The Philippines: Past and Present (Volume 2 of 2)Worcester, Dean C. (Dean Conant)
History
The Philippines: Past and Present (Volume 2 of 2)
Worcester, Dean C. (Dean Conant)
Philippines; Philippines -- History -- 1898-1946
Personally, I feel especially indebted to Mr. Gilbert for his attitude
relative to school work among the non-Christian tribes. The children
of the hill people are naturally hard-working. In some places they
were being actually taught idleness in the schools, and in most
the education given them was of little practical value. I found
Igorot children in Lepanto studying geography. I asked a boy what
the world was, and was told that it was a little yellow thing about
the size of his hand! This was a fairly accurate description of
a map, the significance of which had utterly failed to penetrate
his understanding. Filipino teachers who were not considered fit
for appointments in the lowlands were being foisted off on to the
unfortunate hill people, as they were willing to accept very small
salaries in lieu of none at all. Prior to Mr. Gilbert's assumption of
office, my frequent complaints had produced no practical result. He
was kind enough to say to me at the outset that he would give very
serious consideration to my opinions in the matter of educational
work among the people of the non-Christian tribes. To-day industrial
work has taken its proper place in schools established for them, and
considerable numbers of them are being fitted for lives of usefulness,
although it is still true that school facilities among them are,
as a rule, grossly inadequate. In Ifugao, for instance, with at
least a hundred and twenty-five thousand inhabitants, there are but
two schools. In Kalinga, with some seventy-six thousand inhabitants,
the first school has just been opened. However, this condition will
doubtless be remedied in time.
The former tendency of Filipinos to prepare themselves for trades or
professions and then not follow them has been largely overcome. Most
of the students graduating from the Philippine Normal School take
up the profession of teaching, and practically all of the graduates
of the Philippine School of Arts and Trades are following the lines
of work which they have studied. And now I come to what I deem to be
one of the most important accomplishments of the Bureau of Education.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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