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.

412 EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE PHILIPPINES

every Filipino child, during all of the time that he attends the public
schools, shall be under the care of a competent teacher. To review the
evidence proving that elementary-school teaching is a technical task requiring technical training should not be necessary. Any one who can
communicate at all can teach with some success. Many persons with
peculiar native aptitude and no training can teach very well. In exceptional cases they may do even better than persons less happily endowed could do after taking training. Until recent years no definite
objective means were available for discovering the great differences
between good teaching and poor teaching. These facts have made the
public, and some school administrators, slow to recognize the indispensability of teacher training. But that such technical preparation is necessary, if a sufficiently large staff of competent teachers is to be supplied
for a school system, is now admitted by everyone in theory. Save for
the United States, this belief is acted upon practically by every nation
which can claim respectable rank for its school system. Certainly no
one interested in the welfare of the Philippine schools needs to be convinced of this necessity. Good schools are impossible without technicallytrained teachers. Knowledge of subject matter to be taught, on a level
well above that to which pupils are to be carried, is fundamental. But
to this possession must be added skill in imparting knowledge. The
adult, the university student, has, on the average, gained so much in
habit and skill of learning that he can profit by mere exposure to
materials of instruction. His ability to learn compensates in a measure
for lack of teaching ability on the part of his instructors. The elementary-school pupil has not this capacity. His lack of ability to
learn economically without guidance is the measure of the indispensability
of teaching skill on the part of the teacher.
DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS AND SUPERVISION NOT A SUBSTITUTE
FOR TEACHER TRAINING.-The attempt has been made repeatedly to
make the work of unskilled teachers effective by putting into their hands
detailed instructions to be followed day by day. Long before modern
investigations of the individual differences of children were made, the
ineffectiveness of this method was recognized and its employment realized
to be no more than an unsatisfactory makeshift. Experience has proved
conclusively that no set of instructions to teachers can be devised which
will fit all schoolroom situations even passably well. The lack of
training on the part of teachers which inspires the giving of detailed
instructions also makes it improbable that the instructions, no matter how
well devised, will be carried out to the limit of their effectiveness. The
teacher with real skill finds the instructions a handicap and he will find