The people of the Philippines, their religious progress and preparation for spiritual leadership in the Far East,

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION-AMERICAN PERIOD 333

The Roman Catholic priesthood has regarded the rapid
spread of public education as a challenge to Catholicism to put
forth greater efforts in educational lines. They have competed with the public schools wherever they could secure a
sufficient number of students. The stimulating effect of public
education upon the Church is most strikingly seen in the fact
that
in I913 there were 325 Catholic schools;
in I918 there were 1,228 Catholic schools.
Hundreds of others were started but were forced out of existence by the superior competition of government schools.
So far as Protestant missions are concerned, they have
been prevailingly favorable to leaving secular education entirely
to the government. The majority of missionaries have agreed
with the report made at the M. E. Conference in I903 that 4
"the public schools opened by our government are meeting
the need for popular education and doing it so well that it
would be a waste of missionary funds and a needless reflection
upon the effort of the government for us to enter into secondary school work, as we would most certainly do under different
conditions." As a result of this policy, there are in all the
Islands but eighty-six Protestant schools of any kind. The
Aglipayan Church has depended still more completely upon the
work of the public schools, not so much from policy as from
a dearth of funds and of teachers; they have but forty-one
schools of any description.
Have the Protestant missions adopted a mistaken policy?
Or even if it were the correct policy ten years ago is it so no
longer? Have conditions changed so much that to-day there
is need of secular schools? More missionaries each year
believe that the situation now demands a larger educational
policy than has yet been adopted. Protestant Filipinos are
particularly insistent that there ought to be Protestant high
schools and colleges. These schools, they say, will turn out
a virile constituency, prepared to give the financial and moral
support which the churches need. The remarkable influence
of Silliman Institute at Dumaguete, of Jaro at Iloilo, of the
4Rader in M. E. Report I914, p. 75.