to give him a chance to grow up and incidentally teaching him to govern himself. The one great essential in a policy of this sort is education, education which, while adapting itself to his environment, will take cognizance of his special needs. It is my purpose to attempt to describe for you the extent to which the present system of public instruction in the Philippine Islands is accomplishing this object.

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Scarcely had the echoes of Dewey's guns in the Battle. of Manila Bay died away ere the military authorities were organizing schools. Although actively engaged against the insurrectionary forces in the field" the army "found time to establish and supervise public schools, much to the surprise of the Filipino." The transports which carried the volunteer American soldiers back to the States returned to the islands with volunteer school teachers armed, not with rifles and shells nor even ferules, but with baseball bats, baseballs, and school supplies-and soon the schoolhouse superseded the army tent. By May, 1902, two years after the establishment of the Civil Administration, nearly a thousand of these soldiers of peace were distributed throughout the islands.

America's task in the Philippines is greatly simplified by the fact that three centuries of Spanish rule left seveneighths of the population of the entire archipelago adherents to the Catholic faith. Thus the seven million inhabitants, representing the entire civilized population of the islands, were, at the inception of the American occupation, Christians, Christians, not in the sense that many of us would have them be, but Christians at least in the sense that they were in tune with European and American ideals. Under the Spanish regime, public instruction was administered by the church. The university preceded the primary school. The University of Santo Tomas was founded in 1619 but public primary schools were not established until 1863. The attempts of the Spanish government to institute efficient public instruction were frustrated by the church, the object of which was to confine elementary education to

the church catechism and ecclesiastical observances. Moreover, the monastic orders would not coöperate with the Spanish government in its desire that Filipinos be given a common language to supersede the diversity of dialects spoken by them. By 1897, more than thirty years after Spain had expressed its desire that Filipinos be instructed in Spanish, less than ten per cent of the population could read and write this language. In ceding the Philippine Islands to America in 1898, Spain gave but the remnants of a public school system with barely the nucleus of an efficient teaching force, but left a Christian people capable and desirous of an education and, in the words of President Taft, "with no caste or arbitrary customs which prevent their development along lines of Christian civilization.”

What is the character of the education which is now devised to mould the little brown brother into a full grown man. The Secretary of Public Instruction in reply to this query informed me that public instruction in the Philippine Islands aims to give every boy and girl a common school education in English and at the same time to teach him to do something useful with his hands. Emphasis might well be placed upon the words, "to teach him to do something useful with his hands," as the following incident will attest. A certain woman teacher applied to the Director of Education for home leave. The regulations would not permit its being granted so she was obliged to appeal to the Secretary of Public Instruction who, after telling her that it would be extremely difficult to spare any of the American teachers, asked her what subject she was teaching. When she replied that she was teaching Roman history he retorted as quick as a flash, “Yes, you may go and stay away as long as you please."

The Filipino is accused of being hopelessly indolent. The public schools are striving first to eradicate the word hopelessly from this accusation and secondly to substitute the word industrious for indolent. Indolence as a characteristic of the Filipino is ascribed to the fact that the

tropics afford him the bare necessities of life without the expenditure of great labor, thereby breeding improvidence, and to the policy of the church under the Spanish regime whereby he was taught that the bulk of the fruits of his labor should be dedicated to the church. After the church had exacted its mite the man who worked found himself no better off than his lazy brother. Thus the incentive to labor was gone. To the Filipino, education was a means whereby he might be lifted above the necessity of physical labor, a conception not uncommon to the Orient. To go to school meant to him to don a white collar and be a gentleAn army of seven hundred American teachers and eighty-five hundred Filipino teachers is now directing its energies toward breaking down these baneful traditions. The Filipino is being taught the dignity of labor. This is what the Secretary of Public Instruction meant when he said "at the same time to teach them to do something useful with their hands."

man.

Much is being done by the Bureau of Education to encourage thrift and saving among the school boys and girls, which is not an easy matter, considering that the Filipinos are, to a unit, given to gambling and that the parents, rich and poor alike, are so indulgent with their children as to give them money almost every day with which to purchase food, candy, and toys. A visitor to the primary or intermediate school in the Philippines will now often see inscribed on the blackboard of the schoolroom such a statement as "The pupils of this class have deposited pesos in the Postal-Savings Bank." Prizes and banners are awarded to encourage children making the deposits. Last year a special competition of this sort was inaugurated. Certain Americans contributed substantial prizes. According to the rules of the competition only money which had actually been earned by the pupils during the six months of the competition could be deposited. The total number of depositors, including native teachers and pupils, was 13,728, and the total amount deposited was pesos 33,582.02. The

parents as well as the children are beginning to appreciate the fact that if they take care of the one-time insignificant pennies the dollars will take care of themselves. The habit of gambling which a few years ago was common among all school children has now almost disappeared. Parents are thanking the teachers for establishing banks in the schools.

Although the year 1911 witnessed the inauguration of the University of the Philippines and although the public school system provides thirty-eight high schools with a total enrollment during 1911 of three thousand students, yet the energies of the Bureau of Education are for the most part expended upon the primary and intermediate schools. The returns for the year 1911 show 245 intermediate schools with 25,000 pupils and 4,121 primary schools with 425,000 pupils as the average monthly enrollment. The American administration of the Philippine Islands is expending on public instruction annually, $1.00, Mexican currency, for each man, woman, and child in the islands. (The entire administrative expenses in the islands is met by the islands' revenues.) Japan expends about the same per capita sum on education, while the British government in India expends for a similar purpose less than one-tenth of this amount. In this connection it is well to bear in mind that no fees are exacted from the pupils attending any of the public schools in the Philippine Islands. Of the $7,000,000, Mexican currency, expended during the year 1911 upon public instruction in the Philippines, 65 per cent went for primary schools, 30 per cent for intermediate, and 5 per cent for secondary education. Thus 95 per cent of the expenditures for public instruction in the Philippines are devoted to elementary education. Of the $7,000,000 expended, the insular treasury paid 61 per cent, the municipalities 36 per cent, and the provincial treasuries 3 per cent. The average annual cost for a pupil for the primary course is pesos 11.00, for the intermediate course pesos 95.00, and for the secondary school pesos 120.00, thus making an average of $16.00, Mexican currency, for a pupil for a year for the

entire school system. The average cost for a pupil for a year in the United States is four times this amount.

Naturally we are now interested to know what sort of an education the Philippine people receive in return for the money expended. The Philippines comprise 3,000 islands with an aggregate area of 115,000 square miles, which is nearly equal to that of the British Isles (121,000). Geographically as well as ethnologically the Philippines belong to the Malay archipelago. Geographical conditions are such as to make school work difficult of administration. For instance the northernmost school in the islands is located on the Island of Batan, 135 miles south of Formosa, while the most southerly is in the Sulu archipelago, over 1000 miles distant. The plan of the Bureau of Education is to establish public schools of a standard type on every populated island and in all the important small towns throughout the islands. This plan is now nearly realized.

The Bureau of Education is represented on the Philippine Commission by the Secretary of Public Instruction. The administrative work of the bureau is under the supervision of a Director of Education. The archipelago is divided into thirty-six educational divisions, each of which is under the supervision of an American division superintendent. There is an army of nine thousand teachers engaged in the task of moulding the little brown brother into an industrious human being; of this number seven hundred are Americans, the majority of whom are college graduates. One-third of the American teachers scattered over the islands teaching and directing the work of native teachers are women. Likewise nearly one-third of the eighty-four hundred Filipino teachers are women. It is the policy of the educational bureau to give Filipino teachers of superior attainments an opportunity to render service to the full measure of their capacity. It is the policy of the Japanese administration in Formosa, where there is a population of three million Chinese, to maintain Japanese as head teachers in all the public schools, primary and ad