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.

446 EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE PHILIPPINES

school graduates could hold teaching positions in the Philippine school
system.
PROFESSIONAL GROWTH OF TRAINED TEACHERS.-These provisions suggested above are devised particularly for the sake of teachers
of low attainment who would be required to raise the level of their
professional preparation or leave the service. They should be equally
valuable in stimulating the professional growth of teachers whose preparation already reached the requirements. As time passed they could
be more directly shaped to meet the needs of such persons. Investigations carried on in the United States confirm what school administrators
have long suspected, that experience does not continue indefinitely to
increase the efficiency of a teacher. A teacher with five years of
experience is likely, other things being equal, to be a better teacher
than one with less experience. After about five years, the increased
length of service is much less likely to indicate increased efficiency.
Longer service correlates with teaching skill only if professional growth
has been stimulated by something more than school-room practice.
A fundamental condition of professional growth is professional contact. One who can exercise his profession in isolation and not deteriorate in skill is a rare individual. Reading is one means of such
contact. Education has an extensive technical literature in the form of
books and periodicals. Teachers and administrators who read this
technical literature insure themselves against professional stagnation.
The reading circle work carried on so extensively among teachers in
the Philippines, cannot be too highly commended. And to judge from
the books and magazine seen in the offices of supervisors, it is clear
that professional reading is wide-spread among school men in important positions. A recent clever characterization of the American
school situation is that the little red school house as a factor in education
has been displaced by the little read school teacher. In so far as it
exists training of teachers in service must correct this condition.
But reading is after all a passive way of learning. Every teacher
knows that learning takes place best in an atmosphere of activity. The
lively give-and-take of discussion among persons engaged in similar
work is invaluable as a stimulus to growth. Teachers meetings and
superintendents conventions whose programs are filled with lectures,
except that auditors are even less active than readers, are on a level
with reading. It is useless for superiors to bring administrators, supervisors, or teachers together and so to arrange the situation that free discussion is checked or to create in such meetings an atmosphere of
hostility toward suggestion and constructive criticism. This is to retain
a form that has lost its substance. The money spent in carrying out
such meetings is money wasted. Only if teachers are to be trained in