The Philippine private schools in retrospect

Title

Creator

Sinco, V. G.

Language

English

Source

Panorama Volume XIX (No. 12) December 1967

Year

1967

Subject

Private universities & colleges

Higher education -- Law & legislation

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

From a speech delivered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the recognition of the Philippine Association of Colleges and Universities

Fulltext

■ The record of Philippine institutions of higher edu cation has improved during the last fifty years despite obvious handicaps. THE PHILIPPINE PRIVATE SCHOOLS IN RETROSPECT The organizers of this ce lebration of the Golden An niversary of the passage of Act No. 2706 approved in 1917 recognizing the Philip pine Association of ’ Private Colleges and Universities has assigned to me this subject. It is quite appropriate for a man of over 70 years as I am. For somewhere in one of the ancient books we find these lines: “The old men dream dreams and the young men see visions.” A retrospect is in reality a dream of past events. It is a necessity for the mind and the emotion of man. To dispense with it is to be without a sense of history, thus to be thoughtless and hopeless, a pitiable victim of amnesia. On the other hand, young men with vision are indis pensable, for the experience of history tells us that peo ple without vision perish. For this purpose, our pro gram makers are right when they assigned to our able young man, Dr. Narciso Albarracin, the subject of “The Private Schools: Today and Tomorrow,” which provides us with a view of a bright actuality and a vision of an enhancing, encouraging, and effective assistance in our educational work. Then we need to realize, as the sub ject of our other speaker, Dr. O. D. Corpus, reminds us that our country is in a state of change. In persuading me to ac cept my assignment, Dr. Cresencio Peralta, the active and able chairman of our program committee, told me that all I have to do on this occasion is to repeat what I have written in a booklet recently published with the title “The Case of Philippine Private, Education.” Frank ly, I did not welcome his 6 Panorama suggestion for if I would closely follow it, I would have to waste two or three hours of the valuable time of this audience. Instead, I thought I would confine myself this evening to a few remarks on the development of our private schools since the first days of this century. Long before the passage of Act No. 2706 in 1917 by the newly organized Philip pine Legislature under the Jones Law, the Taft Com mission, which was made up completely of American members, had passed a law creating the Department of Public Instruction in less than six months after it had began the exercise of its le gislative powers. This took place on January 21, 1901. That' law was primarily con cerned with the organization of public schools but it pro vided that nothing in it should “be construed in any way to forbid, impede or obstruct the establishment and maintainance of private schools.” Thus by implica tion, the operation of private schools was legally recog nized and respected. This was to be expected of the American government which has always been the advo cate and protector of demo cracy, intellectual freedom, and free enterprise. In those early years of the American occupation the pri vate schools were still run after the Spanish model. The Spanish language continued to be used in the existing institutions of higher edu cation. Their instructors and students were not sufficiently acquainted with the more modern American methods of instruction. Consequent ly, their graduates hardly had enough knowledge of English to meet the entrance requirements of the newly organized University of the Philippines and other gov ernment colleges or to qua lify for civil service positions. Under such conditions there was much dissatisfaction with their courses and me thods of instruction. But in a few years, those private colleges began to realize the necessity of adopt ing the newer educational procedures; and as the gov ernment discovered that they actually reformed their courses and methods, a num ber of them received official authorization to confer de December 1967 7 grees and award diplomas. This and other privileges en couraged more private insti tutions to apply for govern ment supervision of their courses of study, methods of teaching, textbooks, and equipment in the expecta tion of receiving similar pri vileges. Consequently, the Department of Public In struction’s curricula and plans of study, which was the principal basis of official re cognition, began to be vo luntarily adopted by them. No compulsion was used to force any private college to follow government regula tion; but it was the practical thing to comply with it for with the official symbols of distinction their graduates could be readily accepted in government schools and colleges and in the civil ser vice. But as Filipinos acquired greater knowledge and mas tery of modern education and its administration, the rule of prescribing a uniform and rigid schedule of courses and other instructional ideas which obviously prevented initiative and experimenta tion in private colleges be gan to show its disadvan tages to Filipinos of thought and foresight. Without be ing consciously and widely felt, it created a real dan ger to individual freedom. It made authoritarianism superficially advantageous and insidiously preserved the colonial spirit of intellectual parasitism. The Filipino newspapers at that time showed a remarkable grasp of principle and moral in dependence when their edi tors criticized the action of the Department of Public Instruction under American control as an arbitrary threat to the freedom of education and the spirit of nationalism. It is remarkable how those early ideas of Filipino wri ters were later practically up held in their essence by those decisions of the United States Supreme Court and State courts on educational free dom handed down from the year 1923 to 1947. Their basic theme has coincided with past and present views expressed by liberal thinkers and progressive writers in America and European coun tries on education, specially higher education. It is, therefore, strange that in 1917, when both Houses Panorama of the Philippine Legisla ture were already in the hands of the Filipinos, Act No. 2706 was passed provi ding for compulsory inspec tion of private schools and colleges by the Department of Public Instruction. Still that law did not require a person to secure a permit for the opening of a private school. Uncritical observers considered this omission a defect of the system which in their minds was respon sible for the poor education produced in private schools at that time as if a permit could necessarily assure an adequate educational quali ty. At any rate in 1925, the Monroe Board of Educational Survey in the report of its findings on the condition of the Philippine educational system recommended legis lation “to prohibit the open ing of any school by an in dividual or organization without the permission of the Secretary of Public Instruc tion.” Making the Secreta ry the Czar or dictator of Philippine private education, the Monroe Board suggested that certain conditions be laid down and followed be fore such permission should be granted. Those condi tions are good provided they are intelligently, not arbitra rily and mechanically, ap plied by qualified official chiefs and supervisors. Re alizing this prerequisite the Monroe Report particularly stressed the necessity of an adequate staff in the Depart ment of Public Instruction to be composed of “men and women who have the scho lastic, professional, and per sonal attainments” to pass on applications for opening private schools and to make their supervision effective and sensible. Among the defects of pri vate schools pointed out in the Monroe Report were the absence of a law or regu lation which would prevent a person “disqualified by ignorance, greed, or even immoral character from opening a school”; the lack of sufficient knowledge of the science of education on the part of private school heads; the absence of teach ers familiar with modern teaching methods; and the paucity of uptodate textbooks and laboratory and library facilities. December 1967 9 Strangely enough most of the reasons for the weakness and defects of the private schools outlined in the Mon roe Report were practically the same defects which the public schools 'also suffered according to the same Re port. The difficulty of securing new teachers with adequate qualifications was indeed felt not only by the private but also by the public schools. There were very few quali fied ones available. In the public schools the Monroe Report stated that about 18 per cent of them had less than four years of training beyond the intermediate school; less than 33 per cent had an education equivalent to graduation from a fouryear college. As to profes sional training, 68 per cent of them “had no professional work in education, however meager, in high school, nor mal school, college or univer sity.” Their teaching expe rience was meager and un satisfactory. These deficiencies were naturally present in the Fi lipino private schools at that time which received no gov ernment support of any kind. But as the record shows those Filipino private schools did not stagnate. They struggled to improve their faculty, their courses, and their products. Their gra duates even at that time were able to provide the nation with much of the man-po wer needed in the profes sions, in private business en terprises, in education, and in government service. In his book The Philip pines published in 1945, Dr. Joseph R. Hayden makes this noteworthy remark: “By 1929, the schools which had brought discredit upon the reputation of private educa tion had either been elimi nated or been brought up to standards of equipment, instruction, and administra tion which were comparable with those of public schools. As a result of these accom plishments, private education as a whole was rehabilitated in the eyes of the public.” As Secretary of Public In struction till November, 1935, these words of Dr. Hayden prove that the conditions of the private schools 5 or 6 years after the Monroe sur vey had markedly changed 10 Panorama for the better and, as a group, the private institutions no longer merited the criti cisms indiscriminately cast against them in the past. In another passage in his book Dr. Hayden categori cally declared: “Both sec tarian and non-sectarian in stitutions in many instances are taking advantage of their freedom from state control to adapt themselves more readily than government schools can to modern trends in education and to chang ing local educational needs. Through the secondary level, at any rate, the private schools are free to set higher standards than the Bureau of Education, which is limited by the capability of the ave rage child and some of them have taken advantage of this opportunity.” Whether we take these statements at their face value or with a grain of salt, coming from a man of responsibility, who was a scholar and was once Secre tary of Public Instruction, they show that in general private schools had apprecia bly improved to the extent that they had adapted them selves to modern trends in education more readily than public schools. Without tiring this au dience with a statistical com parison of the conditions of the private educational insti tutions at different periods in this country, it should be stated that in 1924, the total enrollment of private schools recognized by the Govern ment was 73,246. In 19641965, the annual report of the Director of Private Schools shows a total enroll ment of 1,379,868 students. In about 26 years, therefore, the increase of the student population in the private schools was more than 10 times while that of the coun try’s total population was hardly 3 times. The number of college and university stu dents alone two years ago reached a total of 390,454. There were 4,393 private schools from the kindergar ten to the university level. In the collegiate and univer sity level alone, there were 463 institutions of which 27 were universities. Dr. Hayden commented in his carefully written book that “in addition to relieving the government of an appre ciable propbrtion of the fi December 1967 11 nancial burden of education, the private institutions of learning are making a dis tinctive contribution to the intellectual life of the na tion.” The Director of Private Schools reported that for 1365-1966 the private secon dary schools alone would have cost the government, if it had operated them, from P21,356,055 to P170,864,563 on the basis of the wideranging cost per student in different public high schools, or an average of about P96,000,000 a year. These fi gures do not include the cost of buildings and equipment. The same report states that more than 80 per cent of the college students of the country are in private insti tutions of higher education. In the academic year 19641965, the total number of college and university gra duates from private institu tions was 67,359. The de grees granted to them were in practically all careers and professions including agricul ture, technology, medicine, teacher training, social sciences, philosophy, fine arts, nursing, etc. This impressive record of growth has not been con fined to mere quantitative terms. A comparative study of both academic and pro fessional achievements of their graduates as against those who have completed their courses in public secon dary schools and colleges dis closes a marked improvement of the competence and qua lity of their products. In most professions and areas of intellectual work, the ave rage public school product is far from being superior to the private college grad uate. Given adequate freedom and encouragement to the spirit of initiative and crea tivity by the removal of gov ernment control on their aca demic activities and deci sions, private educational in stitutions may reasonably be expected to strive after a superior degree of achieve ment in their work. In retrospect, we need to remember that the tradition of higher education obtain ing in this country today has its roots in the American system, a system based on diversity and liberty. While it is our duty to develop educational practices and 12 Panorama programs adjusted to our special needs and our na tional demands, we should not ignore the basic princi ples of that precious tradi tion of educational freedom if we do not want to see the growth of our educa tional institutions stunted and our educational system marred by the rigidity of ideas fostered by a policy of narrow standardization and uniformity almost amounting to regimentation. It is time that we begin pulling down our monolithic structure which mars the educational landscape of the democratic community we have chosen to establish and develop. This can be done only by adopting in actual practice the constitu tional principle of autonomy for our institutions of higher learning. — V.G. Sinco, From a speech delivered early this month to celebrate the 5Qth anniversary of the recognition of the Philippine Association of Colleges and Universities. NOBEL PRIZE The fact that the Nobel Prize was not accorded tb me1 was doubly pleasant: first, because it saved me from the painful necessity of dealing in some way with money — generally regarded as very ne cessary and useful, but which I regard as the source of every kind of evil; and secondly, because it has afforded to people whom I respect the opportunity of expressing their sympathy with me, for which I thank you all from my heart. — Leo Tolstoy. December 1967 13

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