practice.