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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The power of learning to speak English throws into clear relief then
the inevitable results of imitation. The Filipino child learns to attach
meanings to familiar objects and actions which have been named by
his teacher in strangely sounding words. He listens to the new sounds;
he tries to utter them. He hears these strange English words uttered
with the familiar Filipino intonation. Since the teacher does not bring
out the minute variations in her own speech, his sense of discrimination
for the refinements of the English word sounds is never really trained
at all. Ear training in clear perception of sounds is not given. What
is given consists essentially of a mechanical pronunciation on the part
of the teacher of the English words with practically no tonal coloring
which is characteristic of English. Furthermore, the checking up of
errors in pronunciation is not accurately done by the teacher because
she herself has little discrimination of correct pronunciation. She sets
an incorrect model and the children on the whole imitate it successfully.
Multiply this teacher and her class by 27,000 and the product is the
inevitable one; namely, the wide spread development of a thoroughly
Filipinized English throughout the Islands.
But there is a fourth and similarly crucial factor in this insistent language problem. New habits of speech set up with great difficulty in
the all too brief hours of the school week are combated daily, first, by
the disuse of English and, second, by the driving competition of the
dialects. Twenty-five hours a week, forty weeks a year of memoriter
learning of words in the schoolroom competes with seventy hours a
week of natural use of the native tongue out of school. The former has
few real social incentives to compel efficient learning; the latter is completely motivated thereby. The handicap is terrific. Moreover, the
greater daily use of the dialect serves to crystallize the Filipinizing of
English in the schools.
Finally, in this setting of the problem, the officials and the teaching
staff must face frankly the fact that whatever is done now in the development of skill in speaking English must be done in two to four years.
We have carefully set forth the trying difficulties which teachers face
in creating new linguistic habits. Perhaps the greatest obstacle of all
is the brevity of the exposure of Filipino children to spoken English.
Fifty-three per cent of them are in the first two grades, 82 per cent in
the first four. The rank and file have only three years to accomplish
the task set forth in the foregoing pages.
THE FOREGOING SKETCH OF THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM IS BASED ON
THE TESTING OF 3,400 PUPILS
As in the case of other aspects of the educational problem, the Commission has formulated its view of spoken English in the Philippines only