Work among adults.-The teachers of Alaska are obliged to undertake tasks quite unusual in ordinary teaching. Teachers and nurses are obliged to devote much of their time to doing what they can to establish sanitary conditions by inspecting and improving local housing conditions. Cleanliness is encouraged and a more wholesome diet attained by showing children and adults how to raise the common vegetables in order to vary the old meat and fish diet.

Tuberculosis, trachoma, rheumatism, and venereal diseases prevail to an alarming extent among the natives, due to their former promiscuous mode of living in poorly ventilated huts and subsisting on a diet of too little variety. To improve these unfortunate conditions, Congress has voted an annual appropriation under which the Bureau of Education employs physicians and nurses and contracts for the use of a number of hospitals.

The reindeer service.-The value of this work among the natives is hard to overestimate. It means that the people who formerly were obliged to subsist almost wholly on a fish diet have obtained a new source of supply, both in food and clothing, besides obtaining a suitable beast for transportation and travel. The reindeer industry began in 1892 with the importation by the Bureau of Education of 171 reindeer from Siberia; 1,280 animals in all have been imported. Figure 60 gives the total appropriation in five-year periods for the schools in Alaska and for the Alaskan reindeer service.

Similarly figure 61 gives the number of reindeer in Alaska by fiveyear periods since the establishment of the service.

The Alaska educational exhibit attracted considerable attention to the heroic work being done by the white and native teachers in this remote Territory of the Nation and the very practical results obtained through their efforts.

THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS.

The exhibit of Philippine education was exceptionally complete and showed in graphic terms the remarkable growth in school education since the system was reorganized by the American Government in 1908. Opportunities for school education are now open to the whole Filipino people, good schools being found even in the remotest rural districts. While school attendance is not compulsory, nearly 500,000 children are in school. A very important feature of this school system as emphasized in the educational exhibits is education for the uplifting of Filipino rural life, including every phase of agriculture and home industry.

The Philippine school system strongly centralized.-The system in point of organization is unlike anything known in the United States. It has sprung out of the chaos which existed at the time

tions may be seen at a glance at figure 62. distinctly centralized character of Philippine educational organizaand social experiences, is quite different from our own people. The of the Filipino race, which, in physical environment and political of American intervention and has developed largely out of the needs

insular bureau of education, is charged with the executive adminwhich is education. The director of education, who is chief of the ippine Commission, has charge of many insular activities, among The secretary of public instruction, who is a member of the Phil-·

istration of the entire school system. Two assistant directors share with the director of education the many responsibilities of school administration. The entire group of islands is further divided into 38 school divisions, each with its division superintendent responsible to the director of education. Each division is further subdivided into supervision districts in charge of supervising officials who are similarly accountable to the division superintendents. Finally, the local school principals and classroom teachers work under the immediate direction of the district supervisors. To quote the late director of education, Frank R. White:

The system is a unit; responsibility is definitely placed for every official act; the organization is mobile-changes of personnel up, down, or out are

EVOLVING A SCHOOL SYSTEM

THE GOVERNMENT HAS

PROFITED BY SPANISH EXPERIENCE

STUDIED THE DESIRES AND NEEDS OF THE FILIPINO PEOPLE
MADE ECONOMIC AND EDUCATIONAL SURVEYS

CONSULTED FOREIGN COUNTRIES HAVING SIMILAR CONDITIONS
FOLLOWED THE BEST EDUCATIONAL TRADITIONS

AND MADE FIRST HAND EXPERIMENTS

IN ORDER TO EVOLVE A SCHOOL SYSTEM ADAPTED
TO THE NEEDS OF THE FILIPINO PEOPLE

FIG. 63.-Chart emphasizing evolution of Philippine education.

easily effected; merit and efficiency can be and are promptly recognized; inefficiency or viciousness clothed with arbitrary authority may easily do great harm. But in the situation we are here describing adequate checks are established; the secretary of public instruction and the governor general will quickly note evidences of discrimination or other untoward tendencies, and the remedy is easily applied.

Evolution of the system. For several years following the establishment of the American school system, the teachers devoted all their energies to the problems of organization and administration, and to a study of the needs of the Filipino people. By degrees a system of industrial education has been organized which challenges comparison elsewhere.

During the past year many thousand boys and girls have received daily instruction along profitable industrial lines. A great many of these children have had regular employment in school and home gardening. The number of school and home gardens maintained under school supervision were 3,119 and 39,901, respectively. In the various phases of home economics 43,000 girls received instruction, and at least 63,000 boys and girls were engaged in such minor industrial work as hat weaving, lace making, and embroidery. But before entering into the details of this and the more specific agricultural studies, it is well to consider first the more general phases of Philippine school organization.

The chart gives briefly the curriculum of the primary unit of four years which emphasizes application to everyday life. The studies in this unit are entirely of a general nature. The intermediate unit emphasizes school years five, six, and seven, and includes, in addition to 224 schools with general courses, 36 teaching schools, 72 housekeeping and household-arts schools, 40 trade schools, and 14 farm schools. In a similar way the chart gives a comprehensive classification of minor professional schools which sort under the secondary unit, and the professional and cultural schools under the higher school unit.

This, it will be understood, corresponds to the courses marked "general" under primary, intermediate, and secondary schools in the chart on page 86. The course pays little heed to the old traditions and is exceedingly practical, preparing the pupils either for

the professional schools or directly for life activities. The subjects in the triangular spaces-Latin, algebra, and solid geometry—are optional only.

It is well to bear in mind that in the Philippine Islands, with the system of voluntary attendance, the children in the primary school range in age from 7 to 20 years, or over. It is interesting to note, however, that with the gradual standardization of courses the age of entrance to the primary school is rapidly dropping toward the normal entrance age of 7 or 8. During the past year 413,309 pupils

attended the primary schools, which is sufficient reason for making these schools complete in themselves.

Aims and methods in Philippine industrial education.-The building up of a satisfactory system of industrial education in the Philippine Islands is incomparably easier than in the United States with its highly organized and diversified industries. In the islands the natives live a comparatively simple life. Agriculture, primitive in the extreme, is the chief means of sustenance. A variety of household industries are practiced and are depended on to supplement the often meager returns from tilling the land. To perfect and to multiply these industries and to place them and general farming on