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.

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION

283

The primary consideration of the industrial work in the upper grades
is the education and training of pupils to become efficient producers
of the kinds of products needed by the people or readily salable by
them. If the general sales or commercial features of the present plan
of work interfere with this purpose, then the aims set up for the work
are being partly defeated.
HOME-MAKING SUBJECTS
Because it is of such fundamental importance, a special section is
included relative to the home-making subjects for girls. What is here
presented is in complete harmony with recommendations made in sections following.
In the present curricula of the schools, there is work provided for
girls in home-making subjects from the second grade through the last
year of high school. It includes sewing, embroidery, lace making,
crocheting, tatting, weaving, cooking and food studies, housekeeping,
first aid, home care of the sick, and the care and feeding of infants
and of children. This work is graded and distributed in terms of
its suitability for girls of different degrees of maturity as these have
been found in the schools. For the primary school, some of the work
is now probably too difficult since the overage pupils are gradually
being eliminated.
In the intermediate schools, a housekeeping and household-arts
course is offered, but the only work additional to that in the general
course is a course in the sixth and seventh grades in hygiene and home
sanitation, and two days a week instead of one in cooking and housekeeping. In the high school the work is all placed in a special course.
No work at all is offered in the general course of the high school.
In general, the work has been very effective in improving the home
conditions and life of the people. It has, perhaps, been somewhat
overtechnical. A part of the work, that in lace making, embroidery,
crocheting, tatting, and weaving, has been carried to a point which
makes it commercial rather than essential to home making.
The manual in plain sewing and the Bureau textbook on housekeeping are well prepared for the technical portions of the work, and
for some of the closely related subject matter. The teaching of the
work as observed and as evidenced by finished products, is efficient
in achieving the technical training in production prescribed by the
courses.
The means by which the work can be improved lie in two directions.
One is in making a clear distinction between the home-making purposes and the commercial purposes of the work in textiles and clothing.
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