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.

486 EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE PHILIPPINES

military argument were employed to sanction a similar activity for girls.
To secure any of the values the school should be interested in, calisthenics
for girls and military drill for boys are futile.
ANALYSIS OF THE PROGRAM.-Detailed analysis of the several sections of the manual suggests the following:
INSPECTION.-Physical Education I deals with "a daily health and
sanitary inspection of pupils, of classrooms, of school buildings, and of
school premises." This will be considered under Health Education.
RELIEF EXERCISES.-The purpose of relief activity is excellent.
So much of the academic program is sedentary and so much of the
industrial work unduly restrictive, that it is highly desirable to have
relief periods. When frequent and short, and when filled with free,
natural, relaxing types of activities, they serve their purpose best. To
group the relief periods into one session is a serious mistake. The admonition, "The pupils should be encouraged to perform relief exercises at
home, especially after rising in the morning and before retiring at night,"
may be justified in a large city with few play spaces; it is entirely unwarranted in the Philippines. The tendency to substitute an article
of poor quality for the real thing must be guarded against in education
quite as much as in commerce.
The relief activities should be in game, stunt, or play form. The
use of formal, artificial movements "working up to more complicated
combinations and coordinations," for relief purposes has been rejected
in sound practice.
POSTURE.-Posture of the body represents bad or good habits of
adjustment of the parts of the body to each other and of the body as
a whole to the environment. The upright posture of man is a recently
acquired position and as such is susceptible to derangement like other
recent modifications of the human body.
But to think of the upright posture from a physical standpoint only
is to ignore the facts associated with the evolution and the experiences
of man. Defective posture does result from disease (anterior polyomyelitis), from physical weakness (malnutrition), but most of the bad
posture in school children represents mental and emotional states. How,
it may be asked, can we expect children to stand erect in a posture
that expresses confidence, belief in self, and courage, if the technic for
fostering these qualities of personality is lacking? If the influence of
the school is felt, either through the assignment of discouraging tasks
which are beyond the ability of the individual to solve, or through
social customs that emphasize negative self-feeling, the posture of the
children will be called bad regardless of the corrective exercises em