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.

556 EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE PHILIPPINES

tendents, supervisors, and supervising teachers at Baguio, to and from
which the traveling expenses are paid, are a great asset to the system.
The inter-provincial athletic meets also give superintendents and highschool principals the opportunity to meet others in their fields. In such
contacts, exchange of professional thought is always possible. Furthermore, superintendents may obtain permission to visit the work and province of other superintendents. The central office encourages this type
of visitation and prescribes it for superintendents who need it on their
special problems.
(d) The school administrator who wishes to grow professionally
must keep up with the literature of his field. This is particularly important in the Philippines where distances and inadequate travel facilities make personal contacts unusually difficult. There is comparatively
little incentive to keeping up with this literature in the system at present.
The superintendents are so hard driven that they cannot keep up with
the technical literature of education. Few progressive state departments of education expect men to do this on their own account. Instead,
they issue publications which condense and interpret such literature for
the field. The same thing is done on a national scale by the United
States Bureau of Education. The publications of the latter are freely
available for all the division superintendents in the Philippines. But
conditions are so different in the Philippines that the school administrators here must modify much that is approved for use in the United
States in order to make it applicable to Philippine conditions. The
central staff at the Bureau of Education should be equipped with the
necessary personnel and funds for editing and issuing a monthly news
bulletin which will give to the field the best thought and the latest
facts on education in the Philippines and the essentials from other countries, particularly the United States, carefully adapted for Philippine
conditions.
5. Does the school administrator in the Philippines have freedom
and encouragement to grow in his special professional interests?
While the evidence on this has been conflicting, the answer on the whole
seems to the Commission to be "no." This situation is due to a number
of difficult conditions, some of which could be easily changed, and some
of which could not.
The Commission found a number of superintendents who were doing
excellent work in special professional lines such as language instruction,
classification and promotion, helpful supervision, training of teachers in
service. Most of these men were working with no special cooperation
from the central office. Some have been restrained by that office from
carrying on such special enterprises. Undoubtedly, new superintendents
are held rigidly to the letter of official regulations. On the other hand,