The work is popular, and as there are more candidates than places only the more promising are admitted. They have shown that they possessed common-sense by avoiding the traps set for them by Filipino politicians and newspaper reporters. Their tact and self-respect have brought them safely through many embarrassing, and a few cruelly trying, situations forced upon them by the unkindness or brutality of those whom they have sought to serve. Their gentleness and kindness have endeared them to their patients, and it is now a common thing for Americans to request the services of Filipina nurses. Their faithfulness and efficiency have won the confidence of patients and physicians alike. Their courage has enabled them to triumph over the prejudices of their own people, and to perform many hard, disagreeable tasks, and meet some very real dangers, without faltering. The gratefulness which they have shown for the opportunity to help their people, no less than for the interest taken in them by Americans, has won them many friends. The training of Filipina nurses has passed far beyond the experimental stage; it is a great success.
Instruction in the Philippine Nurses’ Training School is now largely given by members of the university faculty and the graduates of this school must certainly be numbered among the most highly educated women of the Philippines. More of them are sadly needed, not only in government institutions, but in private hospitals, and especially in the provincial towns, where a few of them are already engaging in district nursing with unqualified success. The country might well get on for the present with fewer lawyers, and fewer artists, if the number of nurses could be increased.
Equally praiseworthy is the work of the students and graduates of the College of Medicine and Surgery, which is housed in a commodious and adequate building. Their theoretical instruction is of a very high character, and they have almost unrivalled facilities for practical clinical work in the Philippine General Hospital. Entrance requirements are high and the course of study is severe. A number of the best students do post-graduate work in the hospital, where they are employed as internes and assistants. As a result, the college is turning out graduates admirably qualified for the great work which awaits them among their own people.
The other colleges of the university are, for the most part, doing their work efficiently and well, and as a rule their students are showing appreciation of the opportunities afforded them, and are utilizing them to good advantage.
Important educational work is being carried on by various bureaus of the government. The Bureau of Lands has an excellent school for surveyors. The Bureau of Printing is in itself a great industrial school, and ninety-five per cent of its work is now done by Filipinos trained within its walls, while many others who have had practical instruction there have found profitable private employment.
An excellent school is conducted in Bilibid Prison with convicts as teachers. A very large proportion of the prisoners receive practical instruction in manual training and are fitted to earn honest livings when their sentences expire. Furthermore, they readily secure employment, as the men discharged from this institution have in many cases earned well-deserved reputations for honesty and industry.
All the women confined at Bilibid are taught to make pillow lace.
At the Bontoc Prison, the non-Christian tribe convicts of the islands are taught useful industries, and so satisfactory are the results that I have formed the habit of calling the institution my “university.”
At the Iwahig agricultural penal colony convicts are taught modern agricultural methods under a system such that they gradually become owners of houses, land and agricultural implements and may in the end have their families with them so that they are well settled for life when their sentences expire, if they take advantage of the opportunities given them.
The educational policy which the United States has adopted in dealing with the Filipinos is without a parallel in history. I am glad to have assisted in its inauguration, and I am proud of its results, which will make themselves felt more and more as the years go by. Even now English is far more widely spoken in the Philippine Islands than Spanish ever was, and this is a boon the magnitude of which cannot be appreciated by those who have not had brought home to them by experience the disadvantages incident to the existence of very numerous dialects among the inhabitants of one country.