The Philippines 



3^5 



of the Americans whether they wear a 

 military uniform or the garb of peace, 

 to teach the youth how they should 

 grow and to spread intelligence, led the 

 army into the establishment of an edu- 

 cational system in the Philippines, and 

 in every company of that army two or 

 three men were detailed right in the 

 villages where insurrection was rife to 

 open schools and teach the little Fili- 

 pinos English. Of course, it was a de- 

 fective school system, but nevertheless 

 we found it there, and on what they 

 had done we builded. We sent to 

 America for a thousand school teachers, 

 and we organized, and as the army paci- 

 fied the islands we followed closely with 

 civil government and with schools. 

 Now, we had at the end of the first year 

 after we reached there organized schools 

 enough so that there were reciting in 

 English 10 per cent of the youth of 

 school age of the islands. The next 

 year this was increased to 13 per cent, 

 and last year it increased to 19 per cent, 

 and there were in July and August of 

 last year reciting in English in the 

 schools 263,000 Filipino youth. 



We do not have any compulsory school 

 laws, because a compulsory school law 

 is predicated on your having schools 

 and teachers enough to teach all the 

 youth in the community, and we have, 

 as you see, only about one-fifth of the 

 teachers needed and only one fifth of 

 the school-houses needed. That is what 

 we are doing now. Next year I have 

 no doubt the increase will be 100,000. 

 And all this indicates to you — at least 

 it does to me — the earnest desire of those 

 people, those children, and the fathers 

 and mothers of those children that they 

 should learn English, and that they 

 should become educated. Now, there 

 are 263,000 of them, and the average 

 attendance is 70 per cent. That coun- 

 try is a country where between doing a 

 thing and not doing it you usually choose 

 not to do it, and therefore if 70 per 

 cent of the pupils attend you may count 



on a very strong feeling in favor of 

 education everywhere. The trouble is 

 that we have not money enough to make 

 their education what it should be. We 

 do not want to make them university 

 professors. We shall have a university 

 there. We ought to have one simply 

 as a keystone for the arch of education 

 for a comparatively small number of 

 Filipinos who can afford to take that 

 education ; but what we wish to do is to 

 spread the primary schools, the manual- 

 training, industrial, and normal schools. 

 We are now using 800 American teach- 

 ers, in the first place, to teach the Fili- 

 pino teachers how to teach their Fili- 

 pino children. In other words, we are 

 hoping to build up a body of from ten 

 to fifteen thousand Filipino teachers 

 who can teach English, and thus teach 

 the whole islands a new language — a 

 common language and a language, as I 

 have said, of free institutions. Now, 

 it seems to me that this statement of 

 mine, this statement of fact, itself 

 answers my friend Mr Alleyne Ireland 

 as to the wisdom of our expending 25 per 

 cent of our income in teaching. It is 

 what the people want, and we can be 

 certain that if they learn the English 

 language and read English books they 

 will learn. 



OUR SYSTEM OF GOVERNING THE 

 PHILIPPINES IS DESIGNED TO 

 TRAIN THE PEOPLE TO 

 SELF-GOVERNMENT 



Now, the next subject of criticism is 

 as to the form of government. Mr Ire- 

 land says that we have made a mistake, 

 because we have established municipal 

 and provincial governments under the 

 commission. We have had elective 

 officers in the municipal governments ; 

 we have had an elective governor, who 

 is one- third of the provincial council, 

 the other two members being appointed 

 under the civil-service rules and being, 

 generally, Americans, the "fiscal" or 

 prosecuting attorney being a native 

 and the secretary of province being a 



