REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS The Press of The Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute Hampton, Virginia 1929 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS The Survey was authorized by the Secretary of the Navy and conducted under the auspices of Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes commission of Survey THOMAS H. DICKINsON of Connecticut, Chairman WILL CARSON RYAN, JR. of Pennsylvania W. T. B. WILLIAMS of Alabama C. D. STEVENS of Virginia, Secretary LA 505.Icl C (4 jisa Letter of Transmittal January 30, 1929 The Honorable Curtis D. Wilbur, Secretary of the Navy, Washington, D. C. Sir: We have the honor of submitting herewith the Report of the Educational Survey of the Virgin Islands made in the spring of 1928 with your authorization and approval, under the auspices of Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes. The chairman of the Survey Commission, Dr. Thomas H. Dickinson, is qualified by a varied experience in Europe and in America, as a student, as a teacher and as a writer, to estimate justly the significant factors in an unusual educational problem. Dr. W. Carson Ryan, of Swarthmore College, in 1928 also a member of the faculty of the Hampton Institute Summer School, is one of the soundest scholars and keenest observers in the whole field of Education. Dr. W. T. B. Williams, a graduate of Hampton Institute and of Harvard College, for many years a field agent of the Jeanes and Slater Funds, is now also the Dean of the College of Tuskegee Institute. Few men have a comparable knowledge of Negro educational institutions in the United States or a truer appreciation of educational realities. The Commission had the benefit, throughout the period of its work, of the confidence and cooperation of the Government of the Islands, of many representatives of the leading commercial interests, and of the people in general. It is our sincere hope that the observations and conclusions of this Report may be found of immediate and practical aid in more effectively preparihg, through sound education, the people of the Virgin Islands for intelligent, healthy, happy living and for honorable and trustworthy citizenship. Respectfully submitted, JAMES E. GREGG, Principal of Hampton Institute ROBERT R. MOTON, Principal of Tuskegee Institute. Table of Contents SECTION ONE A CONDENSED SUMMARY OF FINDINGS SECTION TWO SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS A. RECOMMENDATIONS ADDRESSED TO THE GOVERNMENT Education should take a larger place among the activities of the Government. The people should participate in and be partly responsible for their own educational systems. School boards and the community. The taxation systems of the Islands should be re-organized. All other sources of revenue failing, Congress should not permit the vital services of education in the Island to suffer for lack of funds. A program of industrial and agricultural education is required. An agricultural and industrial institute should be provided for. Estimates for agricultural and industrial institute. B. RECOMMENDATIONS ADDRESSED TO THE EDUCATIONAL AUTHORITIES OF THE ISLANDS Education in the Islands should connect up more with the local situation. Steps should be taken for bridging the gap between the school and the home. There should be a closer alliance between the schools and the health agencies of the Islands. The standards of teaching should be raised. Facilities of industrial and agricultural training should be increased in the schools. SECTION THREE DETAILED SURVEY OF EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES OF THE ISLANDS A. RESTRICTED FINANCIAL SUPPORT OF EDUCATION IN THE ISLANDS Favorable factors. Recent reduction in appropriations. Expenditures per pupil and per capita. Proportion of public revenues spent for education. Expenditures on constructive and palliative administration. B. A SUMMARY VIEW OF EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES Poorly paid teachers. Low standards of teachers. No teacher training; isolation of teachers from the States. [11 2 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS Lack of secondary and higher education; no agricultural and industrial schools. Relation of these things with community life. Educational program should be adapted to the islands. C. OBJECTIVES OF EDUCATION IN THE VIRGIN ISLANDS 1. The rebuilding of family life. 2. Establishing health habits. 3. Building up a productive economic life. 4. Developing community participation. 5. Acquisition of conventional skills and processes. Other educational agencies. D. SPECIFIC SURVEY OF THE EXISTING SCHOOL SYSTEM Substantial achievements. School Attendance. Summary of this service. Objective 1. The family and the school. Parents and school children. Objective 2. Health and the school. Objective 3. School and industrial life. Manual training and home economics. School and home gardening. Objective 4. School and community. E. ADAPTATION OF COURSE OF STUDY TO THE NEEDS OF THE ISLANDS Curriculum and local conditions. Secondary and higher education. The junior high school situation. An agricultural and industrial institute. Setting up higher standards. Higher education. SECTION FOUR EDUCATION AND COMMUNITY LIFE Diversity of the community. Social agencies that serve the community. Home conditions. Need of constructive work in the home. Improper nutrition. Great need of cooking instruction. Other domestic industry. Agricultural training and gardening. Need of an agricultural institute. The mechanical trades. Business training and the professions. Better teachers and teacher training. A training school. Capable supervision. TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 SECTION FIVE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC BACKGROUNDS OF THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM OF THE ISLANDS Rapid changes of status not advisable; education the best specific. Area and population of the Islands. Progressive decrease in productive agencies. Conditions of the Islands under American occupation. Industry and source of income of the Islands. Social aspects of chief industries. Undeveloped possibilities. The distribution of land. Population and population movements. High death rate. Infant mortality. Governmental activities. Report of the Educational Survey of the Virgin Islands SECTION I. A CONDENSED SUMMARY OF FINDINGS T HERE follows in condensed form a summary of the findings of the Educational Survey of the Virgin Islands conducted under the authority of the Secretary of the Navy, March and April, 1928. The second section of the Report is devoted to specific recommendations. More extended treatments of the Educational Systems of the Islands with their social and economic backgrounds will be found in Sections III, IV, and V. After ten years of American administration the conditions of the Virgin Islands are found to be in many respects greatly improved as compared with their status at the time the United States assumed sovereignty. Conditions in the dominant industries of sugar raising in St. Croix and port activities in St. Thomas show improvement. Wages are higher. The consistent efforts of the Government in road building, water supply, and sanitation are bearing fruit in a reduced death rate and at least the promise of better social and home conditions among the people of the Islands. In spite of the improvements that are found, the Virgin Islands still labor under serious disabilities and conditions that demand improvement. The population of the Islands continue to decrease and is lower than it has been in more than a century. Along with the decrease in population there is proceeding a decrease in the employment of the natural and industrial resources of the Islands upon which the welfare and support of the people depend. In spite of the improvements made in the death rate, infant mortality rates are among the highest in the civilized world. Family life among a large proportion of the people is disorganized, chaotic, or nonexistent. And no orderly procedure has been supplied to take the place of family life for great numbers of illegitimate children. The nutrition of the people is poor. Few vegetables and fruits are grown on the Islands. The kitchen garden is practically unknown. The "[5] 6 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS dominant industries demand the services of only the lower ranks of labor and yearly the supply of labor becomes more precarious and inefficient. There are few opportunities for the higher ranks of labor and this tends increasingly to emigrate. Outside of work in the dominant industries, labor offers neither regularity nor rewards, and nowhere are there incentives to ambition or to improved standards of living among the people. These conditions lead directly to a consideration of the place of education in the administration of the Government. In education as in general administration the United States is spending upwards of four times as much as was expended under the Danish regime. A large share of this is by direct grant from Congress to make up deficits in the budgets of the Islands. The Educational Department is conducted in a sincere and capable manner, within the limits of its resources, for the service of the people of the Islands. Nevertheless, it must be recognized that there are services that education alone can supply that are practically neglected in the Virgin Islands. No department of the government can be as effective in the rebuilding of the broken down economic and social life of the people as can the Educational Department. In this fundamental work the educational system of the Virgin Islands is laboring under serious disabilities. The first of these is the shortage of funds for educational purposes. In spite of the increased revenues over Danish times, the per capita expenditure for education in the Virgin Islands appears to be lower than in any other place under the American flag. Relatively, education in the Virgin Islands suffers in comparison with the support given to many other services. Administratively considered, education is a constructive service; police, hospitals, poor relief, necessary as they are, are palliative services. In the Virgin Islands far more emphasis is given to the latter services than to education. Education in the Virgin Islands suffers also through the fact that the people have no effective voice in their own schools. Lacking voice they lack as well a concern with education and a sense of responsibility for its support. As has been said, the educational system of the Virgin Islands is conducted by capable and conscientious officials. Many teachers are sincere and efficient. Nevertheless, on account of the conditions under which the system operates, the schools fail in some highly important services. Many teachers are terribly underpaid. As a result, the standards of qualifications for teachers are low. No provision is made A CONDENSED SUMMARY OF FINDINGS 7 for teacher training. The contacts between the schools and the homes are slight. As a result the homes lack these incentives, derived from a vigorous educational system, to better living, better nutrition, more regular systems of home life and relationship, and greater industry. A serious lack in the Islands is the absence of any institution for agricultural and industrial education, upon which so much of the prosperity of American communities depends. Many, if not most, of the problems of the Virgin Islands, can be solved only by the deliberate processes of education applied to the people of the Islands themselves. The educational system of the Islands is not equipped to employ these constructive forces of education efficiently. SECTION IH SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS IN the following section of this Report there are offered, for the attention of those authoritatively in charge of the welfare of the people of the Virgin Islands, the specific recommendations of the Commission of Survey regarding education in the Islands. In the later sections of the Report the facts, findings, and recommendations here outlined will be developed in specific detail. A. RECOMMENDATIONS ADDRESSED TO THE GOVERNMENT Education should take a larger place among the activities of the Government In view of the low expenditures for education in the Virgin Islands, as compared with like expenditures elsewhere under the American flagr, and in view of the disparity in the governmental budgets between expenditures on the constructive purposes of education and the palliative purposes of social control and relief, it would seem, perhaps, that the first recommendation would be that education should be better supported. The Commission prefers rather to put the emphasis in another quarter and to say that a greater use should be made of education. In the constructive program for the improvement of the status of the islands, education should have a larger part. Properly considered, education supports itself and supports the community. In a situation as complex as is that of the Islands, and of such long standing, no agency will serve so well the purposes of fundamental reconstruction as will this. At the present time education does not occupy its proper place in the budget of governmental activities. Viewed from one angle, this means simply that other activities are finding a disproportionate support in the Island budget as compared with education. When we say "disproportionate," we mean according to the standard that has been established on the American Continent. When we inquire into the objectives that are securing the maximum of support we find that they are of two classes. They either deal with the physical environment of the people, or they deal with palliative measures for restraining the [8] SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS9 consequences of past physical and social disease. Important as both these objectives are-and nothing said should seem to deny their importance--they are not more important than the right preparation of the men and women of tomorrow and their adjustment to the world in which they will have to live. The people should participate in and be partly responsible for their own educational systems One of the chief services of education in a democracy is that service which comes from the guidance and forethought of the people themselves as applied to the problems of their younger generation. This participation is now denied to the people of the Virgin Islands. There is no school board in which the natives as such have any representation. The people cannot, even if they would, vote and raise funds for the specific education of their own children. In this respect the situation is worse than it was under Danish rule. At that time there were various self-governing commissions participated in by the people themselves as well as by representatives of the home government. One of the most important of these commissions was an Educational Comimission. One of the early acts of the American Government was to abrogate these commissions. Without inquiring into the reasons for this action or implying that they were not good and sufficient, the fact remains that at the present time there exists no body in which local representatives may meet representatives of the Government to discuss educational proposals in advance of action. There is an Educational Board of Review made up of the Government Attorney as chairman, the Government Secretary or Dispatching Secretary as vice chairman, the Chairman of the Colonial Council, one member chosen from the Colonial Council by the Council, and one member selected by the above four with the Director of Education sitting as advisory member. This Board has power to review measures after they are taken. It meets semi-annually and has power only to summon and examine witnesses regarding school matters and to compel attendance. These are all its powers, all other powers being specifically referred to the Director of Education. It follows, then, that this Board of Review deals with matters only after the fact and is consequently a fault-finding organization. Members who represent the people of the Islands usually find themselves in the party of the opposition to the Government. 10 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THlE VIRGIN ISLANDS Not only do the people of the Islands lack official facilities for conference with the Government regarding measures for the education of their children. They cannot, even if they would, engage themselves specifically to the financial support of such educational measures as they may consider desirable. As a result of the financial system under which the Islands operate, a plan by which the United States engages to contribute to the support of the admninistration of the Islands a sum fixed periodically by statute after a deficit has been created by expenditures over local revenues, the people of the Islands in effect have neither the power of appropriation for specific purposes nor are they empowered to raise money by taxation for the specific purposes of education. It is by no means clear that under present conditions the people would do so if they could. Strong interests in the Islands are adverse to any expansion of education. But it would be very advantageous if those local interests which favor education were placed in a position in which they could make an issue of education. At the present time these interests, being powerless, turn all their guns in opposition against the Government. It cannot be made too clear that f or the welfare of the people of the Islands themselves, and for the interests of the United States therein, a program involving more and more local responsibility in matters of education is needed. Merely laying down the principle that the municipalities are to receive more or less financial help from the Federal Government according to the amount they raise themselves is good as far as it goes, but to be really effective it must involve gradually increasing participation by all the people-not the present few who have the vote-in their own affairs. Education for community participation, therefore-through parent-teacher associations, through home and school activities that affect conditions in the homes, through bodies corresponding to school boards In the States-is an essential part of the educational program for the Virgin Islands. School Boards and the Community It may be appropriate at this point to push somewhat further the question of that larger education which is involved in the participation of the community in its own educational programs and policies. John Dewey's famous dictum that "what the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children," implies first of all that there are parents eager for the best possible education for their children. The method almost univer'sally used in SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS 11 the United States to make this ambition effective has been to place considerable responsibility upon the people of the local community themselves. It is true that at present the States are being urged to do more than they have done, but this is largely because local -communities differ in ability as well as in interest, and because local support had reached the point in many States where the local communities were having to pay a disproportionately large part of the total bill for education. The usual means of registering this local interest and responsibility in the States has been a school board, made up, not of professional school people, but of representatives of the community, and generally (in the smaller places at least) elected by direct vote of the people. Doubtless every school administrator eager for immediate results has at times chafed under the delay caused by boards of education; yet long experience has shown that the slow and patient method of education of the whole community through these boards is best. Only in this way do advances become permanent. In the United States the school board, a lay body, is legally in general charge of the schools, but the board delegates the task of professional direction of education to a technically qualified superintendent of schools. Without necessarily recommending specifically any such plan for the Virgin Islands, it must be pointed out that at present the people of the Islands lack precisely the kind of representation in the management of school affairs that boards of education are intended to provide. An encouraging recent development in the Islands is the action of the Governor in asking the Educational Boards of Review, which seem to have been created originally to deal with complaints, to take more of a part in a constructive over-view of the educational situation. Some form of school board, perhaps wholly advisory at first, would seem to be desirable for both St. Thomas and St. Croix. The Director and Assistant Director of Education would find bodies of this sort exceedingly helpful in getting education established as a going concern, particularly if these boards were genuinely representative of the people as a whole and could gradually take on local responsibility for education. The taxation systems of the islands should be re-organized The development of education and particularly of that larger participation of the community in its own educational programs that is here recommended leads directly to the subject of available funds derived from taxation and otherwise. Any adequate and complete 12 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS study of the educational possibilities of the Islands is impossible as long as the basic wealth of the Islands is unknown and the taxation systems are chaotic and inequitable. For the successful financing of education in the Virgin Islands the following would seem to be essential: 1. A tax survey to determine wealth and income. 2. A study of taxation methods of the various American States, with a view to abolishing some of the present taxes and substitution of taxes now known to be superior for school and other purposes. 3. Enforcement of Federal income tax by requiring that all books be so kept that they may be audited by United States Government auditors. Until this is done no concept of real or personal property valuations may be secured, as value depends on income. 4. Encouragement to the local councils and to the people of the Islands generally to tax themselves for education, including the establishment of various types of schooling. If necessary this could, as usually in the United States, involve a separate tax for school support. The real problem is to get the people of the Virgin Islands so thoroughly to believe in education that they will wish themselves to provide a better education for their own children and the rest of the children of the community. All other sources of revenue failing, Congress should not permit the vital services of education in the Islands to suffer for lack of funds Upon the arrival of this Commission in the Virgin Islands warning was given that no recommendations involving increased expenditures were likely to succeed. This was for the reason that no further funds are in sight. It is not the purpose of this report to inquire as to why funds are lacking. Partly this arises from the fact that taxation systems are archaic as indicated above. Partly at least it arises from a virtual deadlock which exists between the people of the Islands and the Government. On the side of the people it appears that they claim that no further funds can be raised by taxation. By implication the suggestion is made that the Government is too expensive for these small Islands. For the Government it may be said that Congress is already supplying something more than half of the annual budget of the Islands. For the sake of the self-respect and economic independence of the people of the Islands, if f or no other reason, the tendency is toward a decided reduction of advances by the United States Government. The questions involved in this situation are too delicate and corn SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS 1 13 plex to be pursued here. But one thing is clear. In such a virtual deadlock the services of education should be the last rather than the first to suffer. What resources are actually available in the wealth of the conununity apparently cannot at present be reliably determined, but it is clear that so far as present expenditures go they are badly balanced in respect to constructive educational expenditures. Whether additional funds can be obtained to supplement present funds depends upon a number of factors. If a carcful tax survey should show that the annual income is so low that the Federal Government must guarantee sufficient funds to provide schooling, then the interests of the Nation would surely indicate that the children of the Virgin Islands must not suffer. Neither the claims of economy nor the desire to put pressure on the people of the Islands to enforce self-help and to discourage mendicancy and end paternalism should permit the undermining of the education of the future citizens of the Virgin Islands and of the United States. If, as appears to be inevitable, general appropriations by Congress for the support of the Islands must be reduced, the necessary claims of education should be safeguarded by specific grant. A program of industrial and agricultural education is required The above considerations lead directly to an immediate and specific requirement of the educational systems of the Virgin Islands. This is that there should be promptly inaugurated a program of industrial and agricultural education commensurate to the great needs of the Islands in these respects. Education of this type should not be, as at present., restricted to a little work in the grades. It should serve as an agency for the rebuilding of the crippled industrial and agricultural life of the Islands. It cannot be made too clear that if the schools are to serve their purpose they must begin promptly to make themselves active in the reconstruction of the critically dislocated life of the Islands. An agricultural and industrial institute should be provided for The Governor's message for 1927 calls for the establishment of an industrial and agricultural institute. The pressing need for such an Institute cannot be too much emphasized. Plans have already gone so far that the Director of the Experiment Station in St. Croix has undertaken to cooperate with the proposed school, and the municipality of St. Croix has conveyed the land to the Station for the purpose. Now that assurance has been given of permanent scientific associations for the institute the beginning of the school should no longer be delayed. 14 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS The founding of such an institute is important not only for the direct training it would give for agricultural and other industrial work, but because it would make possible the training of teachers who could go out to the schools and help carry on the work of community progress in terms of agriculture and industry. The success of such schools as Hampton, Tuskegee, and Penn School in the States suggests that no other single thing could be done f or the Virgin Islands that would be as important as the establishment of an agricultural and industrial institute of this sort that would also send out teachers. Certain fundamental principles need to be kept in mind in establishing such a school. 1. It should start simply, with few students and very modest buildings and equipment. 2. Whatever financial resources are available should be, devoted largely to paying adequate salaries to a small but well-equipped staff. A well-trained colored man, with Tuskegee or similar training and experience, should be secured to head the enterprise. 3. An important feature of the work of the school should be instruction in domestic science in order to provide education for the youth of the Islands in homebuilding. To do its best work, therefore, the school should admit both boys and girls. The changes needed in home and community life will be brought about only if the interests of women are included at the start. Estimates for agricultural and industrial institute Careful plans have been made by the Director of Education for an agricultural and industrial institute situated on the island of St. Croix, which, inaugurated in a conservative fashion, would serve to provide for a limited number of pupils, boys and girls from all the Islands, the elementary essentials of agricultural and industrial training, combined with the highly important instruction in better systems and habits of nutrition and home life. The number of pupils available on the Islands for such teaching is in the nature of the case today restricted. In view of the small population of the Islands the school could well begin with an enrollment of forty selected from all three islands. The number could then be increased to eighty and more as the need for the service developed. Neither building nor equipment in the Virgin Islands is expensive. No provision is necessary for heating the buildings. For this reason adequate buildings well equipped to serve all purposes could be provided for a fraction of the cost of the same service in the United States. The following budget would well cover the demands of the inauguration of such an agricultural and industrial institute: SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS 15 BUILDINGS 2 Dormitories 2 Teachers' rooms, 40 pupils each, 1 Kitchen and dining room, 80 pupils, Latrines and landscaping --_-----. _------$25,000. EQUIPMENT Metal beds, office equipment, school room furniture, tools, kitchen utensils, lockers, etc. -.-----_---.- -----------_---. - 10,000. TOTAL FOR BUILDINGS AND EQUIPMENT -----------$35,000. MAINTENANCE AND SALARIES For maintenance a budget of $5,000 for the first year and $10,000 for the second and third years would be ample to cover cost of food supplies for the students of the school and materials needed in its conduct. For the following years a substantial reduction in maintenance charges could be expected as a result of increased output of the school gardens. The salary list would cover the employment of a principal, an assistant in charge of domestic science who would have charge of the dormitories, a foreman, and other employes. For this purpose it is estimated that a budget of $7,500 per annum would be adequate. Recapitulating the financial demands of the needed agricultural and industrial institute, the following funds are required to put the institute into operation: For building and equipment: $35,000 For salaries and maintenance: First year, $12,500 Second year, $17,500 Third year, $17,500. B. RECOMMENDATIONS ADDRESSED TO THE EDUCATIONAL AUTHORITIES OF THE ISLANDS Education in the Islands should connect up more with the local situation The above recommendations have been addressed primarily to the Government and not to the educational authorities. What follows is addressed to the educational authorities specifically. Many of the problems of education on'the Islands are peculiar to the Islands. They arise because of restricted size, isolation, and the peculiar quality of 16 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS the industrial organization and social situation of the Islands. Partly perhaps on account of lack of funds, partly no doubt on account of the lack of skilled teachers and administrators, the educational system of the Islands does not appear to have been addressed specifically enough to the local situation. In the pages that follow, detailed study is given to those peculiar problems to which the education of the Islands must address itself if it is to aid in solving the present problems of the Islands and in the reconstruction of community life. Among these problems those of hon~e life, health, nutrition, and industrial and agricultural activity stand out foremost. Particularly there should be improved contacts between schools and the community in the form of parent-teacher associations, home gardens, home visitors, school lunches, and the many other links between education and the home. Steps should be taken for bridging the gap between the school andi the home The re-establishment of family life will have to be undertaken as a definite part of the Virgin Islands' educational program. This requires much higher qualifications for teachers than are now demanded, especially in the rural districts and in the grades. The best and most immediate results could be obtained by the employment of what in the States would be called "visiting teachers"-that is, qualified "family case workers" who would make the contact between school and home'. A good beginning has been made by the school nurse and the Red Cross worker, but their efforts need to be supplemented by qualified social case workers. The right kind of an experiment in the Virgin Islands would include persons of "visiting teacher" qualifications and also persons having the qualifications of the Jeanes Fund workers in the Southern States. One or two trained people of this type, working in connection with the industrial teacher-training institution mentioned later in this report, would be especially helpful in bringing about the changes in family life and community that are basic to any genuine advance. Workers of this type, of course, would not be employed for the purpose of reducing the responsibility of the "regular teacher," but rather for the purpose of showing the teacher how to relate school and home, and gradually training up teachers of a new kind who will be the community leaders that the Virgin Islands so urgently need to have. One result of the work of "visiting teachers" should be to help the community appreciate the importance of qualified teachers in the country districts. The Leinster Bay Boys' Home illustrates only too SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS 17 effectively the need for greater attention to the fundamental problems that grow out of the lack of wholesome family life in the Virgin Islands. There should be closer alliance between the schools and the health agencies of the Islands Health conditions in the Virgin Islands are such that they should no longer be left solely to the remedial agencies of the health service and the hospitals. Only by a program of education extending into the home can improved health among the coming generations be assured. It is clear that, desirable as the external measures are, no positive control of good health for the people of the Virgin Islands will come about until an educational program is directly undertaken, largely through the schools, to teach home life, better care of babies, better food habits, and better individual hygiene generally. That the schools can accomplish this object in several practical ways is shown by successful experience in various parts of the United States. Chief among the plans used are: 1. Checking up by teacher at school each day on health habits at home. 2. Encouraging better health habits by rewards for sleeping with windows open, better diet, specific practices in cleanliness, etc. 3. School lunch, in which the children learn better food habits. The right kind of a grade teacher, especially in rural sections, can get parents to come to school to discuss home problems, and can be so direct and practical in her teaching of health habits that the effect of the school will be felt almost immediately in the home. The school administration of the Virgin Islands has recognized the need for direct health education, and has made commendable efforts in this direction, especially in trying to establish the school lunch and to raise in the school gardens foodstuffs suitable for a wholesome diet. But the schools are greatly handicapped in doing anything of this sort by the low level of teacher qualifications and the lack of money to employ better teachers. The standards of teaching should be raised To improve the standards of teaching the following steps appear to be necessary: 1. Immediately raise the minimum level of preparation required for entrance upon teaching to graduation from junior high 18 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS school; then as soon as possible raise the requirement to senior high school graduation, including specific preparation for teaching. 2. Make the salary schedule provisions relate directly to the amount of education and special preparation the teachers have had, abolishing the examinations as soon as possible in favor of educational qualifications throughout. 3. Without displacing old appointees of sub-standard training, make it clear that increases in salary will be directly dependent upon increased education as well as successful experience. 4. Put into the high schoof and into the new agricultural and industrial institute teacher-training opportunities that will emphasize practice teaching under controlled conditions with the best teachers in the Islands. 5. For teachers in service arrange a program of teacher-training courses, in the form of a summer session or similar opportunity., attendance upon which, while it need not be compulsory in all cases, will, with attendance at institutions outside the Islands, be an important consideration in making salary increases and promotions. Inquiry at the University of Porto Rico suggests that apart from the case of the occasional teacher who may find it possible to go into residence at this University, the University could probably arrange regular six weeks courses in the Virgin Islands if the authorities of the Islands will request it. 6. Establish a plan for sabbatical leave, whereby teachers and supervisors of all ranks shall be allowed absence on part pay for travel and study. This, a customary practice in schools in the States, is particularly necessary in the Virgin Islands, where outside contacts are infrequent. It is particularly important that the Director of Education and others under his direction shall go at Government expense to educational meetings in the States and to visit schools, precisely as school superintendents regularly do. 7. Provide in the salary schedule that salaries are to depend, not upon the grade or subject taught, but upon the amount of educational preparation and successful experience. Elementary teachers, particularly rural school teachers, should be as well educated and as well paid as any teachers in the Islands. SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS 1 19 What is needed, it should be repeated, is not mere additional pay, but a whole salary schedule based upon a program of training in and out of service that will involve higher qualifications all along the line and pay to correspond. Pensions and tenure are also important, but steady raising of the standards of education for the profession is the first essential. The facilities of agricultural and industrial training should be increased in the schools Recommendations above have been addressed to the Government looking to the establishment of an agricultural and industrial institute. It is manifest that even in advance of the founding of such an institute, the educational authorities can do more in the direction of industrial and agricultural training than they are now doing. Particular efforts should be made to connect up the school activities with the existing industry of the Islands. Both the agricultural and industrial institute and the junior high schools will need to study carefully the possibilities of training for those local crafts upon which the industrial prosperity of such islands as these often depends, notably, wood-working in mahogany. It has been suggested that some of the skilled cabinet workers who remain in the Islands should be employed to teach boys in the schools. This might work, but a still better plan probably would be to send to the shops some of the boys who seem especially adapted to the work. Under such a scheme of "cooperative industrial education," as it is sometimes called, the school has pupils, both boys and girls, who spend half their time in the real shops outside the school and the remaining time on the more usual school work. Such a plan could also be applied in other fields, possibly in nursing-one of the few fields in which some adequate training is already under way. One effort that must precede and accompany any industrial training program is study of the possible markets. In the case of certain garden products, this has already been done by the Experiment Station, which has also given direct help on marketing methods and devices. With certain precautions it is possible that the school might assist the women of the community in making and marketing to a far greater extent than they now do the excellent embroidery and lace work they produce. Experience in Porto Rico, shows that there is a legitimate place for such work, and that it can be organized and made to pay, but the school authorities must be careful to safeguard the workers, must see that the quality of work is maintained in order to justify good rates, 20 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS that a supply is consistently available, and that the workers understand the necessity f or getting the work done on time. In the case of mahogany, basketry and other work, it is clear that the tourist trade can absorb a large amount of the product, but the outlet store, whether maintained by the Red Cross, by the schools, or by strictly commercial agencies, will have to be able to depend upon a regular supply. In the case of mahogany work, this will merely mean sufficient introduction of minor labor-saving devices to make possible large production without sacrificing the essentially craftsmanship quality of the work, so far as such a combination is possible. It is quite likely that the schools will find it decidedly worth while-and this would apply to the high schools and the new industrial institute alike-to put in automobile repair work. The rapid development of both automobile and airplane transportation in the West Indies should mean much more opportunity for garage workers, automotive mechanics, and other workers in this field. Some economists believe that the recent introduction of the automobile bus service into St. Croix may possibly mean the economic salvation of the Islands, since it will begin the creation of a series of wants that to be satisfied will mean eagerness to work. At pre-sent there are few such incentives; it is not that Virgin Islanders are "lazy," but rather that they have not had the kind of wants to satisfy that would require labor. Indeed, one fundamental economic reason for keeping children in school through at least the junior high school period is to raise their standards of living, so that they will wish to own their own small homes and have other comforts of modern civilization for which people find it worth while to toil. SECTION III DETAILED SURVEY OF THE EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES OF THE ISLANDS T HE Educational Survey of the Virgin Islands was sponsored by the Trustees of Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes and was undertaken under the authority and by the approval of the Secretary of the Navy. The tour of survey on the Islands began March 26, 1928, and ended on April 15th. The members of the Survey were Thomas H. Dickinson, who acted as chairman; W. Carson Ryan, Jr., Professor of Education at Swarthmore College; W. T. B. Williams, Dean of the College of Tuskegee Institute; and C. D. Stevens, of Hampton Institute, who served as secretary. Full and cordial cooperation was extended to the Commission of Survey by all the officials of the Islands as well as by private citizens of all ranks and activities. In particular the Commission is grateful for the cordial cooperation offered by the Governor of the Islands, the Government Secretary, the Dispatching Secretaries of the Islands of St. Croix and St. John, by the Director and Assistant Director of Education, the leading members of the Colonial Councils, the officers and teachers of the schools, as well as by the leading planters, industrialists, and citizens of the Islands generally. All three of the Islands of the American group, St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John, were visited and inspected. In addition, trips for the purpose of comparison were taken to the British Island of Tortola.) the independent Republic of Santo Domingo, and the American colonial dependency of Porto Rico. Individual members of the Survey had previously conducted educational surveys of Santo Domingo, Porto Rico, and Haiti and of other American dependencies in other parts of the world. A. RESTRICTED FINANCIAL SUPPORT OF EDUCATION IN THE ISLANDS The specific reference of the Survey was educational. For this reason the Commnission addressed itself directly to the study of the schools and the service these are rendering to the people of the Islands, with some consideration of the comparative facilities provided here and elsewhere. [211 22 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS Favorable factors Within the narrow limits of the funds available, the school system of the Virgin Islands does certain things remarkably well. It furnishes schooling to practically all children of school age sufficient to insure literacy, gives a much longer than average school term, and exacts a high percentage of attendance. In its junior high school type of organization, its curriculum and its use of tests, it is more modern than many school systems in the States. It supplements the conventional elementary schooling with some instruction in music, manual training, sewing, and school gardening, and, through the efforts of Navy doctors and the American Red Cross, it is able to provide a machinery for health care of school children, including dental treatment and remedial service, that would be exceptional in good communities anywhere. Having said this it remains to be noted that in few places under the American flag does so small a proportion of the total revenues go to education and that the recent tendency is toward a serious reduction in educational appropriations. Recent Reduction in Appropriations To the student of American educational conditions it is a striking fact that the Virgin Islands is the only place listed in the Federal Bureau of Education "Statistics of States and Outlying Territories" where expenditures for education have recently gone backward instead of forward. Occasionally a State will show a lapse for one year, or a territory (Porto Rico, for example) will make a leap forward and then have to pause for a year before starting upwards again, but for the most part the American States and outlying parts show steady and substantial gains in appropriations for education. In the two years between 1922 and 1924, for example, continental United States as a whole increased its expenditures for education from $1,580,671,296 to $1,820,743,931. In the same biennium educational appropriations in the Virgin Islands remained almost exactly the same, and for the past three years have actually gone backward, from $104,282 in 1924 to $83,718 in 1927. Apparently the Virgin Islands started on a steady program of expenditures for education in 1918-1919, when the amount appropriated was $54,967 as compared with $19,506 spent in the last year of the Danish administration. What has happened to school expenditures in the Virgin Islands since that date is shown in the following table, which gives the school enrollments for each year and the annual amounts expended: SURVEY OF EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES OF THE ISLANDS 23 School Enroll- Amount Expended ment for Education 1918-1919 --------------------------- --.--------.- 2,267 $ 54,967 1919-1920.....-------.---... -----------------2,365 63,000 1920-1921 --------..---.............---------------- 26 2,671 73,540 1921-1922 -...--.--.._.-------......----------1 9 2,977 102,490 1922-1923 ---.--------.- _ ----------------37 3,174 94,660 1923-1924..--.--........----- ---.... ------------ -3,153 104,282 1924-1925..........--------- - -----311....... 3,161 93,650 1925-1926.-.--..--------- ----------3,107 90,161 1926-1927......---.--..--.-- ---------------- 3,083 83,718 Expenditures per Pupil and per Capita Interpreting these figures we find that after the expenditure per pupil had risen for the period of 1921-1924 to about $35 it sank again in 1926-1927 to $26, or but slightly more than the expenditure per pupil in the first year of American administration. While the total expenditures on education have sunk 20% in three years, the expenditure per pupil has sunk 26%. As to the sufficiency of the above amounts for education even at the maximum figure given, some allowance must doubtless be made for difference in cost of living; yet it must be pointed out that a school program that would approximate the average cost for the United States as a whole-not the better States and cities, but the average of all, including the poorest-would mean an expenditure of at least three or four times the amount here given. The Bureau of Education 1926 statistics show a cost per capita of total population of $17.25 for continental United States; the figure is $3.55 for the Virgin Islands. Proportion of Public Revenues Spent for Education But it will be argued that the Islands are poor and "cannot afford education." From the evidence available it is not possible to say what percentage of the total annual income of the people is being spent for education. It is possible to say, however, what proportion of the public revenues are being spent for schools. It differs slightly in the two Islands, but whether the figure taken is that of St. Croix for last year (less than 16%) or St. Thomas (21%) either percentage is below the corresponding figure for any American State. The ratio of expenditures for all schools to the total for State and local taxes was 48.55% in the United States in 1924, and for three States-North Carolina, North Dakota, and Wyoming-the amount spent for education was in excess of 60% of the State and local taxes. Roughly, therefore, American States have come to regard education as an indispensable expenditure that must take up at least half the moneys raised from 24 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS taxation. Even the two or three Southern States that have been spending the lowest proportionate amounts of their public revenues on education (Florida, for example, 28.74%; Mississippi, 32.22%) nevertheless spend double the proportionate amount spent in St. Croix. Expenditures on Constructive and Palliative Administration It may fairly be held that expenditure on education is expenditure for constructive administration. Expenditure for police and poor relief, necessary as it is, is largely palliative. Analysis of the St. Croix expenditure for 1927 shows clearly how much money relatively is going for various palliatives and how little for the permanent work of education. St. Croix Expenditures, 1926-1927 (All figures in Danish West Indian francs; value of franc, 19 cents). Francs Colonial Council.-------------------.---.-. --.. --.-..-....... -------------. 13,577 Municipal Council... -------------.. --.---.--..... ----.--..-----_--.--------- 4,008 Judiciary Department.......----...---....----....-...----53.__. 52,366 Police and Prison.---..-....---.-.----. -- ------....._....._....... 145,964 Harbor and Pilot -----............--------.-.-...------.--.----2.. 8,429 Fire Department, Christiansted........------.------------------------------- 2,341 Fire Department, Frederiksted -------------------.....------- - - ---------------..2,270 Department of Health, sanitation -------------------------------.----_------------ 42,237 Department of Health, chief municipal physician ---------------------_------ 11,068 Department of Health, Christiansted hospital --------------------.-------- 96,894 Department of Health, Frederiksted hospital ---......----------------------86 86,249 Department of Health, Richmond Insane Asylum ----------------------------- 52,706 Department of Health, leper colony _......--------..--.---.- __..- 58,169 Department of Health, dental service.--------. ---------------------. 9,000 Poor Department..--_------.-- --.---------.-----. ----- --- ~ ---- 45,843 Department of Education.......------------. ----------------.---------- 173,162 Public Works. -------- - -------------------------- ---------------- 186,662 Subsidies ----------------- ---------------------------- -------------- 6,375 Miscellaneous -----... ------------ ------_-------- - - ---------- 17,116 Pensions and allowances.--.....--_------------------.. -_-------------- 5,245 General contingency --------------------------.-......-----------------7. 9,751 Refund of import duty --.-------------------------------- 9,323 Department of Health, King's Hill Poor Farm --.---------------- ----------- 50,783 It is impossible to scan this list without noticing the preponderance of items that are at best punitive or palliative-police and prison, hospitals, insane asylum, leper colony, poor relief, poor farm-and the comparatively small amount spent for constructive measures and institutions to prevent the evils for which palliative measures have now to be taken. What is the use of providing excellent muncipal hospital facilities for women to deliver babies in (two-thirds of them illegitimate), if some steps are not taken through education to build up the kind of family life, earning power, and knowledge of proper living that will tend to decrease the abnormally large number of births SURVEY OF EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES OF THE ISLANDS 25 of children born into almost certain death before they are a year old, or, if they live, destined to repeat the career of poverty, disease, and anti-social behavior that appears to be indicated in the situation? If education be compared with other major expenditures in this St. Croix list, the latter being grouped, it will be seen that more than twice as much is spent for disease control as for education, that schools receive substantially less than police, prisons, and judiciary, and hardly approach the amount spent for public works. The situation is shown in the following table and in the accompanying graph: St. Croix, Expenditures for Education Compared with Other Major Expenditures (1927) Francs Disease control and treatment (Health Department) ------- ----------- 355,325 Police, prisons and judiciary -- -----198,330 Public works _ _186,662 EDUCATION ------_----__ --- ---_-------_ ---- -- ---- 173,162 Poor relief _- -__-_----- ------- ----- 96,626 Colonial government and miscellaneous -_---.------- 78,435 1,088,540 POLICE 1 / PIRyON. \ SCONTROL PUBLIC s s SWORKZ 1 C j DU CATION 7 7 Or, if the items in the list of expenditures are grouped in two divisions according to their purpose and nature into what may be called "punitive and palliative" on the one hand and "preventive and educational" on the other, certain of the health activities being classified with schools as in the second of the two groups, it becomes apparent that two and one-quarter times as much is spent in St. Croix for palliative and punitive measures as for education: 26 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS 1 Punitive and Palliative 2 Preventive and Educational Francs Francs Police and Prisons __ -- 145,964 Prevention (sanitation, etc.) 62,305 Disease Relief ----_- 293,020 Poor Relief --_ _ 96,626 Schools ---------- ----- 173,162 535,610 235,467 B. A SUMMARY VIEW OF EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES The facts above presented all have to do with the admittedly restricted financial support of education in the Virgin Islands. It is not the duty of this Report to inquire into the reasons for this restricted support. The Virgin Islands are poor. Taxation returns are small. The United States Congress has been liberal with the Islands and is now appropriately urging the people of the Islands to take a larger share of their burdens upon themselves. It is, however, the duty of this Commission to refer to the results of this restricted support. Poorly Paid Teachers Perhaps the first result is the fact that the salaries for teachers in the Virgin Islands are on the whole extremely low, even when the standard of living is taken into account. The average salary ($597.84 in 1925, when the Bureau of Education figures were compiled, less in 1927), is not half that for the United States, low as the American country-wide average for teachers is in comparison with other workers. But the average figure obscures the worst features of the salary situation in the Virgin Islands, as everywhere. Of 103 teachers whose records were examined, 4 received salaries of $15 per month; 10 of $20 per month; and 20 of $25 per month; 42 had salaries ranging from $30 to $50 monthly; 18 from $55 to $100 and 9 over $100 monthly. The median teacher receives $45 a month, with a third of the teaching force getting $15 to $25. This is less even than the messengers and janitors in the Department of Education itself, their average being $28 and $26 respectively, and far below the clerks in the Department, whose average in 1927 was $77 monthly. There are some excellent teachers in the service, but only a miracle could give a good corps of teachers at salaries like these. There has been no miracle. As it is perhaps to be expected under such a salary system the most poorly paid teachers tend to be established in the elementary grades and in country districts, educationally the key places of the system. This brings it about that the external improvements, in health and sanitation, for example, are not accompanied by the changes in SURVEY OF EnUCATIONAL FACILITIES OF THE ISLANDS 2 27 personal living and in home and community that must be made if gains are to be real and permanent. Fifteen to twenty-five dollars a month teachers with seventh to ninth grade schooling, who have never been off the Islands, are not likely to be much ahead of the community in which they work; they cannot furnish the leadership necessary if the school is to have an influence comparable with governmental and other agencies. Such schooling as is provided, therefore, is almost certain to be artificial and carried on in isolation from the homes of the community. Low Standards of Teachers Under such a situation as this it is only natural that many of the teachers should be poorly qualified. It need not be said that successful work in education depends largely upon having a qualified teaching staff. This iis particularly true in the Virgin Islands, where the old Lancastrian system, notwithstanding what can be said of its success in a limited field, has left a feeling with regard to the profession of teaching that makes it extremely difficult to make the community see that teachers need to be as well prepared educationally as members of any other profession-medicine, law, or engineering. The educational standards of teachers in the Virgin Islands are almost incredibly low. In St. Thomas, where the standards seem to be best, the median teacher is a ninth grade product; 6 out of 47 teachers, whose records were studied have seventh grade schooling or less; 9 have gone through eighth grade; 18 are ninth grade products; 9 have had some senior high school work; 5 have had some college work. In St. John 4 of the teachers have gone as far as twelfth grade, 3 have been through ninth grade, and 2 through seventh. In St. Croix, where kthe evidence seems to be that the better qualified teachers have been leaving the system and less qualified ones have been substituted, 6 out of 42 teachers studied had had seventh grade schooling or less, 6 had been through the equivalent of eighth grade, 10 through ninth, 5 through tenth, 3 through eleventh, and 7 through twelfth, while 5 had had college work. No permanently valuable educational results can be hoped for until these standards are raised. No Teacher Training; Isolation of Teachers from the States On account of lack of funds no teacher training is provided in the Islands. No facilities are provided for the instruction and stimulation of teachers through contact with the latest developments 'in educational practice save what can be provided by the efficient but over-dutied Director of Education. The only contacts with American education 28 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS are through those ambitious natives who in one way or another contrive for themselves an education in the States and through the three or four white teachers who periodically take positions in the Islands. Hampton Institute is now providing scholarships for two students from the Virgin Islands. No provisions whatever are made by the government for education in the States or even for leaves of absence for the teachers, superintendents or Director, some of whom have been in continuous service without return to the States for six or more years. Lack of Secondary and Higher Education; No Agricultural and Industrial Schools Under these conditions not only is there a low level of teaching qualification, but the standard apparently tends to become lower instead of higher, since no provision exists for teacher training and the teaching staff is largely recruited from pupils in the junior high school, who are allowed to take the teacher examinations while still in the seventh or eighth grade. Indeed, while the school system does provide, as has been said, a general schooling covering the first six grades, it carries singularly few beyond this point, at least according to current American standards. The three junior high schools undoubtedly do good work, but their efforts are largely confined to the few boys and girls who have ability and interest for formal academic work, and even for these there is no provision for anything higher except a tenth grade in St. Thomas. More seriously the Islands lack altogether that stimulation of the economic and social life that comes from the presence of an agricultural and industrial school. There is indeed no longer even any twelfth grade high school for the youth of the Islands. In their present form, therefore, the schools neither prepare the youth of the Islands for constructive leadership in the economic life of the Islands nor are they able to serve the needs of those who seek to go on to further academic work. Relation of These Things with Community Life The facts cited above are impressive enough in themselves. They become more impressive when viewed in connection with the existing community and domestic life of the Islands. In later sections detailed study will be given to these conditions. Community life in the Islands is characterized by the absence of normal family life among an unusually large part of the population, by the almost total lack of independent home and land ownership, and by the fact that such parents as might be interested in education, whether in country or city, have no SURVEY OF EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES OF THE ISLANDS 2 29 voice in the administration of schools. No school boards exist; the right to vote is very much restricted; only a small beginning has been made in parent-teacher associations; participation by citizens in the work of the schools has not been developed. It is trite to say that conditions such as these, in the schools and in the community, re-act upon each other. It is trite, also to say that no education can come down altogether from above. Nevertheless, these reminders, as applied to the Virgin Islands, have some appositeness. To secure the best ends of education schools and community must cooperate constructively. Otherwise, the faults of one destroy the other. Educational Program Should be Adapted to the Islands On account of its special situation it is peculiarly important that the educational program of the Virgin Islands be specifically adapted to the needs of the Islands and especially to the inauguration of better standards of life there. The purpose of education in the Virgin Islands must in the nature of the case be corrective and constructive. It cannot rest on the existing status. It must stimulate to better standards. Any educational program, therefore, will have to emphasize the recruiting and training of teachers who can lead in the rehabilitation of family life, to better farming or other industrial opportunities, to higher standards of earning and spending. Such teachers must be more than classroom instructors. Development of self-help will have to be the principle on which they work, for the object always to be kept in mind is the gradual substit'Ution of individual and community responsibility for merely external governmental provision. It is 'important that the schools of the Virgin Islands shall be sufficiently comparable in a few conventional achievements with other systems in order that boys and girls from these schools shall not be handicapped when they leave the Islands; but it is still more important that an educational program be worked out that will be so well adapted to the needs of the Islands that people will wish to stay and more people will wish to come. Experience in the States shows that good schools are among the best advertisements of a community. The right kind of educational program will more and more enlist the people of the Islands in the task of providing education; it will seek to increase the ability and willingness of the people with regard to education to the point where they will, without depending upon the United States Government, spend a sufficient amount of money of their own raising to support a school system comparable with those of better communities in other parts of the United States. 30 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS C. OBJECTIVES OF EDUCATION IN THE VIRGIN ISLANDS It is frequently assumed that the acquisition of the ordinary skills, reading, writing and arithmetic, and the bare facts of history and geography, constitute the main reasons for the establishment of schools. Thes are, as a matter of fact, only necessary tools and processes that need to be enriched by many other things and given reality and value by connection with activities that are much more fundamentally educational. The basic reason why modern states and communities provide public schools is that they wish to prepare human beings for fuller life in society as a whole. Any educational program to be effective, therefore, must be directed to the ascertained needs of the people. If the needs of the Virgin Islands are specifically considered and an educational program set up with these needs in mind, the major objectives of such an education program would be as follows: 1. The rebuilding of family life, to the end that children in the home and at school may have the normal home training that is the right of every child. A surprisingly large percentage of the children of the Virgin Islands lack the protection and care ordinarly provided by wholesome family life. 2. Establishing health habits., in order that such sanitary and other measures as have been begun may be supported by better health conditions in the homes. The school and home working together should be able to reduce the high death rate and the exceedingly high infant mortalityý--apparently one of the highest in the world. 3. Building up a productive economic life. Repeated experience elsewhere has shown that industrial training applied to the resources of a region is one of the most effective ways of producing the increased wealth by means of which people may pay for still better education and thus constantly raise their standard of living. 4. Developing community participation so that the men and women of the Virgin Islands may take an active part in the 'improvement of schools and all other public enterprises. 5. Acquisition of the conventional skills and processes such as reading, writing and arithmetic, together with the universally valuable means of culture provided in music and the arts. It is especially important that these conventional skills and processes be directly adapted to the life of the Islands, rather than merely taken over bodily from continental United States, and that the cultural contributions shall emphasize local music and local arts and crafts. SURVEY OF EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES OF THE ISLANDS 3 31 Other Educational Agencies In a comprehensive educational program involving all thes. objectivres the schools would play a leading pani, of course, but would by no means be the only agency. Governmental and private activities, including the work of medical service; the Red Cross, the churches and mission organizations, have a considerable influence on the people of the Islands. Even the normal activities of government-judiciary, internal revenue, immigration service, public works,-affect people and their habits and attitudes. That these non-school and private agencies have by no means been fully utilized educationally is evident in the continued existence of bad health conditions, low level of economic production, and absence of normal family life even in those parts of the Islands where these agencies, notably the churches, have long existed. The objectives of education above stated apply quite as much to the other agencies as to public schools, and they apply particularly to church schools. D. SPECIFIC SURVEY OF THE EXISTING SCHOOL SYSTEM Let us now make a more detailed study of the present school system having particular regard to the above five objectives. Like many school systems elsewhere, that of the Virgin Islands has confined itself so far largely to the last of these five objectives, emphasizing chiefly the acquisition of the conventional skills and certain of the facts of history and geography. Substantial Achievements By most of the tests ordinarily applied, the schools have fulfilled this routine function with more than customary success. The public schools of the Virgin Islands have a school term of two hundred days, as compared with an average for the United States as a whole of less than one hundred seventy days. In average annual attendance the Virgin Islands stand especially high-one hundred ninety-five days. Regular school attendance, therefore, at least for the compulsory elementary period, was long ago attained in Danish times,* and is *The essentials of the old Danish system, which was based on the Lancastrian plan, are given in "Laws, Ordinances, Publications, etc. valid in or referring to the Danish West Indies"; Copenhagen, J. H. Schultz, 1884. The ordinance of 1853 (five years af ter -the abolit.ion of slavery) required that "all children on estates or elsewhere in the country must attend country schools from the sixth year until they have attained their thirteenth year". It was made the duty of the manager of an estate, as well as the parents, to cooperate in the "strict execution of the ordinance", and the manager must appoint a "trustworthy person to attend the children to and from school". The ordinance of 1876 (for St. Thomas and St. John) described the subjects of instruction-Bible history, English language, 32 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS apparently not a problem. Illiteracy is almost non-existent, and while there are no official figures, the rate for illiteracy of two per cent sometimes quoted is probably accurate. This rate is considerably better than the rate for continental United States and equivalent to the record of the better American States. School Attendance School attendance in the Virgin Islands is compulsory to age fifteen. Unfortunately, however, since no census has been taken since 1917, it is not possible to show accurately the percentage of school age children in school. The official United States Bureau of Education figure for the Virgin Islands, 12%7, of the total population attending public schools, seems low as compared with 21%o for continental United States as a whole.* It must be remembered, however, that the proportion of children attending parochial schools in the Virgin Islands -one-fourth-is far higher than in the United States. Furthermore, the Bureau of Education figure for the Virgin Islands is higher than that for Alaska (7.9%o) and the Philippine Island (8.8%7,). It is not much lower than for Porto Rico (14.4%7,) where an American public school system has been established for more than a quarter of a century and where the parochial school attendance is only an insignificant part of the total. There seems to be no reason to doubt that practically all children between six and fifteen years of age are in school every day, although it must be admitted that large numbers of them go to school for only half a day, receive poor instruction according to modern standards, and seldom go much beyond the sixth grade. Of the 3,083 pupils attending public schools in the Virgin Islands in 1926 -27, only 179 are in grades above the sixth, and for a class of 641 who were in the first grade in 1920-21, the corresponding number in seventh grade was but 93 six years later. That the situation in respect to holding attendance has not improved is indicated in the table below, which gives the enrollment by grades since 1919. It should be said, however, that the school authorities have recently used a standard writing, ciphering ("mental and with the use of the slate"), geography, and natural history. It is also explained that the school term must be the entire year, omitting only fourteen days in August, Ascension Day, Whitmonday, birthdays of the King and Queen, the 25th of July and the 25th of October-these two dates being the beginning and the end of the hurricane season. *Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education, Bulletin 1927, No. 39. Statistics of State School Systems, 1925-26, p. 11. (This 'is, however, one of the least reliable of the Government tables.) SURVEY OF EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES OF THE ISLANDS 33 achievement test for classification purposes and this is undoubtedly reflected in part in the table. Enrollment by Grades Year 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 N.S. Total 1926-27 763 505 490 403 379 243 93 56 30 0 0 0 121 3083 1925-26 709 446 454 475 403 348 146 78 36 6 6 0 0 3107 1924-25 652 438 507 478 135 304 147 72 42 17 10 0 59 3161 1923-24 606 440 528 465 525 287 170 68 42 17 2 3 0 3153 1922-23 652 502 548 538 404 297 118 53 43 14 5 0 0 3174 1921-22 665 429 612 438 347 229 111 56 26 15 0 0 0 2977 1920-21 641 743 513 334 200 93 93 28 22 5 0 0 0 2671 1919-20 997 441 280 260 236 85 31 35 0 0 0 0 0 2365 The average attendance has continued high. The figures for the years since 1920 are given in the table below: Average Attendance Percentage of Year Enrollment 1926-27 - -. --- ---- 97.84 1925-26 -- ----.. __,----- 96.69 1924-25 97.58 1923-24 --- - ----- -- 97.84 1922-23 -__ ---- -- --- ---------- ---- 98.42 1921-22 ------ -. ---- 98.02 1920-21 ---- ---------- - -- - ----- 93.90 Summary of this Service Summing up the substantial achievements, it appears, as has been said before, that the schools serve the purposes of the fifth objective mentioned above, that of the acquisition of the conventional skills, rather well. This always within the limits of poorly paid, poorly trained native teachers and of administrators, the best of whom under present conditions find themselves isolated from the United States and must maintain their educational contacts, if at all, at a great distance. Objective 1. The Family and the School The service rendered by the schools of the Virgin Islands to the other objectives mentioned above is not so creditable. Unfortunately, these other objectives represent precisely those services of which the Virgin Islands stand in desperate need. In later sections of this Report there will be found detailed statements regarding family life, legitimacy and illegitimacy, nutrition and health conditions of the people. From the facts here adduced it appears that family rehabili 34 REPORT OF TH9EEDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS tation is the key to almost everything in the Virgin islands, at least,) as far as the masses of the population are concerned. Health, economic development, community enterprise, are all held back by lack of a wholesome family life. At present the school suffers from the collapse of the home among the common people of the Islands; the school itself must take the lead in remedying this condition. From official figures it appears that more than half the births in the Virgin Islands are illegitimate. Moreover, this does not appear to be the mere technical illegitimacy sometimes f ound, especially where the church has made marriage expensive and difficult and reasonably stable family life exists without formal marriage. On the contrary, the illegitimacy in the Virgin Islands seems to indicate an irresponsibility that developed under centuries of slavery and will doubtless require a long period to be overcome. Parents and School Children Any modern educational program assumes an interest on the part of the parents in the welfare of their own children. What is the condition here? Of 126 babies born in the Frederiksted district of St. Croix last year, 41 were legitimate, 85 illegitimate. Of these latter 20 have "unknown fathers"ý-which means that no one could be prevailed upon to sign a certificate admitting fatherhood. In the school at La Princesse, which was not very different from many others, the school registers showed that only one of the fourteen pupils enrolled in grades II and III had as the name for "guardian" the same last name as the pupil himself. In the case of f our of these children the mother was either dead or at an address unknown. In the first grade of the same school three children had surnames that were the same as the names of the "guiardian"; the remaining 14 had names other than those given by their guardians. Whatever the explanation may have been in individual cases, it was evident that the active concern of parents for their own children-the strongest motive modern society depends upon for progress in education-was lacking in an abnormally large percentage of cases. The situation in the towns was not notably better than in the country. For the first grades of the Christiansted Grammar School in only 32 out of 91 cases was the name of parent and guardian the same. In 8 cases the mother was dead, in 10 cases the mother was in New York, in 6 others the mother was in Porto Rico or St. Thomas, out of reach of the children. The upper grades appear to be slightly better. Nearly half the pupils (63 out of 134) have names the same as those SURVEY OF EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES OF THE ISLANDS 3 35 of their guardians, though here again a comparatively large number are without ordinary parental care-14 of the mothers are dead and 10 are in the United States. Objective 2. Health and the School In health work the Virgin Islands offer an excellent example of the futility of external sanitary control and hospitalization when not sufficiently accompanied by health education of individuals. Few communities anywhere have a better organization for health work than the Virgin Islands.* Nevertheless, the death rate continues abnormally high, especially for infants. For a detailed discussion of this see pp. 67-68. What is needed is a program of health education through school and home that will develop better personal habits, not through the teaching of so-called "physiology", but through actual practice of good health. Objective 3. School and Industrial Life Commnendable efforts have been made in the Virgin Islands to have the schools help in the economic, development of the Islands through (1) manual training and home economics in the upper grades and junior high school; (2) school gardening in the elementary schools; (3) cooperation between the schools and the agricultural experiment station whereby the extension specialist of the station works directly with the schools. Manual Training and Home Economics The first thought an observer has in seeing the manual training and home economics work, especially the work in foods in the junior high school, is: Cannot this valuable type of education be given where more children will get it? At present, as shown above in the statistics * The annual report of the Director of Education to the Governor (1927) says: "School nursing service, which was established four years ago by the American Red Cross with the assistance of the local Government, has developed into one of the most important features of the school program. There are two Red Cross nurses from the United States, paid by the Red Cross, assisted by three local nurses, paid by the local Government. A school center is maintained in each of the three towns. "In a survey conducted by the American Child Health Association during 1925 the program followed in the Virgin Islands was rated high enough to receive honorable mention and one of the best nineteen school systems in the United States and its possessions. "Due to splendid cooperation of the Navy doctors connected with the Department of Health, physical defects are immediately treated, and physical exanminations are conducted each year for all the school children." 36 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS of retention of children in schools, an alarmingly small number of children go beyond sixth grade. Some work in sewing is given in the grades, but apparently the work done is for the most part not for the pupils themselves, and thereby lacks the motive for change in the home that should accompany all such training. The most valuable work is given in the junior high school, to a small group of children from families that need it least. If junior high school is to be reserved for only a few pupils, as at present,, then instruction in foods and other direct work in household arts should be given below the junior high school; but if, as is better educationally, such work is to be given in its present form in the junior high school, then children should be retained in the junior high school quite without reference to their ability to do ordinary academic work. In either case, the simple but essential work in manual training and in home-making should be taught from the very beginning of the elementary school. This should be part of the essentially local material that should be the basis of the school curriculum. School and Home Gardening School gardening is one of the most hopeful recent features of the school work. Despite the difficulties that always accompany ventures of this sort, it seems already to have had some helpful effect on the economic possibilities of the Islands. Experience in the States and elsewhere indicates, however, that with all due regard for the value of the garden at the school as a cooperative group experience and as a means of instruction in gardening, still more important is the home garden supervised from the school. This represents a further step in responsibility; and it brings the changes that are needed closer to the home. If the school through the children can demonstrate the possibilities of home gardens, there is far more likelihood that these children as they go from the school will wish to own homes and cultivate gardens about their own homes, whatever else they may do; and there is some likelihood that even the adults of the present generation will be directly affected. The almost complete lack of individual tree planting and individual gardens is striking in islands so well situated as the Virgin Islands are for growing things. One of the good features of the beginnings in agricultural education in the Virgin Islands is the evidence of cooperation between the Experiment Station and the schools. It happens, however, that the specialist in agricultural extension is located in St. Thomas, where there is almost no agriculture, and the Experimental Station itself is in SURVEY OF EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES OF THE ISLANDS 37 St. Croix, where there are still real agricultural possibilities and where an extension agent could be exceedingly valuable. The best sign of the possibilities of cooperation between the Experiment Station and the schools, however, is the announced willingness of the Experiment Station head to have the proposed now agricultural and industrial institute located in close proximity to the Experiment Station. Objective 4. School and Community As to the service rendered by the schools in the concrete life of the community, much must now be clear. The schools are there. They function. It should be made clear that in the opinion of this Commission the School Director is doing all that he can be expected to do within the limits of his budget and the system of education in vogue. But the fact, remains that the-schools have very little vital touch with the life of the community. And they can do exceedingly little in raising the standards of the community. As already noted, the schools do an excellent "three R's" job and a few other things, but on the whole they work in curious isolation from the community. The probable reasons for this have been pointed out-the lack of normal family life in an unduly large part of the population; the fact that the mass of the people, including all women, have no vote, and that there are no boards of education; and the low level of teacher requirements, particularly in the elementary grades, so that community leadership from the school is rarely available, especially in country regions, where such leadership is most needed. Many parents and citizens express definite interest in the schools, however, and one of the chief tasks of the educational program in the Virgin Islands will have to be to increase and develop this public concern for education so that the people will desire better schools and will work to secure a larger measure of support for them. E. ADAPTATION OF COURSE OF STUDY TO THE NEEDS OF THE ISLANDS In considering the four major needs of the Islands, namely, rehabilitation of family life, health, industrial development, and community participation, and the types of education to be set up to meet them, it should be kept in mind that not mere additions to the existing program are suggested, but rather that the whole school content shall be revised in the light of these fundamental objectives. Curriculum and Local Conditions The present course of study of the Virgin Islands was taken in the main from two American States. At the time it was established it 38 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS represented fairly advanced educational practice. Considerable change has occurred in curriculum-making in the past half dozen years, however. The essential weakness of the course of study for the Virgin Islands is that it has not grown out of a specific inquiry into the needs of the Virgin Islands. To a certain extent, as has already been pointed out, the schools of the Virgin Islands will necessarily be affected by the conventional requirements of city school systems in the States to which the children are likely to go; but this should not be allowed to interfere seriously with the real task that faces those in charge of education in the Virgin Islands, viz: to adapt materials and methods of instruction to the people of the Islands and to build a content of education for them that shall meet their abilities, interests, and needs. That the educational content in the Virgin Islands schools is not well adapted to the life of the Islands may be illustrated by what was observed in a visit to one of the classrooms, where a conscientious teacher, in good control of the situation, was teaching a verse selection used in the States in the early spring and called "Winds of March." The stanzas were displayed prominently on the blackboard, and were evidently serving as the center for much of the work the children were doing. In New England and the Atlantic States the words might have had some meaning for the children; in the Virgin Islands the words were singularly devoid of any significance. There are no "Winds of March" in St. Thomas in the sense in which Northern children would have understood the term. March is a warm month made delightful by the trade winds, and the whole symbolism of spring-time intended to be revealed in the poem is lost on the Virgin Islanders. The same poem speaks of pussy-willows, but there are no pussy-willows, apparently, in the Virgin Islands. Robins, likewise, appear in this poetry selection, but there are no robins in the Virgin Islands. The argument is not, of course, that the content of learning should be confined to things found only in the West Indies; but rather that where the content is intended to constitute something of everyday experience, as this poem does in parts of the United States, it will have to deal with life as found in the Virgin Islands. Children in these Islands need to have their reading, writing, and other school activities in connection with ideas and experiences that are genuinely real to them; only in this way will there be any likelihood that what they learn in school passes over into the realities of life around them. The danger here referred to always attends any transplanted scheme of education. Things learned as artificially as they are in the schools of the Virgin Islands will not have the effect they should have. An observer listening to artificial SURVEY OF EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES OF THE ISLANDS 3 39 lessons in physiology, in which the pupils try to repeat from memory a list of diseases, some of them entirely unknown or offering no problem in the Virgin Islands, will easily understand why the health instruction in the schools has had almost no effect upon living conditions. Far more effective is bound to be the actual practice in care of the baby given by the Red Cross nurse,) but unfortunately this highly useful method of teaching health reaches only a few of the girls in the high school and does not touch the homes of the masses of the population. Educational content in the schools of the Virgin Islands needs to be constantly re-worked with the needs of the Islands in mind. The four major objectives described in this report will be attained largely to the extent that the training in skills, processes and facts, reading, writing, numbers, geography and history, is directly related to family life, health, industry, community participation, and given in a setting that approximates as closely as possible to reality. Secondary and Higher Education Attention has already been called to the poor record of retention in grades above the sixth in the Virgin Islands, which forms such a decided contrast to the remarkable record of attendance in grades below the junior high school. Half the children in the United States as a whole go to the ninth grade or beyond, whereas only one per cent reach that point in the Virgin Islands. The official percentage of enrollment in high schools given in the Bureau of Education reports for 1925-1926 (when attendance was greater than now) is the lowest in American territory with one exception. The Junior High School Situation It is particularly unfortunate that the junior high school plan, having as one of its chief purposes in the States that of keeping boys and girls longer in school, should in the Virgin Islands apparently have the effect of making the public feel that six years of schooling are all that are necessary for most of the population. In enforcing school attendance up to fifteen years of age the schools of the Virgin Islands are in accord with modern practice, but in failing to keep children through Junior high school they are distinctly behind. What is needed is a realization on the part of the community that sixth grade schooling is an insufficient achievement for people who are to be part of the American democracy; that a different kind of education should be provided for those whose interests are not in the conventional high school subjects; and that no modern community can afford not to 40 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS maintain some higher educational opportunities of at least senior high school grade. That the people of the Islands have hardly realized the necessity for an adequate program of secondary education is indicated by the discussion over the possibility of consolidating the two junior high schools of Christiansted and Frederiksted on St. Croix. Physically this would be quite feasible; the distance of fifteen miles between is by no means insurmountable. But the two parts of the island of St. Croix are both large enough to maintain easily a junior high school, and it is only fair to say that any community in the States with from four to six thousand population would maintain not only a junior high school but a senior high school as well. Children will continue into high school if the community once understands the importance of this attendance; if the right kind of training is furnished, sufficiently diversified to meet varying needs; and if the standards set up by the various vocations are sufficiently high. An Agricultural and Industrial Institute Every consideration, both of individual and community betterment, demands the early organization of an agricultural and industrial institute probably on the Island of St. Croix. Plans for such an institute have already been outlined. Setting up Higher Standards The nurse-training situation is an excellent example of the present difficulty in setting up higher standards. Good training for nurses is made possible by the Navy hospital facilities, but because of the lack of secondary education provision the training schools for nurses take in girls who have had little or no real high school training at all. This means that, no matter how good the instruction, these nurses will never be able to work legitimately in the very communities in the United States where many of them are likely to go, since present requirements in the States tend to call for at least high school graduation before admission to nurse training. The situation is even less excusable in the case of candidates for teaching. The law requires only that a teacher shall be an American citizen over sixteen years of age who passes certain examinations. This means that children of junior high school age can and do take the examination for teaching in the schools of the Islands and are appointed to positions without even finishing the eighth or ninth grade. This is undoubtedly done on the mistaken theory that it will be difficult SURVEY OF EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES OF THE ISLANDS 41 to get candidates if higher standards are exacted. The low salaries are of course a serious handicap, but on the whole experience shows that the higher the qualifications the better the material is likely to be. Certainly a minimum requirement should be established, so far as teachers are concerned, that no one shall be accepted as a candidate who has not at least finished the junior high school, and at the earliest opportunity this should be raised to graduation from senior high school and beyond, to approach the standards of the better American States and foreign countries. This would be the effective way of serving notice on boys and girls and the community generally that teaching is an important technical service that must not be entered except by those willing to have a real education in preparation for it. Higher Education One reason for the proposed agricultural and industrial institute is that it would give additional intermediate and secondary school facilities for pupils who may not necessarily be interested in the more conventional kind of schooling. Boys and girls in the Virgin Islands should, however, have opportunities for education beyond the senior high school, and it is difficult to see how the Councils and the Government can avoid the responsibility of providing it. At present two scholarships are maintained at Hampton Institute, Virginia, for Virgin Islands students. These are, however, provided at the expense of Hampton Institute. The Governor has recently requested the trustees of Hampton to provide additional scholarships, showing that the authorities appreciate the type of higher training such schools as Hampton and Tuskegee offer and its special value for the Virgin Islands. The Virgin Islands should not be dependent upon these privately supported institutions in the States, however, for the expense of this training; it should be included in the educational budget of the Islands, together with sufficient funds for other advanced education. The population of the Islands is too small to warrant the establishment of any local university education, but the Islands should as a regular matter of policy set aside such comparatively small sums as would be needed for sending each year a certain number of picked students for study in the States or elsewhere. This in turn would require the establishment of at least one fully staffed and fully equipped senior high school in the Virgin Islands, and preferably one for St. Thomas and St. Croix separately, where pupils might secure sufficient secondary education to admit them to higher institutions outside the Islands. SECTION IV EDUCATION AND COMMUNITY LIFE Diversity of the Community HAVING reviewed the internal structure of the schools of the Virgin Islands it is now in order to inquire a little more closely into the peculiar characteristics of the community that the schools have to serve. In so doing we are struck with the diversity of the community. Unlike areas on the mainland in which the background of school administration is a more or less coherent unit, the school system of the Virgin Islands must serve two communities separated by some forty miles of water and differing fundamentally in their economic and social development. The Island of St. Thomas has practically no agriculture and is almost entirely commercial in its pursuits. Everything centers about its port, St. Thomas, with a cosmopolitan population and a good harbor and coaling station that attracts ships from all the world. The Island of St. Croix, on the other hand, lacks a good harbor and is agricultural in its interests. As is usual with strictly agricultural communities, St. Croix is conservative in its views and purposes. Further, it is in the grip of a single, dominating crop, sugar cane, which apparently can be grown to advantage only on large estates and in great quantities. Small holdings are difficult to obtain and are not generally encouraged, with the result that little or no individual initiative is developed among the common people. The great mass of them work the estates at starvation wages and are forced accordingly to live under poor and often degrading conditions. In recent years the population has decreased rapidly from an abnormally high death rate, from excessive exploitation, and from an exodus of the best labor from the Island to the States. And the sugar crop, especially in good seasons, suffers from a shortage of labor, which, so far, employers have found no satisfactory means of overcoming. Social Agencies that Serve the Community These diverse communities have in the past been servd by some very simple social agencies. The religious and social agencies operating in the Islands have been more or less alike. Four of the great [42] EDUCATION AND COMMUNITY LIFE 4 43 religious denominations have in the main ministered to the spiritual needs of the communities. They have doubtless rendered highly satisfactory services to the comparatively few white people and to a limited number of the more favored colored people. But for the native blacks, the great mass of the population, these services seem to have meant but little. They appear to have left almost untouched the fundamentals of life and character. Too much, it would seem, has been made of conducting religious services for the natives and too little of developing religious life within them. But little effective religious leadership on the part of natives seems to have developed. And when native leadership in other fields has appeared, it would seem to lack the modifying influences of Christian teaching. In health work in recent years, the Islands have been fortunate in having the excellent services of the United States navy physicians and of Red Cross nurses. But so great are the demands made upon them, that they are able to do only palliative work for the most part. No agencies appear to be making effective efforts at constructive, preventive health work, or at improving home conditions generally among the masses of the natives. Wretched Home Conditions For the humbler people of the three considerable urban centers and for most of those outside these towns, the problems of home-life are extremely serious and difficult. For many no regular family life in the common acceptance of that term exists. One room is commonly the space available for a family, however large. Under these circumstances sanitary conditions are wretched and privacy out of the question. Marital relations are most irregular, and illegitimacy is common. Of the 612 births in the Virg-in Islands for 1926, for instance, 362, or 59.2 per cent are recorded as illegitimate. For the Island of St. Croix the percentage of illegitimacy for this same year was 67 per cent, while St. Thomas with the best showing ran as high as 51.9 per cent. For no year since 1918 at least has this percentage of illegitimacy for the whole group of Islands been less than 54.7 per cent. From one-third to one-half of the school children of the rural communities give as their guardians other persons than their fathers, or either parent in most of such cases. The towns show better conditions. As already stated, the. death rate is abnormally high. In St. Croix it exceeds the birth rate. Here it is about three times that of the United States, twice that of Hawaii, and one and a half times that of Porto Rico. Infant mortality, due largely to malnutrition and gastro-intestinal diseases, 44X_ REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS plays a conspicuous part in this high death rate. These conditions point directly to the homes which the schools should in some manner reach more directly and improve. For the masses of the people there is only limited employment. The growing of sugar offers only seasonal employment for most. Harbor work, the coaling of ships and the like, provides only irregular work for many of them. Wages are low and food is high. Need of Constructive Work in the Home Such are some of the common conditions in the conmnunities which these schools must serve. Of first importance is the matter of health. The schools are in position to reach the homes and to give them helpful assistance. In their health program they should teach not only hygiene and physiology, but should carry their work into the homes and help to establish health habits there. It is quite common in the Southern States, for instance, for teachers to win the cooperation of parents in keeping the school children clean, well clad, and properly fed. This cooperation takes the teachers into the homes, where through tact and sympathy they gain the privilege of helping mothers set the homes in order, and of teaching them how to keep them clean and sanitary. In this way they also get the chance of training mothers directly in the selection of the best food for their families, and in the proper preparation of it. In many instances, too, these teachers not only carry on their health work in the schools and individual homes, but apply it to the community as well. They secure the interest of the preachers and through them carry their health work into the churches and to other groups of the people, and thus awaken the whole community to a desire for better health and more attractive surroundings. So wide-spread has this movement become that it culminates each year in a National Clean-up Week in which not only private citizens, but municipalities take an active part. Fortunately for the Virgin Islands many of the schools have teachers' homes in connection with them. It is not apparent, however, that these homes afford any practice for the school children in training in housekeeping, though some of them are models of neatness. The care of these homes should form a rgeular part of the school children's training in health work. Improper Nu~trition Some such school and community work is greatly needed in the Virgin Islands and especially in St. Croix, where so many of the people EDUCATION AND COMMUNITY LIFE 4 45 live in crowded unsanitary conditions in the neglected "villages" of the estates. Here, according to the physicians on the Island, the most destructive maladies are caused by poor food, improperly prepared. This soft, unsatisfactory food, "fungee" in the main, a crude combination of cornmeal and fish and vegetables, helps at least in bringing on wretched dental conditions among people noted elsewhere for good teeth. Bad teeth serve as the basis for focal infections resulting in heart disease that carries off an alarming number of the people. Of the 157 deaths in 1927 in a population of perhaps 7,000 in one municipality on St. Croix, 42 per cent were of heart disease. This condition should be attacked at its base in the homes, if any effective preventive measures are to be used. Cooking classes in the schools could help a great deal. Great Need of Cooking Instruction The schools of St. Thomas, Christiansted and Frederiksted offer cooking. But even in these schools it is confined to the favored few pupils who filter through the elementary school into the junior high school, the ones, in most instances, that need such training least. For the neglected children of the "villages" no training in cooking is given. To remedy the dangerous conditions mentioned and to make the work widely effective, practical cooking should be taught in the elementary schools where the mass of the children are enrolled. Certainly the children from the fourth through the sixth grades, inclusive, should be given this instruction. This cooking should not be elaborate, but should involve training in the selection and proper preparation of such suitable foods as are within the reach of the ordinary homes. It should be the work of these classes also to train children to eat a greater variety of food than they are accustomed to eat, and to include in their diet more fish, meat and vegetables, and especially a greater number of such helpful vegetables as may be grown in their communities. The hot school lunch might be used as a part of the training of children in the preparation of simple, wholesome food, and in educating them to like foods to which they are not accustomed. In the States hot lunches are not only common but often are selfsupporting. Some unusual effort may be necessary, but it ought to be possible for the schools generally to interest parents and children in at least helping to meet the cost of the hot lunch. In fact the Survey Staff saw one school on St. Thomas which was about to establish the hot lunch on this basis. The schools could help, too, in increasing the consumption of helpful vegetables by teaching the older girls to 46 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS can vegetables for use in seasons when they cannot be grown. This is a common practice in the schools of the Southern States. In fact, some of the schools not only can vegetables for home consumption, but for the market. Certain schools have their own labels and do a profitable business in canned vegetables. To make this work in cooking thoroughly practical, the lessons of the school should be carried into the homes. This can be done through intimate cooperation on the part of teachers with parents who can be led to have their children share largely in the preparation of food for the families. Other Domestic Industry Sewing as a school subject may be so conducted as to have very practical value in the community. It is given in the junior high schools and in certain of the elementary schools of the Islands. It should be made possible in all the schools. Plain sewing"-repairing, patching, the making of simple underwear and dresses-should be stressed. In the high school dressmaking may be carried to greater perfection. Here, too, fancy work and especially local styles of embroidery should be encouraged with the idea of making this work profitable to considerable numbers of the young people. The needs of the homes should be the first consideration, but it should be possible so to train many of the older pupils for productive work on a scale sufficiently large to be attractive to manufacturers, as is done in Porto Rico,, for instance. In one of the junior high schools, some provision was made for the teaching of laundering. This work should also be carried into the elementary grades where there are many girls mature enough to do thoroughly practical work from which they might get immediate financial returns. And even the younger children should be started in the right direction in this work, which will doubtless have an increasing value as the growing number of tourists and others turn in the direction of these Islands. In basketry and weaving of other articles from native materials, the schools have a local industry which they may develop to the ad. vantage of their communities. The schools are deserving of credit for reviving an all but lost native industry. This is work that may, in all probability, be carried on in all the schools. It is an industry, too, in which not only the children may engage with profit, but also the older men and women of the communities who are no longer able to follow their regular pursuits. Indeed, it is from the older people that the EDUCATION AND COMMUNITY LIFE 4 47 children are learning this long neglected native craft. So f ar the schools have hardly begun to meet the demands for their woven wares. It may be of interest to note that in the Southern States, and especially on the islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia, a somewhat similar basket industry has been revived. While this is not always directly a source of profit, the advantages of such instruction in inculcating habits of industry and establishing artistic standards are many and important. Agricultural Training and Gardening Though the sugar industry may gradually decline or even disappear from these Islands, agriculture will continue in some form on the rich lands of St. Croix, and to a limited extent on St. Thomas. Agricultural training should, then, form an important feature of the school program. Some encouraging efforts at school gardening have already been made. This work should be continued with both boys and girls in the elementary schools. The school gardens offer a fine opportunity to train children to grow not only the familiar vegetables, but desirable new ones. However, this work should not be confined to school gardening, but what is taught at school should be duplicated in home gardening. All this work should be done under the general supervision of a trained agricultural teacher. But it should be directed both at school and at home by the regular classroom teachers as a part of their school work. The school gardens should furnish vegetables for hot lunches and for sale for the further promotion of this work. Some of the vegetables grown at school should also be given the children as incentives for good work. And the home gardens should be the means of training the older people in better methods of gardening and in making greater use of gardens in supplying food for their families. In the high schools the work in agriculture with both boys and girls should take the form of lessons in practical farming and "project work" after the fashion of the Smith-Hughes work in vocational agriculture. These courses cover not only training in the growing of farm crops and animals, but such allied farm activities as simple training in wood, iron, and leather-work for the making of ordinary repairs about the home and farm. In the project work each student is led to take as a home project under the direction of an agricultural demonstrator the growing upon an acre or less of land, some regular farm crop, or the growing of chickens, the raising of pigs or calves to illustrate the advantages of improved methods in farming. In the States 48 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS where such work is carried on extensively it frequently happens that the boys are able to prove to the entire satisfaction of even doubting parents the superiority of improved methods. Thus the schools become potent factors in improving farming conditions about them. It happens that a beginning has been made in this farm demonstration work on the Islands. But for some reason not made clear, the man in charge of this work has been transferred from St. Croix where agriculture is the chief industry, to St. Thomas where but little agricultural work is possible. Something should be done to restore this work to St. Croix. Need of an Agricultural Institute These Islands should give, also, an opportunity for still more advanced work in agriculture. This is especially needed for boys who look forward definitely to farming, for men who may be chosen for farm demonstration work, and for the training of regular teachers for their special work in school gardening. For this work there should be, however, a special school of agriculture such as is mentioned elsewhere in this report. In case this school can be operated in connection with the Agricultural Experiment Station, as has been proposed, it will have an unusual opportunity to do effective work. This school should be under the direction of a thoroughly trained colored man from the States who has had experience in the training of teachers, if possible. He should have, also, several well-trained assistants. And they should have as their work the training, not only of students for work in agriculture, but the training of regular classroom teachers as well. They should be able to give to the latter such an understanding and appreciation of agriculture as would enable them to relate their schools definitely and effectively to their communities. And the school should be enabled, if possible, to assure its students of the possibility of securing reasonably small tracts of land for such profitable farming as it may teach them to carry on. The Mechanical Trades The mechanical trades offer an attractive and a fairly varied field of activity for the boys of the Islands. In a group of 309 parents on St. Croix even where agriculture is dominant, 14 different mechanical trades were represented. They included carpentry, blacksmithing, sheet-metal working, shoemaking, saddlery, wheelwrighting, masonry, printing, painting, tailoring and upholstering. St. Thomas would add to this list of mechanical trades. EDUCATION AND COMMUNITY LIFE 4 AG JL-..f Already there are shops for the boys in the junior high schools in St. Thomas, Christiansted, and Frederiksted, but no chance is given the country boys for mechanical training. Though the work given for the younger boys is very good and is deserving of great commendation, still it is not sufficiently advanced to prepare students for inmnediate and profitable employment. A chance should be given for effective training in mechanical trades both for the boys who remain in the Islands and for those who go in such large numbers to the States. There should be at least one school whose work could be carried to trade proportions. It might not be possible to offer many trades, but a few representative ones at least could be selected and thorough training given in them. This school should be opened not only to the boys who are able to remain in school beyond the junior high school grades, but also to older boys who may have dropped out of regular school work altogether. Arrangements could be made for the latter to take the courses as continuation work. The instruction should be thoroughly practical, and should be given as far as possible by men who have had successful experience as mechanics. It might even be possible to secure local tradesmen for certain portions of the teaching. Or arrangements might be made to allow boys to go into local shops at stated periods for their trade training. In such work, boys sometimes work in pairs, alternating between school and shop, thus keeping the shop supplied with a regular worker all the time. The necessary academic work is taken care of on the same alternating basis. On such a program students have the advantage of doing practical productive work as a part of their practice in learning trades. But schools without such advantages manage to find practical work for trade students also. For example, one of the high schools of Kansas City, Missouri, does all the repair work in the whole city school system, and makes on special orders cabinets and other things required by the schools. At such a trade school as Tuskegee Institute, the several trade groups often do all the masonry, carpentry, plastering, plumbing, painting, and installing of electric fixtures, etc., in buildings erected at the school. Even in isolated country schools the boys of the Smith-Hughes Agricultural courses often help in erecting dwellings for teachers and students. For such trade work students sometimes receive pay. The amount received depends largely upon the skill of the worker and the amount of work done. In this way students are frequently enabled to remain in school for their trade training when otherwise they would not be 50 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS able to be in school. By such means it might be possible to hold students of the Islands longer in school, and at the same time give them such training as would fit them for greater usefulness at home or elsewhere. Business Training and the Professions Of the 309 fathers on St. Croix whose occupations were given, 7 were planters, 3 managers of estates, 11 clerks, 4 were bookkeepers and 7 were merchants. These 32 occupations formed 10% of the occupations in a distinctly agricultural district. The percentage of such occupations would run much higher on St. Thomas where business is dominant. Accordingly the schools should do what they can to prepare youth for this very considerable calling. Business training is given in the tenth grade in the schools of St. Thomas. Similar work was also given in St. Croix, but it seems that the demand for young people with such training was soon supplied. However, such training as is possible in the high school is valuable not only for those who are needed in the Islands, but for others who leave for the States. Owing to their isolation these Islands must to a great extent be sufficient unto themselves. They have the necessity of giving the initial training to their youth for whatever callings they may wish to enter. College training is a prerequisite for certain of the professions necessary to the community. Communities of from 10,000 to 12,000 inhabitants, such as these, should have their own physicians in sufficient numbers, for instance. At present the Islands are mainly dependent upon the United States Navy for such services. The local schools should provide the college preparatory training for youths headed for college and the professions. However, there is no public school in the Islands sufficiently advanced to prepare students to enter college. This may in some measure account for comparative lack of colored physicians for instance, in this group of 20,000 or more colored people. But it is doubtful if any physicians of another race, with only professional interests in their practice can render the necessary widely effective service so badly -needed by the colored people of these Islands. This need of well-trained disinterested native physicians is typical of the need of capable teachers, preachers, and social workers generally, in this large native group. The number of outstanding native teachers or preachers of whom the casual visitor hears is surprisingly small. Only in business are such men to be found as a rule, it seems. And success in this line appears to destroy their interest in the natives as such and to remove them from active leadership among the colored EDUCATION AND COMMUNITY LIFE 5 51 people. Graduates of the local schools as now constituted are likely to be lost in the mass of poorly trained people. The few who are able to continue their studies elsewhere rarely return for service in the Islands. In short, the schools do not provide for the leadership necessary to the local group. The Islands should provide at several points at least a complete high school course. Better Teachers and Teacher Training In order to have such a complete course and such widely effective schools as have been mentioned above, the Islands must have far better teachers than most of those now employed-teachers with ample training and with such spirit for service as will make them effective leaders. These teachers must come mainly from among the natives themselves. No other people can furnish the sort of leadership these Islanders stand in dire need of. The rank and file of these natives need the inspiring influence of strong, capable, attractive, sympathetic black men and women as teachers who bring to their work what is known among the colored people of the States as the "missionary spirit",-the intimate sense of responsibility on the part of the more fortunate ones for their less fortunate brothers. This is what has lifted the masses of the colored people in the States beyond the condition of any similar group elsewhere in the world. First, the teachers needed must be led to feel that the school has a greater service to render than the giving of merely literary instruction. They must see that the school offers an opportunity to direct and improve all the life and activities of the community. The proper health, food, clothing home conditions, work and industry of the community are as much the concern of the school, for instance, as a knowledge of the "three R's". The effective teacher must know how to use all these interests and activities in the rounded development of her pupils. For such understanding, however, teachers require training beyond that offered by the junior high schools as a rule. And they should have also a working knowledge at least of many of the common activities of the home and neighborhood. For a fortunate few of the children of the Virgin Is-lands, teachers need perhaps to do but little, if anything more than the conventional work of the schools. But for more effective service for the many, these teachers require training for simple social work beyond the schoolroom. Without it the best efforts of the classroom will amount to but little. Home life among the masses here is wanting in so many of the things that go ordinarily into the making of good homes. The very foundations of family life are frequently 52 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS wanting and need to be established. As has been mentioned above, the loosest sort of family relations are common. Consensual marriage is practiced to a considerable extent, and separations are frequent. For example, of 25 children of as many fathers of the Peter's Rest School on St. Croix, 13 live with others than their parents. Of 90 children of the Friedensfeld School on the same Island 55 are cared for by others than their parents. And even in Christiansted one of the two advanced urban communities where the names of 411 fathers of as many children are recorded, 123 children or 39 per cent have other guardians than their fathers. Teachers who have to deal with such conditions have need of broad and effective training. A Training School The Islands stand in great need of a special school for the training of their teachers,-a school where the theory of such work as is suggested above may be taught, and where practice under intelligent direction may be given. Native pupil teachers need to see school activities carried on that include both the conventional academic work of the classroom and the practical work of both the school and the home. And they need also in their own lives the training and discipline of clean, well-ordered living such as a properly conducted boarding school can give. They need not only to learn to teach effectively, but to become shining examples of all that their teaching should produce. This training school for teachers may well enough be a part of the agricultural school already mentioned. And at the outset, it would probably be well for the school to be small in order that the training for the special needs of the Islands may be most effectively given. Certainly the Islands cannot reasonably look to other communities to train teachers for their particular needs. However, for more advanced training than it i's likely that a local school could give, a few teachers should be sent to Porto Rico or to the States. The work of such schools as Hampton Institute, Tuskegee Institute, or other schools in the Southern States would probably prove more suggestive than any training such teachers might receive in Northern centers. Capable Supervision But even the well-trained teacher with the best of intentions can cover but a limited field. Such teachers need the help of a capable supervisor or helping teacher other than the superintendent or director of schools. Such a supervisor should not be confined to any particular school, but should be free to aid in teaching in a number of schools, EDUCATION AND COMMUNITY LIFE 5 53 and to study conditions in their neighborhoods. She should be a strong, sympathetic person, and a good organizer. A considerable part of her task should be to interest the people in the schools, and to secure their cooperation in making the school work helpful to the community. She should be able to lead her people to put her teachings into practice. On the other hand, she should know how to secure the interest and cooperation of school officials, and to lead them to see the use to which the school may be put in bettering conditions in the community. In these and other ways she should be able to center the interest of patrons and officials in the schools and to secure from them ever increasing means for their support and development. Fortunately the schools have no difficulty in getting hold of the children. Parents have been trained to send them regularly and in full numbers. Their attendance is excellent. And the schools are well organized for conventional literary work, of the elementary and junior high school grades. Their weakness lies in the woefully inadequately trained native teachers for even this narrow field of work. But few of them have any idea of the broader service the teacher should render. The principal of the school associated with a Christian mission reported that his teachers seldom went to the homes or churches of the people. They do not make themselves a necessary and vital part of the community. "The people feel that the teachers are not for them" the principal said. The few white teachers from the States., who may have some knowledge of the broader work of the school, cannot, even if they desire to do so, get into the homes and form such relations with the natives as would enable them to render helpful service. But with a force of well-trained native teachers, assisted by a few specially prepared colored teachers from the States, the schools of the Virgin Islands may easily be led to render their communities far-reaching and surprisingly effective services. SECTION V SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC BACKGROUNDS OF THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS OF THE ISLANDS IT has been said that by the terms of authorization and by specific design the scope of the present Survey was strictly limited to educational matters. The Survey Staff did not consider itself authorized nor was it prompted to give special attention to the various problems of a financial, economic and political nature which are engaging the thought both of the Government and the people of the Islands. And yet these could not entirely be ignored. Enough has been shown in the previous pages of this report to reveal that many of the conditions under which the educational systems of the Islands are operating are of long standing and go back to very deep roots. It is manifest that neither the problems nor the opportunities of education in the Islands can be properly understood without paying some attention to these deep-lying conditions. Rapid Changes of Status not Advisable:- Education the Best Specific Like most of the islands of the West Indies group, the Virgin Islands represent an old civilization that is firmly set in its own traditions. The system of life there has been and is today alien to our own. In these conditions we are certain to find habits, customs and principles which are at variance with our practices and in some respects do violence to them. While maintaining our faith in our American traditions and methods it is important that we observe in our criticism and *in our proposals the principle of deliberate progress rather than of radical innovation and substitution. This points directly to education as the best instrumentality for improving the conditions of the Islands. In making our findings we also have in mind that the United States has been in control of the Virgin Islands only about twelve years; that this period is a very short time when measured against their centuries of past history and tradition. The Government has been well advised to make haste slowly, to let events themselves teach their own lessons rather than too precipitately to make changes. It may safely be assumed that conditions, as they are today, represent neither the ideal of the former Danish regime nor the ideal of the present American [54] SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC BACKGROUNDS OF THE ISLANDS 5 55 regime. They represent the necessary middle ground of transition between an order which has for three-quarters of a century been a process of dissolution and a new order which has had a bare decade in which to operate. The educational principle, using these terms in their broadest meaning, will get the best results. Area and Population of the Islands First in importance in considering the factors conditioning education in the Virgin Islands is the restricted area and population of the Islands. While authorities do not agree on the precise area of the Islands, the figures accepted by the United States Census of 1917 show for the three islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. John, areas of 28.25 square miles; 84.25 square miles; and 19.97 square miles respectively, making a total for the three islands, of 132.47 square miles. As to present population no exact figures exist. The United States Census of 1917 shows a population for St. Croix of 14,901; for St. Thomas, of 10,191;- for St. John, of 959-a total of 26,051. The latest informal police department enumeration made in 1927 gives St. Croix a population of 11,118; St. Thomas, 8,826; and St. John, 784-a total estimated population of 20,728 or a decrease in ten years of 5,234 inhabitants. Accepting the official figures of the Census of 1917 as a basis for computation, we find that the density of population in 1917 was for St. Croix, 176.9; for St. Thomas, 360.7; and for St. John, 48-an average for all three Islands of 196.7 inhabitants per square mile. This is to be compared with 30.9 per square mile of land area of the United States and with 325.5 per square mile in Porto Rico in 1910. As has previously been said, these Islands are not a unit. They are widely separated by ocean channels and by a diversity of activities. Moreover, small as they are, they offer both urban and rural problems. On the Island of St. Thomas, the largest city, St. Thomas, had by census of 1917, 7,747 inhabitants, or 75 per cent of the entire population. On St. Croix there are two cities, Christiansted and Frederiksted, with populations of 4,575 and 3,144 respectively, or 60 per cent of the population. Progressive Decrease in Productive Agencies If education had to deal with a restricted but widely distributed population in which normal progress was the rule, the problems of education would be relatively simple. But this is not the case. For up 56 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS wards of a hundred years the productive agencies of the Islands have been progressively decreasing. When the United States took over the Islands retrogression had become traditional. This applies first to population. In 1835 the population was about 43,000. By the beginning of the twentieth century population had decreased to 30,000 and at the time of the annexation stood around 26,000. Today the population is about 20,000. We shall later have occasion to study specifically the reasons for this decline. In short there were two, the steady emigration from the Islands; and a preponderance of deaths over births. Both these conditions exist today, the first having been accelerated under American occupation, the second somewhat retarded. The progressive diminution of population in the Islands is paralleled in a reduction of productive resources. This applies primarily to reduction of areas under cultivation. While there is, of course, no reduction of land area, the reduction of cultivated lands has been steady. Particularly marked has been the transfer of lands formerly employed in sugar and cotton cultivation to the uses of grazing or to bush land. In St. Croix there has been a positive decrease in ten years of land used for sugar cane, from 12,000 to 9,000 acres, or 25 per cent. Land employed for cotton has been reduced from 408 acres to nothing. At the present time about 12,000 acres or one-quarter of the land area of St. Croix, is put down as cultivated land, 37,000 acres as pasture land and a few acres as useless land. Comparatively little pasture land is grazed. There are but very few acres of cultivated land on St. Thomas and even the pasture land represents a maximum of about 3,000 acres. The rest is in bush. A like situation exists in St. John which, on account of limited population and restricted cultivation, is almost entirely wild land. The Virgin Islands still possess their magnificent climate and rich acres. Year by year these become of less utility. Conditions of the Islands under American Occupation In describing conditions on the Islands reference is made to the conditions as of the period of transfer. As has been said, these conditions are of long standing. Ten years is entirely too short a time to bring radical improvement. It is, however, important at this point to correct certain misconceptions which have become current in the Islands and in the United States regarding the effects of American sovereignty on the prosperity of the Islands. It has been said that the Islands have suffered under American sovereignty. This is not the case. While American administrations have admittedly done little to date to correct some of the outstanding industrial abuses of the SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC BACKGROUNDS OF THE ISLANDS 5 57 Islands, such as land monopoly and a vicious taxation system, the merely incidental benefits of association with the United States have been great. The United States has spent an average of $300,000 a year on the Islands f or ten years. Much of this has been put into permanent improvements and all of it has gone to native labor. The work done~ for the health of the people has reduced the death rate one-third in a decade. The transfer to American sovereignty stimulated the industry of the Islands. Before the transfer all sugar imported into the States from the Islands paid a heavy tax. With the transfer this tax was removed, followed by an immediate improvement in the sugar situation of the Islands. The export of sugar from the Virgin Islands to the United States rose from $63,496 in the fiscal year 1916 to $1,259,607 in the fiscal year 1917. Before the United States took hold, 95 per cent of the exports to the States paid duty. Now local products are entered free. There has been much comment upon the alleged loss of revenue on account of the prohibition of the manufacture of rum. There are no figures that show that rum was ever a commodity of large export from the Islands. As to bay rum, the export of bay rum is continually on the increase. Perhaps one of the best methods of estimating prosperity is by savings bank deposits. Savings bank deposits of St. Croix averaged less than $100,000 a year for the ten years before the United States took hold. Immediately upon the American accession in 1917 they rose markedly and have never since receded even to the highest point of the previous decade, and for the ten yars after Americansovereignty averaged more than $250,000 a year. of this saving, indications point to the fact that the greater savings were by planters. Deposits in small savings banks frequented by labor continued relatively constant. The total deposits of the banks in the three Islands increased two-fold in the ten years of American occupancy, being over twenty million francs today. Likewise the trade of the West Indies Company which handles coal has increased largely, being larger in 1927 than in any previous year in its history. Of bay rum about 60,000 cases are sold and exported every year. As an indication of financial status interest returns for land purchases run from 4 to 6 per cent. This indicates plenty of money. Not only does capital show increased prosperity. Wages also have risen considerably in ten years and there is little or no unemployment. The stevedores in St. Thomas are now active and draw as high as $10,000 a month or between $60,000 and $80,000 a year. These laborers make twice as much as they did 58 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS ten years ago, their earnings being estimated at a flat rate' per basket of coal, which is now double that of a decade ago. Likewise, the laborers on the sugar estates receive on the average twice as much as ten years ago. The chief sugar company of St. Croix has an annual payroll of about $200,000. Wages are low and conditions of life are difficult,, but these facts are not to be pointed to the American occupancy. Industry and Sources of Income of the Islands It does not lie within the purpose of this Survey to assess the industrial and agricultural difficulties under which the Islands are laboring save to the extent that these are reflected in the problems of education. But the connections between education and the dominant industries of the Islands are too close to be ignored. Speaking generally the Virgin Islands draw their subsistence almost entirely from international services and trade. This international service and trade may be listed under the following heads: 1. The export of raw sugar from St. Croix. 2. The fueling of ships and the sale of port services at St. Thomas. 3. The export of bay rum. 4. The export of cattle. 5. Tourist trade. Of these the last three, while offering the possibilities of good revenue in the future, are today so small as to constitute only an inconsiderable portion of the Island income. Of the two industries left, both are so important as practically to dominate the industrial and community life of the Islands. The second of these, the fueling of ships and the rendering of port services, represents the chief activity of St. Thomas. The city of St. Thomas, which has an excellent harbor, has more than three-fourths of the whole population of the Island. Agricultural activities on this Island are practically non-existent. Except for a few acres cultivated by settlers of French descent, and a few acres employed for grazing, practically the entire island of 10,000 acres is given over to brush. In the city, activity is given over to work on the docks and coaling stations and to merchandising and small trades. Dock workers are unionized. Work is irregular. Though pay is low the dock laborer today draws twice as much as ten years ago. Much of this work is done by women. These workers consider themselves much superior to the field laborers SOCiIAL AND ECONOMIC BACKGROUNDS OF THE ISLANDS5 59 of St. Croix, and even in times of slack work refuse to take j obs in the cane fields. At that the labor is of the most unskilled type. Naturally the industrialists in charge of coaling operations are not much interested to furthering the cause of education. Aside from the port activities of St. Thomas, the chief industry of the Islands is the raising of sugar cane and the manufacture of raw sugar. All the sugar produced on the Islands comes from the Island of St. Croix, the largest island of the group. St. Croix is, then, predominantly an agricultural island and all agricultural activity is under the dominating influence of the chief crop. As is well known, sugar is a crop that can profitably be grown only in large areas. For centuries land on St. Croix has been held in large plantations. As labor troubles become more acute and as the competition from other sugar growing areas increases, the tendency is to centralize sugar holdings under single managements. As we show in another place the productive lands of St. Croix are today in a very few hands. Social Aspects of Chief Industries Before the United States took over the Islands, the sugar industry had been in a difficult position. As a result of the competition of other sugar-raising areas, decrease in fertility of the soil, labor troubles, and high import taxes on sugar into the United States, the sugar industry was in a bad way. With the assumption of American sovereignty the sugar import tax was removed and this concession gave the sugar planter of the Virgin Islands another lease of life. Other conditions, however, continue to be either unfavorable or precarious. Sugar is a crop which depends upon a plentiful rainfall. In recent years the Virgin Islands have not been able to depend upon an adequate supply of water. The average rainfall for five or six years from 1920 was about 35-36 inches. For a good crop at least 45 inches are needed. During the last two years there have been good rainfalls. The best that can be said is that sugar Iis today a gamble. A good rainfall will bring an extremely profitable crop, sometimes running to three or four hogsheads of sugar to the acre. This may be followed by some years in which the crop proceeds run under expenses. An ever present factor in sugar raising has been a large supply of strong, industrious, and capable field labor. Work in the sugar fields is very hard. It has always been the cheapest form of labor.ý Mortality is high. The history of the sugar industry in the Islands is a record of recurrent labor disturbances, riots, and strikes. During recent years labor has moved out of the stage of physical violence in struggle for 60 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS rights in to the stage of economic adjustment through emigration and union negotiation and pressure. Before the transfer the planters were able to fill their depleted ranks by contract importations of labor from other islands. This system of contract labor has not been permitted under the American Government. Speaking generally, the position of labor in the sugar fields is much better today than it was ten years ago. Wages have risen from about forty cents a day to about eighty cents. The supply of labor is, however, smaller and probably the quality is not as high. The managers of the great plantations are employing a great deal of technical skill in extracting the maximum of returns from the soil. They employ the latest systems of agricultural engineering in the matter of planting, cultiva~ting and enriching the soil. They use the latest and most approved machinery. They protect their soil and machinery and maintain both in good condition. It cannot be observed that they employ the same watchful care and wise conservation in handling their labor. Labor is still poorly housed and badly nourished. Death and emigration still take more away than accretions of birth supply to the fields. Under the pressure of the difficulties of the sugar planter there have recently been tendencies in two directions. One has been the tendency on the part of some of the smaller sugar planters to give up the responsibilities of sugar raising themselves and to turn their acres over to renters who take all the responsibility. Under the conditions of renting that exist, it is almost impossible for the native worker to make a living. Another tendency has been to give up the land entirely for sugar raising and to turn it over to cattle raising. Cattle raising requires the services of very few men. It need not be said that under the conditions that exist the needs of popular education do not find their strongest supporters among the sugar interests of the Islands. Undeveloped Possibilities4 The influence of the dominant industries extends far afield. Perhaps the most notable influence they exert is in the restriction of activities that do not directly serve these dominant ends. One who compares the Virgin Islands with other islands in the neighboring groups is instantly struck with the important products of agriculture which are not produced in the Islands. These include the very products out of which the neighboring islands are creating their economic prosperity. Moreover, they are the products which are greatly needed for the healthy nutrition of the people. The only fruits grown in the Virgin Islands are the native fruits that grow wild. No oranges, pine SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC BACKGROUNDS OF THlE ISLANDS 6 61 apples, or grapefruit are grown. Even bananas are imported from surrounding islands. Practically no fresh vegetables are grown on the Islands. Market gardens and kitchen gardens are almost unknown. Recently there has been an effort to stimulate the growth of vegetables, lettuce., onions,, egg plant, etcetera. But the people have been for so long unaware of the uses of vegetables that there is little local demand. And it will take time to develop an external market. Both fruit and Vegetable culture represent undeveloped possibilities of the Islands. The lack of these products has had an unfortunate effect industrially. It has had an unfortunate effect on the nutritional standards of the people. And it has required that food stuffs to a value sometimes exceeding the total exports of the Islands shall be imported from abroad. According to the figures of the Bureau of Foreign and Domes. tic Commerce the Virgin Islands imported in the two years, 1920 and 1921,) foodstuffs to the value of one million dollars and three-quarters of a million dollars, respectively, for subsistence. This includes, for 1920, bread stuffs, $447,928; fish, $77,927; meat and dairy products, $275,960; and vegetables, $39,248. For 1921 it covers bread stuffs, $375,879; fish, $60,927; meats and dairy products, $255,584; and vegetables, $46,875. This does not include importations of vegetables from the surrounding islands and fish and dairy products from Europe. The values of importations, of food stuffs ran from 60%7, to 150%7 of the total values of exportations from the Islands. The exportations into the United States from the Virgin Islands for 1920 were: cattle, $72,212; sugar cane, $4,219,454; for 1921 these were: cattle, $27,732; sugar cane, $546,197. Against these we find total exportations from the United States to the Virgin Islands of $3,993,478 for 1920; and $2,622,396 for 1921. In the latter year total importations, into the Virgin Islands were five times as much as the total exports of cattle and sugar from these islands. These figures are impressive enough in an economic sense. Of greater importance are the facts they imply regarding the food stuffs consumed by the people. In the list of food stuffs eaten we have the bread stuffs and fish taking the largest part. There is little garden produce, comparatively no fruits and very little milk. As a result of these conditions malnutrition is found everywhere., The majority of diseases are diseases of the gastro-intestinal order. On account of lack of oranges, tomatoes, and grapefruit few vitamines are found in the food. Their food is made up largely of proteins. Efforts have been made to encourage the raising of vegetables in a demonstration farm on St. Croix which offers 14 acres for vegetable gardens and demonstration purposes. Also an agricultural fund in St. Thomas, 62 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS has been created, vested in a board of control to assist the farmers in the preparation of crops and marketing. A serious feature of the nutritional situation is the fact that the people have few wants that serve as an incentive to encourage them either to raise products themselves or to work for higher wages. Their most popular food stuff is "fungee," which is made up of dried fish and corn meal. The wants of the people are stunted, their conceptions of living standards are of the lowest, and until these conceptions are raised by instruction in more healthful forms of living, it will be difficult to supply those incentives through which only better standards of living can be achieved. Not alone do the Islands lack in the independent industries of fruit and vegetable raising. Even the domestic industries and crafts, which were formerly active, are now in a precarious condition. The time was when the Islands had an active and self-contained industry in carpentry, shoe-making, hand-working in jewelry, and basket-weaving. These industries are rapidly being undermined by the tendency of people to buy beyond the borders. As the Islands are at present constituted there is little choice for the laborer. If he adapt himself to the dominant demand he must work on the docks or on the sugar flats. For the ambitious native the outlets are limited to clerical work for the Government and the activities of small trade. Under these conditions there is small wonder that for all classes the true path of opportunity should lead beyond the borders, particularly to the United States which has recently been opened to them. The records of activities of the graduates of the higher schools during recent years give interesting confirmation to this. These show a striking exodus on the part of the better students from industrial labor on the one hand and out of the Islands on the other. Of 125 graduates of the high schools of the Islands between 1920 and 1924, 60 had gone to the States to study and find work; and 30 were doing clerical work on the Islands. Of the others it would be too much to assume that more than a very few were entering actively into the industrial and productive life of the community. Under these conditions the labor that is left is little better than useless. It is discontented, without incentives or economic wants. The involvements of all this with the educational problems of the Islands are so close as to require 110 emphasis. The pressure of the industrial interests of the Islands is always to reduce the standards of labor to the cheapest possible. Labor of the higher type 'is driven to the towns to compete for clerical jobs and places in mercantile life and to the United States, leaving only the old and infirm and those of weaker calibre to work in the Islands. The re SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC BACKGROUNDS OF THE ISLANDS 6 63 suits are manifest in the labor conditions of the Islands in a labor which tends to be lazy and shiftless. In the population itself there is taking place a gradual shifting of level downwards mentally, morally and physically. In the decade of American operation the Government has drawn a barrier up against this progressive deterioration, but the essential movement itself has not been stopped or stemmed. In the absence of a reconstruction of the dominant economic and industrial life of the Islands, no procedure shows any promise of succeeding in stemming the tide of deterioration save education. The Distribution of the Land Closely connected with the undeveloped possibilities of the Islands is the matter of land distribution. The average native of the Islands is cut off from all responsible contact with the land. He is invariably a renter. In St. Croix he lives in a ruined stone hut of the run-down villages of the old plantations, for which he pays from 25 cents to a dollar a week. His tenure is short. There is no incentive either to adorn or clean his home or to plant a garden or to have chickens. One does not even see pigs. There are a few goats. Some of the more independent of the, natives are known as squatters. These rent from six to twelve acres of land solely for the purpose of sugar growing. The tenure in these lands is short. Some owners have the system of moving their squatters every two or three years away from the areas they have cleared to uncleared bush land. By this means the owner gets his property cleared. Rent is very high for these lands, running as high as a dollar an acre per month. When it is remarked that land on the Islands probably averages under $35 an acre, real value, the sale of rent is seen to be equivalent to the purchase of the land every three years. Lately there has been a tendency on the part of landlords to increase this leasehold system. By so doing the hazards of the sugar crop, always high, are passed over to the renter. Taking into consideration all charges on the renter and the crop possible under the primitive conditions under which he works, it is doubtful if the average renter makes anything like even the low day wage paid on the larger plantation. From the study of the dominant interests of the Islands it appears that while the Islands are agricultural, the organization of the Islands is industrial. This is further evidenced by the system of land holding in vogue. Aside from cattle grazing and milk production, which take up a very small proportion of the land, only those acres are employed which are devoted to the purposes of sugar raising. The remainder 64 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS lies in bush. And since the coming of the Americans the incentive of speculative holding of land has entered strongly. While three-fourths of the land of St. Croix is practically unproductive it is today almost impossible to get from the holder of the land a sale price under $100 an acre and some is held as high as $300. In fact, very little land is for sale at any price. While taxes are low there is no reason either to sell the land or to make it productive. Land in the Islands is held by a handful of owners. On St. Thomas more than 10,000 acres, or 60 per cent of the total acreage, is held by fifteen owners. The figures for St. John and St. Croix are even more impressive. Of the total acreage of St. John, four-fifths, or 11,000 acres are held by twelve owners; of the 52,000 acres of St. Croix, 70 per cent, or 36,000 acres are held by fourteen owners; upwards of 90 per cent are held by twenty-five owners. On this latter island one company owns 24 per cent of all the land on the Island and 53 per cent of all cultivated land on the Island. If the land-holding system does not encourage productiveness, no more does the system of taxation. The system of taxation employed goes back to the Danish times. It puts a premium on leaving land uncultivated and holding it for sale. In St. Thomas land is taxed on land value of $10 an acre or less; in St. John land is taxed on the value of $5 an acre or less. In St. Croix cultivated land pays 80 cents an acre, uncultivated land pays 23 cents an acre, and unused land pays nothing. As a result of these facts, the tendency is to pass land over from the cultivated to the uncultivated status. About 10,000 acres in St. Croix are under cultivation; 37,000 are uncultivated, but are presumably capable of cultivation. Taxes paid in St. Croix have decreased from 722,000 francs in 1914-1915 to 567,000 francs in 1925-1926l. In other respects taxation systems of the Islands seriously require reorganization. Some attempts have been made recently to enforce a distribution of the land. The people do not understand, nor are they as yet ready, for the American system of installment sales. Land is therefore held high by the plantation owners in the hope of Pales to American capitalists or tourists. An American owner has started some distribution in St. Thomas by distributing about 200 acres to the French agricultural workers at $35 an acre. Measures have been inaugurated in Congress appropriating money for roads in case the owners are willing to sell half the lands on the roads to settlers. Everything possible should be done to encourage the distribution of land to the people. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC BACKGROUNDS OF THE ISLANDS 65 Population and Population Movements In the facts above outlined there is to be found, perhaps, a sufficient explanation of the unsatisfactory community life of the Islands and of those population movements which render difficult all efforts to create a stable life on the Islands. In order to understand the movements of population, some picture of the population itself must be had. The population is something more than 95 per cent colored. The colored population is of many varieties including former slaves and descendants of slaves from Danish and British West Indies, Haiti and Martinique; free Negroes who, by industry have established themselves as heads of plantations and industries in the mercantile world as office holders, politicians, doctors, lawyers, musicians, and writers. The strictly white population of the Islands, constituting little more than 3 per cent, is made up of old Danish, English, Irish, and American families who have taken over the plantations and have contrived to keep the strain pure by avoiding intermarriage. In this respect it should be said that social prejudice in the Virgin Islands cannot be interpreted in the light of the conventional American color prejudice. It has been said, for instance, that the American introduced color prejudice into the Islands. This is by no means the case. Not only did color prejudice exist before the American came, but there were also many other types of prejudice and varieties in the color prejudice which carried the caste system beyond anything known in the United States. The Islands are, and have been, a complex of caste and prejudices, many of which are more subtle than those of color. There are, for instance, "high yellows" who, on account of distinguished ancestory, consider themselves the equal of, or superior to, many of the whites. At the present time the Virgin Islands are based on a complication of caste gone to seed. Into this situation the United States is apparently introducing the comparatively simple inconsistencies of the American "color line". What now of the home life of the common people of the Islands? Something has already been said of the conditions of food and nutrition. Perhaps a more striking index of the lack of the stable virtues of civilization is found in the fact that while there is little employment, the standards of life are so low that 95 per cent of the burials in St. Croix are pauper burials. Ten per cent of the total budget of the Island of St. Croix is expended on poor relief. Eight hundred persons in St. Croix are on dole and this does not include those in institutions and poor-houses. One hundred and seventy-two in St. Thomas are on dole, and 24 in St. John. In spite of everything that can be done, this pauperization continues under the United States. 66 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS But it is in the tables of legitimacy and of births and deaths that the most impressive story is told. When we speak here of illegitimacy it should be understood that the reference is entirely to the conditions of home life that a high rate of illegitimacy implies. It is well understood that in some cases a high rate. of illegitimacy goes along with a relatively stable home life. This is not the case in the Virgin Islands. The official statistics of the Islands show for every year a preponderance of illegitimate births over legitimate births, running as high, for the Islands as a whole, as eight to five. For St. Croix the illegitimate births under American control have been known to run as high as two to one; in St. John, as high as three to one. The following table of births is from the records of the Department of Health of the Islands: BIRTHS ACCORDING TO LEGITIMACY IN THE VIRGIN ISLANDS AND EACH ISLAND FOR THE CALENDAR YEARS 1919-1926 (Exclusive of still-births) Virgin Islands St. Croix St. Thomas St. John Classifi- No. of Per No. of Per No. of Per No. of Per Year cation births cent. births cent, births cent. births cent. 1919 Total 769 100 428 100 300 100 41 100 Legitimate 294 38.2 140 32.7 136 45.3 18 43.9 Illegitimate 475 61.8 288 67.3 164 54.7 23 56.1 1920 Total 780 100 424 100 326 100 30 100 Legitimate 307 39.4 129 30.4 166 50.9 12 40 Illegitimate 473 60.6 295 69.6 160 49.1 18 60 1921 Total 727 100 379 100 320 100 28 100 Legitimate 330 45.3 159 41.9 160 50 11 39.3 Illegitimate 397 54.7 220 58.1 160 50 17 60.7 1922 Total 729 100 381 100 313 100 35 100 Legitimate 304 41.7 139 36.5 151 48.2 14 40 Illegitimate 425 58.3 242 63.5 162 51.8 21 60 1923 Total 647 100 431 100 289 100 17 100 Legitimate 288 44.5 132 38.7 146 50.5 10 58.8 Illegitimate 359 55.5 209 61.3 143 49.5 7 41.2 1924 Total 662 100 324 100 319 100 19 100 Legitimate 292 44.1 122 37.5 161 50.5 9 47.4 Illegitimate 340 55.9 202 62.5 158 49.5 10 52.6 1925 Total 634 100 288 100 331 100 15 100 Legitimate 261 41.2 106 36.8 151 45.6 4 26.7 Illegitimate 373 58.8 182 63.2 180 54.4 11 731,3 1926 Total 612 100 276 100 314 100 22 100 Legitimate 250 40.8 91 33 151 48.1 8 36.4 Illegitimate 362 59.2 185 67 163 51.9 - 14 63.6 From the point of view of the community the seriousness of these figures lies in what they imply of scattered families, homes from which the mothers are absent all day in the cane fields, homes in which a number of men may be known as father, promiscuity, and orphanhood. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC BACKGROUNDS OF THE ISLANDS 6 67 High Death Rate It has been usual to ascribe the dcrease in population of the Virgin Islands largely to emigration from the Islands. A study of death rates reveals that this is not the only reason. Records in the division of vital statistics at St. Thomas show a reduction in the death rate from 35.4 to 22.8 since 1917. There has undoubtedly been improvement in the past ten years, though it must be pointed out that the rate depends upon the population, and no census has been taken since 1917. If the loss in population through emigration has been as great as is usually estimated, then death rates figured on the 1917 base are probably too optimistic. The table below gives the rates as figured on the unrevised population figures: NUMBER OF DEATHS AND DEATH RATES FROM ALL CAUSES PER 1,000 POPULATION IN THE VIRGIN ISLANDS AND EACH ISLAND (Exclusive of still-births) Virgin Islands Saint Croix Saint Thomas Saint John Calendar No. of Death No. of Death No. of Death No. of Death Year Deaths Rate Deaths Rate Deaths Rate Deaths Rate Annual Av. 1911-1917 940 35.4 581.6 38.3 338.7 32.5 18.7 19.7 1918 744 38.4 477 32 248 24.3 19 19.8 1919 540 20.7 352 23.6 176 17.3 12 12.5 1920 652 25 459 30.8 185 18.2 8 8.3 1921 661 25.4 422 28.3 220 21.6 19 19.8 1922 658 25.3 418 28.1 223 21.9 17 17.7 Annual Av. 1918-1922 651 25 425.6 28.6 210.4 20.7 15 15.6 1923 639 24.5 387 26 240 23.6 12 12.5 1924 601 23.1 361 24.2 221 21.7 19 19.8 1925 501 19.2 270 18.1 224 22 7 7.3 1926 499 19.1 303 20.3 186 18.3 10 10.4 1927 594 22.8 354 23.8 236 23.2 4 4.2 The death rate, high even in this table, would appear to be considerably higher if the population has decreased as much as is generally supposed. The 354 deaths reported for St. Croix, for example, mean a death rate of 23.8 only if the 1917 population figure be accepted. If St. Croix has 12,000 population, as one physician recently estimated it, the rate would be between 29 and 30, but if the population is only 10,000 as is currently believed in the Island, then the rate is over thirty-five. For comparison it may be recalled that the rate for New Zealand is 8.1 and for the registration area in the United States 11.7. Even the official rate of 22.8 is higher than the rates usually given for Hawaii, the Philippines, and Porto Rico (16, 19 and 22 respectively), 68 REPORT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS while the rate just suggested as possibly the correct one for St. Croix would be higher than any of those ordinarily recorded.* Infant Mortality A more important index of civilization is the death rate of children under one year of age. Fortunately, the rate f or infant mortality as usually given is based on the number of births rather than on total population. The rate f or the Virgin Islands as a whole is 208 in 1,000 and for St. Croix alone 278.4. DEATHS UNDER ONE YEAR (EXCLUSIVE OF STILL-BIRTHS) AND INFANT MORTALITY RATE IN THE VIRGIN ISLANDS AND EACH ISLAND (Number of deaths of infants under one year of age per 1,000 born alive) Virgin Islands Saint Croix Saint Thomas Saint John Number Number Number Number Deaths Iinant Deaths Infant Deaths Infant Deaths Infant Calendar Under mor- Under mor- Under mor- Under morAnnual Av. Year 1 year tality 1 year tality 1 year tality 1 year tality 1911-1917 234.9 320 155.9 380.6 74.6 245 4.4 122.9 1918 181 266.6 132 356.8 42 152.7 7 205.9 1919 133 173 87 203.3 41 136.7 5 125 1920 162 207.7 132 311.3 28 85.9 2 66.7 1921 151 207.7 106 277 41 218.1 5 ___178.6 1922 152 208.5 97 254.6 50 ]59.7 5 14. A nnual A v. 1918-1922 135.8 212.7 110.6 280.6 40.4 132.6 4.8 143.8 1923 125 193.2 71 208.2 51 176.5 3 176.4 1924 118 178.2 70 216 46 144.2 2 105.3 1925 89 140.4 50 153.6 36 108.8 3 200 1926 74 120.9 42 152.2 29 92.4 3 136.4 1927 115 208 76 278.4 38 141.8 1 83.3 These rates show little improvement since 1918. That they are ab. normally high is shown by comparison with several other countries. New Zealand ------------------------------------------- -----43 United States ---------------------------------------- -----___72 Dutch Guiana ------------------------------ -- -----105 Negroes in the United States ----------------------------- 118 British India - ------ ----------------- - ------------- 184 Virgin Islands ---------------------------------------------- 208 St. Croix -------------------------------------------------276 *Straits Settlement, 27.9; Ceylon, 34.8. (Gore, John K., "A World War Against Disease", Newark, N. J., Prudential Insurance Co., 1927.) SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC BACKGROUNDS OF THE ISLANDS 6 69 For 1927 the deaths exceeded the births in the Virgin Islandsthere were 553 births and 594 deaths. The situation is at its worst in St. Croix, where deaths have exceeded births steadily, according to the official records, with the exception of one year, since 1922. Governmental Activities It has been said that the purposes of this Survey are limited strictly to educational matters. But it would not give a fair picture of conditions in the Islands to outline, as has been done above, the disadvantageous features of social and community life without again referring specifically to the work the Government is doing in improving these conditions. In its engineering, road-building and water-supply work, in its sanitation work, and in the work of Navy doctors and nurses to raise the standards of health and set back the death rate, the Government has done here, as elsewhere, a work of first importance. The Government has also kept up the palliative services. It may be questioned whether, while so much was being done for the physical environment and for the palliation of existing conditions, at least an equivalent support should not be given to the purposes of education on which very largely the solution of the problems of the Islands would depend. While the Government has given support to restrictive, policing, and curative measures, and to the construction of better mechanical advantages of civic life, education, which was at first liberally supported, has been gradually dropped into a subordinate place. The budget expenses on health and poor-relief under the United States in the Island of St. Croix run from six times those for education to twice this figure. Education never comes nearer than one-half the expenditure for health and poor-rel'ief. Even the police systems of the Islands have large budgets than the educational system. As time goes on it will undoubtedly be found advantageous to employ all the resources of an aggressive educational establishment to aid in the solution of the perplexing problems of Virgin Island administration. THOMAS H. DICKINSON WILL CARSON RYAN, JR. W. T. B.WILLIAMS C. D. STEVENS, Secretary. 3 05 05590 l,') A -z.4 N *1 A-4 I I' 4 / ot _4