V. PUBLIC ORDER.—Public order, the first requisite of a stable government, has been splendidly maintained through the agency of the Philippine Constabulary and the municipal police. The Constabulary has always been dependable and thoroughly efficient. There is hardly any country in the world more peaceful than the Philippines.
VI. EDUCATION.—The present school system in the Philippines has been one of the principal uplifting agencies in the colonial enterprise undertaken by the United States as a result of the Spanish-American war. Immediately after the capitulation of Manila, an army officer acting as superintendent of schools opened schools. Everywhere the army went afterwards a public school was established and put into operation.
The school system is supported entirely from Philippine revenue. The advance has been rapid, there now being about a million pupils in the schools being taken care of by the Philippine government. The attendance of almost a million is entirely voluntary, there being no compulsory education law.
The public school system has received the unstinted support of the Filipino people. The first bill passed by the Philippine Assembly in 1907 was the appropriation of one million pesos for the building of rural schools. In 1918 the thirty million-peso act was passed, which provided that thirty million pesos be set aside, over and above the regular annual appropriation, for school-housing and equipment. The law is expected to provide school facilities for every boy and girl of school age in the Islands by 1924.
The head of the public-school system is the Vice-Governor-General who is at the same time Secretary of Public Instruction. The executive control is centered in the Bureau of Education headed by a director, who is responsible for the conduct of public schools and has the authority necessary to make his control effective.
School divisions.—The Islands are divided into forty-nine school divisions, each division generally coinciding with the boundaries of a province, except the City of Manila, and four Insular schools—the Philippine Normal School, the Philippine School of Arts and Trades, the Philippine Nautical School, and the Central Luzon Agricultural School—each of which is considered as a distinct division. A division is under the immediate charge of a superintendent who is the representative of the Director of Education. The Division Superintendent in the province is generally assisted by a provincial industrial supervisor and an academic supervisor. Each provincial division is divided into different districts consisting of one or more municipalities and several barrios or villages, each under the charge of a supervising teacher.
There are 50 provincial high schools. There are 20 provincial trade schools and 14 provincial shops, the principals of which are responsible directly either to the principal of the provincial school or to the Division Superintendent of Schools.
The original feature of all school work was the academic. Soon the Bureau of Education labored to make industrial work a part and parcel of the curriculum. This was followed by making physical education a vital part of the courses. And now the aim is to maintain a proper balance in the academic, industrial, physical, and social work.
The English language is the only medium of instruction.
There are seven elementary grades—four primary and three intermediate. The secondary courses take four years. There has been built up an English-speaking Filipino teaching staff—a distinctive achievement reflecting credit on Filipinos and Americans alike.