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.

SECONDARY EDUCATION

389

The teachers in the regular high school are not trained for their job.
Approximately 18 per cent of them have received but four years
or less of training beyond the intermediate school. This means that
they have attended no school beyond the school in which they are
teaching. About 33 per cent have had eight or more years of education beyond the intermediate school, an education equivalent to graduation from a four-year college. Thus, only one-third have received that
degree of training which is now regarded in the States as the minimum
academic preparation for high-school teaching. On the side of professional training the situation is even less satisfactory. Sixty-eight per
cent of these teachers have had no professional work in education,
however meagre, in high school, normal school, college, or university.
Moreover, only 13 per cent of the American teachers who attended
college specialized in English, the subject they are required to teach.
They were apparently selected quite without regard for either their
special academic or their professional training.
For the most part the teachers in the regular high schools are relatively
inexperienced. Thirty-three per cent of the Americans and 29
per cent of the Filipinos were teaching their first year in the system;
and the median number of years of teaching experience was 2.6 for
the one group and 2.8 for the other. The corresponding figure for
American secondary schools, where the teachers are notoriously youthful
and inexperienced, is approximately seven. Moreover, only eight per
cent of the teachers in the Filipino high schools have been in the
profession more than ten years. The situation is undoubtedly due in
part to the recent and very rapid growth of secondary education in the
Islands, but this growth is in itself an insufficient cause. For a generation the growth of the public high school in the United States has been
equally rapid. If the work of the academic high school is ever to become efficient, a more experienced teaching staff will have to be secured.
The tenure of the high-school teacher is brief and uncertain. Sixtynine of the Americans and 239 of the Filipinos were new to their
present positions this past year, and there is little prospect that they
will remain long where they are. The median number of years which
the American teachers have taught in their present positions is but 1.4;
and the corresponding figure for the Filipino is 1.3. From these facts
it would appear that the ordinary teacher remains in the profession but
three years and that during this short experience he holds at least two
different positions. From such a teaching staff, however conscientious,
very little of sound training can be expected. A teacher can hardly
render satisfactory service until he has become acquainted with the
school and the surrounding community; and he can scarcely be expected
to develop a fair measure of acquaintance in less than one year.