Panorama Vol. XXl, No. 4 April 1969

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Title: Panorama Vol. XXl, No. 4 April 1969
Issue Date: Vol. XXl, No. 4 April 1969
Year: 1969
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extracted text: THE PHILIPPINE MAGAZINE OF GOOD READING 50 C< APRIL, 1969 "Juuidi mI WipiMi: PANORAMA needs intelligent renders off: 1. Informative materials 2. Interesting ideas 3. Enlightening opinions 4. Broadening views 5. Controversial thoughts 6. Critical comments 7. Idealistic suggestions 8. Humorous remarks 9. Serious statements 10. Meditations on life and work. AH’ these are either original productions or selective adap tions and condensations from Philippine and foreign publica tions. Usually brief and compact, lasting from two to ten minutes to read, each article offers a rewarding experience in one’s moments of leisure. Relax with Panorama. We say this to the busy student and the teacher, the lawyer and the physician, the dentist and the engineer, the executive and the farmer, the politician and the preacher, the employer and the employee. PANORAMA is specially designed for Filipinos — young, middle-aged, and old, male and female, housekeeper and houselizard. Special rates on November 1, for new and renewal 1966: subscriptions to begin 1 copy ..................................... 1 year ..................................... 2 years .................................... Foreign rate: .......................... 50 centavos P5.00 P9.00 $3.00 (U. S.) For one year’s subscription of 5 pesos, a person receives the equivalent of 12 compact pocketbooks of lasting value and and varied interest. COMMUNITY PUBLISHERS, INC. Inverness, (M. Carreon) St., Sta. Ana, Manila, Philippines Vol. XXI THE PHILIPPINE MAGAZINE OF GOOD READING Knt«r«d m Mend elaaa mail natter at th* Manila Port Office on Dee. 7. l»5t Dr. M. Carreon cor. A. de las Alps, Sta. Ana, Manilo MANILA, PHILIPPINES No. 4 THE REAL REVOLUTIONS Does history justify revolutions? This is an old de bate, well illustrated by Luther’s bold break from the Catholic Church versus Erasmus’ plea for patient and or derly reform, or by Charles James Fox’s stand for the French Revolution versus Edmund Burke’s defense of “prescription” and continuity. But in most instances the effects achieved by the revolution would apparently have come without it through the gradual compulsion of eco nomic developments. America would have become the dominant factor in the English-speaking world without any revolution. To break sharply with the past is to court the madness that may follow the shock of sudden blows or mutilations. As the sanity of the individual lies in the continuity of his memories, so the sanity of a group lies in the continuity of its traditions: in either case a break in the chain invites a neurotic reaction. . . Since wealth is an order and procedure of produc tion and exchange rather than an accumulation of (mostly perishable) goods, and is a trust (the “credit system”) in men and institutions rather than in the intrinsic value of paper money or checks, violent revolutions do not so much redistribute wealth as destroy it. There may be a redivision of the land, but the natural inequality of men (Turn to Page 5) ■ At what stage is the rearing and education of the youth should start for more effective results? THE INCREASING RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE SCHOOLS I think the most striking changes that have taken place in our lifetime have been the increased amount of knowledge available to us and the corresponding in crease in the complexity of life. At the time of the American Revolution (or about 100 years ago) an in telligent man could be a classical Greek scholar, an engineer, a historian and a farmer all at the same time. Today engineering is divided into a number of sub-spe cialties and it takes years and years of study to be an expert in even in a part of one of the sub-specialties. In the last 10 years the world’s cache of facts has doubled. The amount of knowledge accumulated in the last decade equals the amount gathered in all the years of written history! This proliferation of knowledge along with the associated amplification of the com plexity of the environment that man has now to adjust to, has exploded many of the simplistic beliefs once held regarding the function ing of our universe. These changes have pro duced feelings of inadequacy and incompetency in increas ing numbers of parents, so much so that in many areas they have abdicated their traditional responsibi lities and insisted that other institutions assume some of the burden. The school, operating as it does as a captive social agency, has been one of the institutions most prevailed upon to step into the breech. Schools have been asked to prepare students for college, or for a vocation, to teach driver education, to institute a lunch program, to take the responsibility for after school recreation, to teach 2 Panorama home economics, family plan ning and now sex education. And then parents wonder why they can’t understand how their children develop the attitudes they hold. I wonder if this transfer of responsibility hasn’t at limes resulted in repercus sions beyond what either the family or school anticipated. The school is saddled with assignments it is ill-equipped tp carry out, the family has found its taxes increased and its children with attitudes the antithesis of what they liad expected. I have often wondered whether such a transfer of responsibility is even possible. To me edu cation is a mutual, coopera tive endeavor. If a child gets a good education it is not only because he has gone through a good school system but also because he came from a home where learning and education were valued. Our clinical experience with children at the Menninger Foundation indicates that until children receive parental permission to dis cuss sex, they cannot; and furthermore they cannot “hear” what the therapist has to say on the subject. For this reason a child-the rapist will seldom introduce this topic into the out-pa tient treatment for a child — despite the child’s interest and readiness — until the patient has the approval of the home and even more, the assurance that the pa rents are willing to continue the discussion at home if the child so wishes. Other wise, the children feel guilty or inhibited or both and the entire effort becomes futile. If it is true that children cannot “learn” about sex without active parental in volvement, t h e question would then become not who shall take the responsibility in this area, but rather how can the home and school enter into an effective dia logue in this area so that an articulated program can be developed? There is another areas of educational activity which if it eventuates will have even greater repercussions on the family than any existing practice and that is what is now called preschool educa tion. Although this is not Aphil 1969 3 yet a reality except for a limited number of our dis enfranchised population, it is quite likely that in the fore seeable future mandatory public school education will be the law of the land for children from there on. Research has demonstrated that by the time some dis advantaged six-year-old child ren enter the first grade the sensory and intellectual de privation they have suffered has been so great, one can predict with a high degree of accuracy which ones will be high school dropouts! And this, mind you, is prior to their first academic con tact. Surely if some come destined to complete failure there must be hundreds of thousands more who enter school with limited disabi lities. Obviously from an educational point of view, for these children it may be essential and imperative that the school entrance age be lowered. I feel confident that the more affluent seg ment of our society will soon demand the same opportu nity for their offsprings. Although it will be dif ficult to contest the intellec tual and academic value of this experience, society will need to consider the effect of such an experience on the total development of the child. The prevailing psy chological theory which guides our clinical opera tions with child and adult patients suggests that the ma jor portion of the indivi dual’s personality is estab lished prior to the onset of school. It is, of course, com mon knowledge that pre school children are extreme ly impressionable and malle able. However, we have dis covered that what they have encountered in their child hood in terms of attitudes and experiences often estab lishes lasting, and sometimes immutable behavioral pat terns. This is not to say that change does not take place after six; of course it does, but rather the change occurs within broad but pre determined boundaries. Now, lowering the starting age will mean that the charge to the school will be not only to impart know ledge or transmit culture, but implicitly to take part in the rearing of our child ren. If this eventuates, the Panorama school will help establish values, attitudes, behavior traits and so forth. Al though the ostensible func tion will be to educate our youngsters, they will in fact be assuming the responsibi lity for a share of the child’s basic personality develop ment, a function which in the past has been almost ex clusively the domain of the family. I am not suggesting whe ther this will be a whole•Some, beneficial move or a debilitating and disastrous one. This question cannot be answered at this junc ture, certainly not without knowledge of how this will be programmatically accom plished. We do know from past experience that the re sults will be disastrous if this is considered just an other responsibility of the school undertaken without constructive change in teach er training programs utiliz ing the knowledge and skills of psychoanalytically orient ed mental health specialists. There seems to me no question that the increasing complexity of our world will demand changes in the fa mily, its functioning and sphere of influence. The questions we need to ponder, discuss and argue are what kind of change, for what purpose, and by whom? By Marvin Ack, Ph.D., Science Digest, March 1969. THE REAL REVOLUTIONS . . . soon re-creates an inequality of possessions and privileges, and raises to power a new minority with essentially the same instincts as in the old. The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints. — From The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant. Aphil 1969 5 ■ Can we depend upon objective tests and other methods of valuating educational achievement and knowledge? PROSPECTS FOR EVALUATION OF LEARNING What of the prospects for educational evaluation? Will the present practices be re versed? Will the present problems be resolved? The long history of education sug gests that enduring changes are more likely to evolve slowly than to explode sud denly. But changes do come. One of the current and anticipated changes has to do with the increased em phasis on education and its evaluation. Since World War II, the rush of students to college, in greater numbers than most good colleges could accommodate effective ly, has led to enormous ex pansion of admissions testing programs. The flow of dol lars to aid students who are able but not affluent has led to the development of scholarship testing programs. The needs these testing pro grams have served will con tinue, and no better alter native seems likely to dev elop. But we ought to hope and expect that tests will improve and their results will be used with increasing wisdom. New concern for quality in education and for equality of educational opportunity, with resultant increases in government expenditures and involvement, have led to re cognition of the need for re liable assessment of the re sults of our educational ef forts. The national assess ment is one attempt to meet this need, and some states have enacted law relating to mandatory testing and re porting of test results in the public schools. The growth of the widescale programs for testing educational achievement and for college admission and scholarship testing has led to another major change: the development of high Panorama speed, high capacity, highly automatic machines lor scor ing objective tests. It is reasonable to suppose that the years ahead will see ra pid growth in the utilization of these diverse and versa tile devices. Despite the current popu larity of objective tests and mass testing programs, how ever, there are those who believe that all is not well with the evaluation of learn ing today. Among the con cerns expressed are these: 1. That the tests currently used to evaluate learning are inadequate to the task, mea suring only imperfectly the less important educational outcomes. One’s opinion on this mat ter is, of course, likely to depend largely on whether he agrees with what most schools spend most of their time trying to do, that is, to help students gain com mand of useful verbal infor mation. The subject matter of most studies — history, literature, science, geography, even mathematics (if its svmbol are regarded as essen tially verbal symbols) — is verbal information. If verbal information is extracted from formal education, there is very little if anything left. But many educators are unwilling to admit that their aims are so prosaic, prefer ring to claim objective that are more spiritual than ma terial, and hence largely im measurable. Verbal know ledge is certainly not all that matters where man is con cerned, and the school can not afford to ignore muscu lar skills, or attitudes, or values, or character, or overt behavior. But neither can the school afford to give any of these things priority over command of knowledge in specifying its mission. And if it should choose to give other things priority, it will almost certainly find that cultivation of command of useful knowledge is the best, if not the only, means it can use to attain the ends it seeks. If this is true about man and the process of educating him, tests can do much of the job of evaluating learn ing. Many tests in current use are inadequate, it is true. But their faults lie less in the direction they point April 1969 7 than in the distance they travel. OBJECTIVE TESTS 2. That objective tests are spuriously attractive because of the ease with which they can be scored en masse, but are seriously deficient as tools for the evaluation of learning because of their in herent ambiguities, their ten dency to emphasize superfi cial factual information, and their reward of successful guessing. The supposed deficiencies of objective tests, however, are not inherent in the form. Objective test scores are typi cally more reliable than essay test scores, both because each student’s performance is judged against the same standard, and because of ex tensiveness in sampling var ious aspects of achievement. It is true that objective test questions appear to be tri vial more often than do es say test questions, but this is a matter of numbers. If a test can include only a few questions, as an essay test ordinarily does, the ten dency is to make each one general and comprehensive. Objective test questions also tend to be more “factual,” but it is important to re member that a fact in this sense is a verifiable truth, which need not be trivial. If a subject is not loaded with important factual truths, the value of studying it would seem open to serious question. It is true that answers to objective test items apparent., ly could be learned by rote?’ without real understanding, but this seldom happens. For one thing, it is always possible to pose questions that the examine has never encountered before, and thus require answers he could not have learned by rote. For another, rote learning is a difficult, ineffective, and un satisfying method of learning most things that students study. That test questions, either in objective or essay form, are sometimes ambiguous is also beyond dispute. But with reasonable skill and care in test construction, this can be reduced to the point where it no longer interferes seriously with the evaluation of learning. Panorama Like ambiguity, guessing is not a genuine menace in the use of objective tests. Well-motivated students do very little blind guessing on tests that are appropriate for them. The correctness of their informed guesses is re lated substantially to the amount of relevant informa tion they command. Thus their “guesses” provide valid indications of achievement. A student who does a great deal of blind guessing is likely to get a very low score on a good test. Fin ally, both ambiguity and guessing would result in in consistent results from re peated measurements, and so if a test constructor succeeds in building a test that yields reliable scores, it is safe to conclude that defects related to ambiguity and guessing are not serious on that test. Thus despite the criticisms of objective tests, it seems likely that their popularity will continue to grow. 3. That wide-scale testing programs and the use of standardized tests place teachers in curricular strait jackets, preventing them from meeting local needs or mak ing use of unique local op portunities, suppressing their creative ideas and their indi vidualities as teachers, and rewarding routine, mechani cal teaching. It is true that if students and teachers know in ad vance the general nature ol questions to be asked and content to be covered in a test used to evaluate learn ing, they will direct their study and teaching toward these kinds of capability. But if the tests are good tests, with appropriate cur ricular coverage and empha sis, and if they are not the sole basis for evaluation, they are likely to do much more good than harm. After all, the test-makers, in most cases, are themselves master teach ers, and the tests they build aim to follow rather than to lead curricular innovation. The teachers most likely to make the review of old tests a major part of their instruc tional program, as if they had been placed in a cur ricular straitjacket, are those who are least secure in their positions because they are least competent. April 1969 External tests have been influencing what is taught in particular classrooms for nearly 40 years; yet is it not true, in view of the increas ing mobility of our people, that a greater degree of uni formity among classrooms than we have today could well be tolerated? 4. That testing places stu dents under undue pressure and exposes them to unne cessary experiences of failure, diminishing their self-confi dence and destroying the joy of learning. It is not the measure of achievement but the aspira tion to achievement that places students under pres sure. Test scores simply re port levels of achievement; if the reports are disappoint ing, the blame may rest on ineffective learning or teach ing, or on unrealistic expec tations. The suggestion that the way to deal with excess pressure is to stop paying so much attention to achieve ment makes very little edu cational sense. Instead we need to pay more attention to the setting of realistic goals, and to the recognition of individual differences ill interests, abilities, and ave nues for self-fulfillment. 5. That testing, particular ly intelligence and aptitude testing, leads to the labeling of pupils as bright or dull, in both cases adversely af fecting their expectations, their efforts, and their self concepts; denying and thus tending to destroy the almost infinite potential for devel opment inherent in every human being. Although the items in most intelligence and apti tude tests are clearly mea sures of developed ability, too many educators have been willing to believe that they provided direct and de pendable measures of innate capacity for learning. On too many occasions, a child’s low IQ score has been used to explain his failure to learn instead of being used to help him to learn. But these tests have some times been interpreted pro perly and used constructive ly. It is hard to beat a good intelligence test as a convenient measure of a young child’s general educa tional development. Since 10 Panora ua all learning builds on prior learning, effective teaching requires information on each child’s level of educational development. More schools may join those which have abandoned intelligence testing because of abuses and because of local pressures, but it is not likely that intelligence testing will disappear. We can hope and expect, however, that intelligence and aptitude tests will be interpreted more realistically and used more constructively. In all, to teach without testing is unthinkable. Teachers are likely to do more testing in the future, and to do it better as they become more skilled in the techniques of their craft. Above all, they are likely to use the results of testing more wisely and more cons tructively. — By Robert L. Ebel, from The Education Digest, March, 19.69. AWARENESS OF LIMITS As we advance in life, we learn the limits of our abilities. — James Anthony Fraude April 1969 11 ■ This short summary should be of great interest to Filipino educators and school men. COMPARISON BETWEEN AMERICAN AND BRITISH SCHOOLS There is much that we in the United States could learn from English schools. We could learn that child ren are capable of working effectively in language and numbers earlier than they do in American schools; that they are capable in the elementary school of more systematic and sustained stu dy in basic subjects than they generally get in Am erican schools; that the true abilities of many children are often buried by low scores on standardized tests or by poor home conditions or by low expectations on the part of teachers; that children do not suffer from a longer school day and year than is standard in Am erica. Even more important, we could learn that a limited, though by no means a rigid, curriculum for students at every ability level is import ant; that schools cannot try to do everything anil any thing and still be schools; that they must establish some priorities thought by adults, not children, to be important; that secondary school students of modest ability can be brought fur ther in basic subjects, in cluding mathematics and foreign languages, than they commonly are in American schools; that students of high ability can be brought a great deal further in basic subjects than they common ly are in American schools. And we could learn that the elaborate administrative ma chinery that characterizes our schools and school systems, with their plenitude of non teaching supervisory person nel, is not visibly superior to the looser and much less grandiose system of the Eng lish (and European) schools, where the emphasis in ad ministration is on classroom 12 Panorama freedom, not restriction, and on the selection of parttime administrators who are respected for their ability as teachers. All this and more we could learn from Eng lish schools, while at th* same time recognizing and eschewing their weaknesses. But first there must be a willingness to look abroad for ideas on the part of those in charge of American schools. — From the Reform in Education by James 1). Koerner (1968). OF STUDENT DEMONSTRATIONS I am for youth activism as long as the move ment is geared toward economic growth and na tional development. The danger of youth activism lies in the leadership of the student demonstrators. The leadership should not fall into the wrong hand. — Gov. Isidro S. Rodriguez, Rizal April 1969 13 ■ This is a deeply considered view of a famous British professor and economist who made a long study of universities in Southeast Asia. THE UNIVERSITY FOR NATIONAL VALUES A fundamental feature of university life in Southeast Asia is that it has been im ported from abroad, with ready-made value systems sometimes already crystallized in institutions, techniques, and attitudes. But academic values outside Southeast Asia are neither uniform nor un changing, and the compari son of different colonial aca demic models is stimulating new thought in the region. The institutions in which these values are exemplified are no longer sacrosanct. .. The imitation of foreign curricula, reading lists, and examination questions makes for unnecessary cultural con flict. One set of cultural and political ideas is approved academically; a quite diffe rent set finds expression in newspapers and in public life. And because the public is made to think of the uni versity as mainly a source of factual knowledge, students come to rely on memoiy and care little for principles and techniques. It would seem to be wiser for the univer sities to make it quite clear that it is an important part of university training to change attitudes and to pro duce real professional peo ple — doctors who can really cure, lawyers who can up hold the law, historians who can find out and interpret what happened. The claim should be made. It may make the governments keener than ever to have universities staffed by their own nations, who share the national aspirations; it may mean wrestling with difficult constitutional issues; but the right of the university, how ever constituted, to control the training of attitudes is one that should be fought for and won. For the whole concept of professional codes, 14 Panorama and of the training of pro fessional responsibility, is still unfamiliar in many of these countries. Universities are seen as places where people can learn to pass examinations and so gain the knowledge formerly mono polized by Europeans. They are seen by too few as places where values are created and attitudes changed. — From the Southeast Asian Univer sity by T. H. Silcock, Emeri tus Professor of Economics, Malaya U. JAPAN TODAY Japan could easily become a nuclear power after 1967. Several reactors will soon be in opera tion. They produce plutonium as a by-product. That plutonium could be used to manufacture a stockpile of Nagasaki-type plutonium bombs. In addition, Japan’s own four-stage rocket, which places a three-hundred-pound satellite in orbit 650 miles above the earth, puts the country close to the scale of our Minuteman missile. This rocket is the primary American thermonuclear deterrent. All of Japan’s Prime Ministers have been interested in A-weapons. The present Premier Eisaku Sato told the Parliament that China was a real threat to Japan now that she had a nuclear armory. Sato’s remarks were made openly, but they didn’t affect commercial and unofficial diplomatic contacts with China. That made the revelations of the Premier more interesting. — From the Experts by Seymour Freidin & George Bailey. April 1969 15 ■ The present rise of nationalism has presented a significant challenge to the great powers today — Russia and the United States. THE GREAT POWERS FACING NATIONALISM Nationalism means, first of all, the determination to assert national identity, na tional dignity, and national freedom of action. It can also mean, as the memory of prewar Germany, Italy, and Japan reminds us, the determination to assert these things at the expense of other nations; and in this sense nationalism has been and will be a source of tre mendous danger to the world. But the nationalism which arose after the second world war, in the main, not the aggressive and hysterical nationalism which had led nations before the war to try and dominate other na tions. It was rather the na tionalism generated by the desire to create or restore a sense of nationhood. In the years since 1945 na tionalism has redrawn lines of force around the planet. Take Europe, which Chur chill described twenty years ago as “a rubble heap, a charnel house, a breeding ground for pestilence and hate.” Economically shat-’ tered, politically demoral ized, militarily defenseless, Western Europe in the For ties was absolutely depen dent on America for social reconstruction and military protection. Then the Mar shall Plan set in motion the process of economic recovery. Economic recovery led to the revival of political self confidence, and political self confidence to a determina tion to assert European auto nomy. No doubt the turn given this mood in recent years by General de Gaulle is exaggerated and extrava gant. But it would be a great error, I believe, to sup pose that Gaulism does not spring from a profoundly real impulse in contemporary Europe: a deep pride in 16 Panorama European traditions and ca pacities, a growing will to reaffirm European indepen dence against the twin co lossi. And even those who reject the narrow nationalism of de Gaulle do so in the name of the large national ism of Europe. The contagion of nation alism runs everywhere. To day nationalism is seeking home rule in Scotland and Wales; it is dividing the country of Belgium; it is threatening Canada with the secession of French Quebec; in our own country it finds expression in the mystique of Black Power. And it has wrought even more spectacu lar changes within the em pire which Stalin once ruled so calmly and implacably. The Yugoslav heresy of 1948 represented the first serious rebellion of national Com munism against Russian pri macy. In another decade China burst forth as inde pendent Communist state, increasingly determined to challenge Russia for the do mination of Asia and for the leadership of the interna tional Communist movement. With the clash between China and Russia, the uni fied Communist empire be gan to break up. Moscow long ago had to accept the Yugoslav heresy, and on Yu goslav terms. It has con ceded a measure of national initiative to the once cowed and complaint satellites of Eastern Europe. Albania and Romania are going their own way. In a desperate ef fort to preserve the domi nant Russian position, the Soviet Union had to resort to military intervention in order to discipline Commu nist Czechoslovakia. Even Poland, even East Germany may some day insist on na tional freedom. “Everyone chooses the truths he likes. In this way faith disinte grates.” This was said by Pope Paul VI, but it might as well have been said by Brezhnev. The unity of Communist discipline, the unity of Com munist dogma — all are va nishing as international phe nomena, crumbling away under the pressure of na tionalism. In the contem porary age of polycentrism there is no longer any such thing as “world Commu nism.” A Communist take over no longer means the April 1969 17 automatic extension of Rus sian, or even of Chinese po wer. Every Communist gov ernment, every Communist party, has been set free to begin to respond to its own national concerns and to pursue its own national poli cies. One Communist state, Cuba, has even performed the ingenious feat of being simultaneously at odds with both Moscow and Peking. The reason for the failure of Communism in the dev eloping world is the same as the reason for the expulsion of colonialism from that world what the new nations want more than anything else is the assurance of thennational freedom of decision. And this very fact too, while it has endowed the new na tions with spirit and auda city, ' has’ prevented them from forming, as some once feared they might do, a uni fied block against the West. My guess is that the most realistic evolution in the fu ture would be along the lines of the proposal made by Churchill in 1943 — a development o f regional groupings within the United Nations, thereby merging universalist and sphere-of-inlluence conceptions, strength ening the “middle powers” and discharging the great powers from the supposed obligation to rush about put ting down every presumed" threat to world peace. This would be a policy neither of universalism nor of isolationism but of dis crimination. It would imply the existence of what Pres ident Kennedy called the “world of diversity” — “a robust and vital world com munity, founded on nations secure in their own indepen dence, and united by alle giance to .world peace." By Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. "Viet nam and the End of the Age of Superpowers,” from Harper’s Magazine, March 1969. 18 Panora ma ■ A reversal of students demonstration. REVOLT AGAINST THE REVOLTERS It was just a year ago when the first major student revolt racked the slumbering bureaucracy of New York’s Columbia University. In the 12 months since that explo sion, a wave of youthful re bellion has swept across the land, disrupting university life and claiming front-page headlines from Boston to Berkeley. Now, suddenly, the head lines are changing: • At Harvard, five agita tors are arrested and received jail sentences of up to a year. • At Columbia, two cler gymen who supported dissen ting students are fired. • At a number of other institutions, conservative stu dents are forming vigilante groups to combat disorders on campus. • At the White House, President Nixon officially condemns student disorders while the Department of Health, Education and Wel fare works on a program for helping college administra tions with the problem. • In Washington and se veral state capitals, legislators are drafting bills to suppress unrest and punish violators. The mood of America is no longer one of the usual adult tolerance toward ado lescent high-jinks. A back lash against all the campus uprisings of the past year is setting in and, in some in stances, threatening to reach the same degree of blind ex cess that student extremists themselves have achieved. “The revolt against the re vol ters is in full swing,” notes educator and columnist Max Lerner. The participants in this counter-revolt, of course, have varying goals; they range from moderate student and faculty groups that sim ply want the demonstrators to tone down their tactics to stern conservative elements that want to bear down with April 1969 19 punitive laws and financial sanctions. If the mounting backlash movement has one symbolic figure, it is S. I. Hayakawa, the celebrated semanticist and the acting president of embattled San Francisco State College. He is the un settling image of the new col lege president — driving to work every day preceded and followed by police cars. Hayakawa realized early that SF State was, in a sense, like Vietnam — both sides were using it as a testing ground for the “war of li beration.” He was quick to use, and is quick to defend, force. He is weary, he says, “of liberals who feel it’s terrible to have a show of force on campus. When President Eisenhower used Federal troops to open up schools in Little Rock, the liberals didn’t squawk at all. Whe ther to protect the liberty of white people or the li berty of black people, you ultimately have to use force. And I, for one, am not going to hesitate to use it.” While the rebellion at SF State was still in full flower, Notre Dame president, the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, is sued an ultimatum to his students that has become a sort of rallying cry for con servatives. Extremists, he warned, would be given 15 minutes to reconsider their actions. If they persisted they would be suspended, then expelled and, if neces sary, arrested. The hard-line approach is paying off — at least for some administrators. At the University of Texas, board of regents chairman Frank Erwin, who last spring called rebellious students “dirty nothings,” was reappointed despite a poll showing that only 23 per cent of the stu dents and 40 per cent of the faculty favored the reap pointment. Students at some colleges have acted in anticipation of future disturbances. Ten thousand Michigan State students have signed a peti tion against radical dissent. Bands of neatly dressed un dergraduates have been showing up at demonstra tions to form cordons against rioters and, in some cases, 20 Panorama to stage counter-demonstra tions. If the blacklash were con fined to the campus, mode rates agree that there would be no cause for worry. Af ter all, protest, and reaction to it, are as old as education. In 1766, a Harvard student named Asa Dunbar staged an “eat-out” because, as his slogan proclaimed, "our but ter stinketh.” But lawmakers, too, are jumping into the fray, □'here are already two Fe deral laws, passed last year, to curb disturbances. Nei ther has been enforced, but both hang threats over the heads of demonstrators. One law directs a univer sity to hold hearings for students accused of violating regulations in disrupting order and, if the students are found guilty, to deny them further Federal aid mo ney. The other cuts of! Federal aid to any student convicted in a regular court of illegally disrupting his school. Opponents of the laws argue that they are dis criminatory against the poor and, once enforced, would provide a whole new basis for protests. More disturbing are the bills that are currently be fore more than a score or state legislatures. The Wis consin Assembly, for in stance, is debating 16 bills, which would do everything from abolishing the univer sity’s tenure system (so un cooperative faculty members could be fired) to levying a P500 fine and/or a six-month prison sentence on any stu dent who returns to the grounds of a school from which he has been expelled for participating in campus disorders. The California legislature is faced with 50 bills. One that was recently introduced would allow school adminis trators to ban loudspeakers from the campus and bar anyone they think might create a. disturbance — a pro posal that implies not only conviction before commis sion, but the prohibition of newsmen from state campus es. Many moderates are alarm ed by the prospect of legis lative crackdowns. "New laws will just contribute to April 1969 21 the polarization of left and right,” predicts a UCLA stu dent who has been trying to keep to the middle ground. “They force the mid-left and the mid-right to make a choice, and so depo pulate the center of its buf fers. This is where the dan ger lies.” Even so, some politicians have found it expedient to espouse the cause of student repression. California Gov. Ronald Reagan, who has constantly conjured up images of “guerilla warfare” and a nation-wide Commu nist conspiracy, is considered virtually unbeatable in his bid for reelection next year. (“We can’t hope to out-ba yonet Reagan,” says one prospective challenger.) Lesser luminaries have used the issue to solidify their hometown power bases. “I walk down the street back home,” reports a Wisconsin state senator, “and people come up to me and start cursing the damn university. They’re angry — not a little angry, real angry. The mid dle class used to be sympa thetic to students. No more.” A recent Gallup Poll showed that 80 per cent of the people in the United States favor expulsion of — and suspension of Federal aid, to — campus lawbreakers. Seventy per cent think that students should not have a greater say in running col leges. But the danger with back lash is always that it will lash too hard and in the end be self-defeating. In deed, the most radical of the demonstrators want nothing more than severe repression. It makes underdog martyrs of them and, by engaging the sympathies of moderates, gives added momentum to their cause. — From Variety. Fanoiuma ■ Cigarettes and cigars have been effective in the Vietnam war. THE VIETCONG'S SECRET WEAPON: MARIJUANA While the Paris peace talks drone on, and the thunder of artillery and ma chine gun fire trickles down to a desultory non-and-then sniper’s shot or quick fire fight, the Vietcong is stag ing a new and subtle attack on the American fighting man. The VC’s secret weapon: Cannabis sattva. More com monly known as marijuana. “This is the first war in which the Army has been more concerned with mari juana than with V. D.,” says psychiatrist Dr. John A. Tal bott, who just returned to the U. S. after a year in South Vietnam with the Army Medical Corps. He reports an increasingly high incidence of psychotic reactions among servicemen after smoking Vietnamese marijuana — probably be cause of opiate additives present in the Vietnamese product. The Pentagon is seriously alarmed not only because of the psychological consequen ces but also because they know that money spent on the drug is being tunneled right back into the hands of the Vietcong. Says U. S. Navy Rear Ad miral James Kelly flatly, “Our commanders have evi dence that the Vietcong and North Vietnamese have large stocks of the drug in the vicinity of our troops in an effort to subvert them.” The mere mention of con xa (Vietnamese jargon for marijuana) brings an instant look of recognition from Vietnamese taxi drivers, sidewalk vendors and even children playing in the streets. Usually, the mari juana is sold in cigarette form, already rolled, in cel Apbil 1969 23 lophane packets ot 1U. lbe cost is dirt cheap — ranging from §1.00 to §2.50. In Saigon, packets are purchased openly on any cigarette stand on the Tu Do — the city's main street in the heart of the downtown area. Da Nang-based servicemen pick up their junk at China Beach near the USO. At Cam Ranh Bay, the site of a major U. S. logistics sup ply area, almost every bar in the village is selling mari juana for the asking. At Chau Doc, not far from the Cambodian border, four ounces of marijuana sells for about §4.25 while a kilogram can be purchased for just under §34. The GI is exposed to ma rijuana from the very mo ment he lands at Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut airfield. Lit tle Vietnamese beer stands set up in the rear of the base fill all orders. Sold in what looks like an ordinary pack of regular American cigarettes, the marijuana has been neatly packed into what once were American brand packs. Only a small piece of Scotch tape near the bottom of the pack indi cates that the tobacco ciga rettes have been replaced by reefers. One alley lined by brothels near the base is also a marijuana den. Says one trooper, “There’s so much marijuana in that alley that if it ever caught fire, it would stone out all of Saigon.” Government officials are usually loath to talk about the problem. One 1966 Joint United States Public Affairs Office press release underestimated the situation, stating “One soldier in 2,000 has been found to possess or use marijuana.” Slowly since then the brass has be gun to admit that the pro blem is bigger than this. Figures for 1967 over 1966 show an increase of mari juana-smoking reaching 62 per cent. And this figure re flects only officially investi gated cases and does not cover the tens of thousands of GIs who are smoking but have not been caught. The Defense Department an nounced in January that nearly nine out of 10 young soldiers court-martialed for military offenses in Vietnam had smoked marijuana be fore they joined the service. Continuing their habit be 24 Panorama came quite easy when they reached the streets of Sai gon. “There is just no way of really telling how many men have used drugs,” say Colo nel Everett G. Hopson, an Air Force officer involved in investigating narcotics. “If I were to hazard a fig ure it could be as high as 15 to 20 percent. That is the figure experts use when they talk about how many high school and college stu dents have tried some kind of drug, and those are the people we pull into the ser vice.” John Steinbeck Jr., son of the late author, stirred up a Pentagon hornet’s nest when he returned from Vietnam to say that 60 per cent of the GIs “turned on” and that he had “direct ex perience” with about 350 marijuana users in the mili tary including “a great num ber of military police and legal officers.” Another major problem is that the GI smokers, after their year’s tour is up, are trying to bring marijuana back into the States with them. A record 26,000 pounds of the drug has been seized from GIs in the last fiscal year — twice as much as during the previous 12 months. Admits Colonel Hopson, “A soldier leaving Vietnam may have his baggage care fully screened without his knowing it.” About 50 Ger man shepherd dogs have been trained at Fort Gordon, Ga., to recognize the scent of marijuana. The dogs sniff the stuff even when it’s con cealed in duffle bags or care fully wrapped. Another drug sensor is a small X ray spot ting tlevice which can “look into” suitcases and boxes searching lor marijuana. The VC are so clever that for a time some GI prison ers at the LBJ — the Long Binh Jail, the GI name for the Army stockade — were actually getting marijuana even though behind bars. The junk was being slipped in from the outside through “trusties.” A stockade of ficer accidentally picked up a pack of cigarettes from a desk one day, lit one, and found he was smoking mari juana. The pack probably had been dumped by a frightened guard. Aphti. 1969 25 In Cam Lo, just south ol the DMZ, infantrymen get pot from children who live in the refugee camp there. Sharp Vietnamese kids at Da Nang make money by dou blecrossing U.S. Marines. They peddle a few joints to a trusting trooper, then dou ble time to the nearest MP and collect a reward for re porting that the Marine has junk his possession. An increasingly common practice is to lace the ma rijuana with opium; this gives a higher high. “You’ll put both legs around the rafters when you smoke one of these,’’ says one CID in vestigator. It is such opiate additives that have psychia trists worried about pot smokers in Vietnam. The opium trade is al most as active as the ma rijuana business. Vietnam has long been one of the major way stations in the world's opium traffic. The poppies come out of Laos, Northern Thailand, Burma and Red China through Viet nam on their way to the Western World. Tons of opium pass through Saigon every year. Rumors have long had it that Saigon gov ernment officials are working with the VC to make illegal fortunes in this opium traf fic. A major Pentagon problem is that since a GI figures he’s breaking the law' by smoking pot, he becomes a law breaker in other ways as well. Many deserters in Saigon live comfortably by selling marijuana and opium to American servicemen. Marijuana income long sup ported the “Home of Lonely Hearts” on Cong Ly Street, which appeared to be just a booking office for Saigon’s call girls but was actually part of an extensive criminal network that furnished Ame rican deserters with every thing they needed, from forged identification papers to pistols. Is pot smoking confined to the rear areas or is it done in the battlefield? Ma jor Robert Donovan, Assist ant Provost Marshall of the First Air Cav. Division, be lieves “few troops smoke in the field because the GIs have a strong sense of lo yalty to other soldiers they’re with and they’re afraid of what people will think." 26 Panorama Adds one Marine Sergeant, 'Out in the field we never sntoke, but here in our bar racks we’re smoking all the time. I’d say half the guys in this town smoke grass a lot.” On the other hand, one Saigon-based newsman recent ly reported spending a night with a Fourth Infantry Di vision patiol in the central high-lands during which ten soldiers wiled away the eve ning in their tent by smoking pot. A First Air Cav. Divi sion doctor says medical men occasionally see wounded soldiers in clearing stations whom they suspect may be high on pot. One group of soldiers whose job is to es cort dead bodies from the field into the mortuaries at Saigon and Da Nang told a reporter recently that they were taking marijuana from four out of every five Ame rican dead during Tet. “We took a pack of Camels off a lieutenant,” they said. “It turned out to be full of joints.” GIs in Vietnam apparently smoke pot for the same rea sons that college students in the States turn on: to re lieve tension and boredom, because they are looking ’for a kick and as a means of rebelling against authority. Many pot Smokers are among the most intelligent mem bers of the regiment. Says Colonel Douglas Lindsey, a medic, ‘‘Soldiers who smoke pot are more likely to be found among the better sol diers in the unit.” Officially, the government takes a hard line on marijua na. Raids are frequent. CID men posing as GIs in search of a smoke constantly try to seek out VC suppliers. MPs and Vietnamese cops frequently stage joint raids on suspected cellars and bars. When GI bar patrons see a raid coming, they dump the contents of their pockets on the floor. The sweeping af ter one recent raid produced about 30 joints. The main reason behind this hard line is that Army authorities agree that it’s a good source of income for the VC and reduces the ef fectiveness of the U.S. troops. “The enemy is the big push er,” warns a First Cav. offi cer. "The use of marijuana in Vietnam not only endan gers the life of the user but also the lives of those de 27 April 1969 pending upon him for the successful accomplishment of his mission.” The Army feels the mari juana user is as dangerous behind the wheel of a car as a drunk. In Vietnam, where any trooper can get his hands on a weapon and ammunition easily, anything that affects his judgment can be dangerous. ‘‘Mari juana and gun powder don’t mix,” says one officer. As evidence, authorities point to an incident at Cu Chi which was being hit by Vietcong rockets. Two troopers, high on maryjane, became so enchanted with the fireworks that they sat on the sandbag wall to watch. A round landed a. few yards away, killing one of the soldiers and wounding the other. In another case, two airmen at Tan Son Nhut were killed while passing a hand grenade back and forth with the pin pulled. The men were high on pot. Although the Pentagon in sists it is holding to a hard line against marijuana, in the ranks, there’s a great deal of permissiveness. Some GIs say their officers and NCOs know there is pot in the outfit but don’t turn in smokers, especially in combat outfits. “If a guy’s been on the line a while and is ex perienced,” says one sergeant, “why should the company commander turn him in for smoking a little pot? He's going to lose a good man and get a green replacement.” The strong bonds of loyalty and friendship which grow between men in units who face combat together can of ten make a line officer or NCO reluctant to turn a pot-smoking trooper over to the MPs. “We’ve talked to some kids who smoked ma rijuana and we haven’t pro secuted them,” says one legal officer, “because we were con vinced they tried it only once and didn’t use it re gularly. Almost every col lege kid in the U.S. is ex perimenting with pot. We can’t expect our soldiers not to.” It adds up to a major di lemma. The soft-liners, in side the military and out, say that marijuana is less harmful than liquor or to bacco and shouldn’t be il legal. Hard-liners answer that drugs are harmful and should 28 Panorama be controlled even if it means handing out bad con duct discharges and five years’ hard labor in jail — the maximum sentence for drug offenses. And all the time, Victor Charlie’s getting rich on the proceeds, possibly beating with marijuana cigarettes those American GIs whom he hasn’t been able to de feat with gun powder. By Arturo F. Gonzalez Jr., from the Science Digest, April 1969 issue. DEPARTMENTAL TERMINOLOGY DEFINITIONS It is in process — So wrapped up in red tape that the situation is almost hopeless. Expedite — To confound confusion with commo tion. To implement a program — Hire more people and expand the office. Under consideration — Never heard of it. Under active consideration — We’re looking in the files for it. Reliable source — The guy you just met. Informed source — The guy who told the guy you just met. Unimpeachable source — The guy who started the rumor originally. A clarification — To fill in the background with so many details that the foreground goes under ground. Give us the benefit of your present thinking — We’ll listen to what you have to say as long as it doesn’t interfere with what we have al ready decided to do. — From The Communicator, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. April 1969 29 PRIVILEGE AND STATUS The responsibility of lead ership shrugged off in the name of patronage, political expediency, and general pakikisama, is falling under harsh light. The national mood is to be less tolerant and more demanding of leadership. Now from the halls of congress comes the call for austerity and our only reaction is to throw back the challenge to them. The ills of this country, it is by now evident, are dir ectly traceable to our elite, or more precisely to the pri vileged class. The persons who are privileged change with each change of admi nistration and ruling family, but by and large they thrive as a class on privilege. The legislators may change with every election, but the pro tection of their group privi lege is perpetuated. The malakas-mahina syndrome is nothing but the conflict for privilege. This is something our so ciety should seek to shatter. The great love for public office along with grandious display of the swearing-in ceremonies, is nothing but die mad aspiration for pri vilege, rather than desire to serve. Recent public en couragement given to the appointment of technocrats, the emerging group of trained young men who function outside the dyna mics of personalism and party politics (concentrating on performance instead), is one healthy sign. Similar direction could help make privileged status anachro nistic and extinct. On the other hand, one must point out that it is the heady irrelevancies of privilege that has caused the decay of once-principled reformers and even technocrats. By privileged we mean the powerful and wealthy who fatten and become even more wealthy and powerful by brazenly placing them selves as exemptions on the simple basis of official posi30 Panorama tion, class status, or technical legalism. Legislators, for ex ample, obtain various exemp tions, e.g. franking privi leges, P2-to-$l exchange rate, when they should set the ex ample in order to demand sacrifice. It is generally the influential who frustrate the law. It is only the public officials, including law en forcers, who can make crime pay. Kinship is regarded as a privilege even when it is against the common good. The corruption of segments of the society, such as law enforcers and-or the press, is done by providing them with privileged status. Any austerity program must be gin with the removal of pri vilege because of official sta tus. When one tries to compare the Communist countries with the Philip pines, it is the dedication of the leadership in some of these countries premised on the removal of privilege, that makes the difference. We cannot change this nation and the quality of leader ship, until we renounce the social status of privilege. — The Manila Times Editorial, December 19, 1968. THIS OUR TIME This is not a time for malice, but for magna* nimity; not for propaganda, but for patience; not for vituperation, but for vision. — Lyndon B. John son (in his speech as U, S. President on June 19, 1967, at Washington) April 1060 31 ■ Government subsidy to education need not mean government control of public education. THE STATE CONTROL AND THE SCHOOLS Participatory government requires an informed citi zenry, but the way citizens analyze and judge the infor mation is determined by the precepts and attitudes instill ed in them as they grow to adulthood. The nature of the society depends not so much on the factual infor mation known to the citi zens, but on their philoso phic conditioning, resulting from their total environment of which the school is one of the most important ele ments. The purpose of schools has ever been to pro duce the kind of adult com ponents needed to insure the survival of the tribe. Schools have never been for child ren’s benefit but for the pro fit of society, and those who refuse to be molded by the school are indignantly ex cluded from society’s best benefits. The mastering of techniques has never been a sufficient goal for schools since a skilled and trained adult who refuses to play his ordained role because he doesn’t accept the goals of the society, is a hazard to it. This attitudinal condi tioning is in fact the thing by which society judges the success of the school. More over, acceptance of the phi losophical basis by the stu dent is vital to the success of the transmission of tech nique. The delicate emo tional part of the learning process is turned on or off by the substance of the phi losophy and by the way it is projected. Free peoples in a pluralis tic nation must decide the kind of adults that the schools are to produce. To yield this right to the bu reaus of the state is to in vite fascism, and to risk the oppression of one tribe by the majority. But the case for commu nity control does not depend 32 Panorama solelv on the fact that with out it school systems fail to educate. City school boards, by regulations designed to protect the professional edu cators from capricious inter ference have usurped the pa rental authority. The legal requirement that parents be responsible for the training of their young have been countermanded at the school door by regulation not law and, in the case of black parents, without their con sent. Such usurpation is more reprehensible in states where education is compul sory and operates most de vastatingly on the poor who must keep their youngsters in public school. The requirement that the state insure a chance for edu cation to all its young citi zens does not inherently mean that a governmental agency must actively run the schools and it is unfortunate that public support of schools developed this way. The proper distribution of governmental subsidies, edu cational or otherwise, is di rectly to those subsidized, in this case the parents of the children. Tuition vouchers adequate to the cost of good education and redeemable by schools in good standing, is by far the better way for government to support the intimate process of educa tion. All cultural and reli gious issues raised by the doctrine of separation of church and state would become moot. The child is subsidized period, and he takes his voucher to the school of his and his parents’ choice. Also there would be no confusion in the minds of the faculty about where their loyalties were owed, they would be true profes sionals with clients again. — From the UUA Now by Ben Scott, March 5, 1969. April 1969 33 ■ A layman’s critical observation of the pompous display of churchmen’s wealth. THOSE PAPAL KNIGHTS A very amusing sight to remember is to witness those so-called Knights of St. Dolphy or Ladies of Sta. Chi chay, during one of those religious processions or ce remonies, or the Christ the King October all-male pro cession, when these papal knights are in full regalia. There you see them, these pillars of society, these pro fessional Catholics (to dis tinguish from us inconspi cuous ones), saintly Catholics (who probably pay P20 to their maids or cheat their employes of their wages, or the government in their in come tax, while going to dai ly mass and communion), with their holier-than-thou airs, strutting, like peacocks, with their funny hats, black napoleonic uniforms, red sash across their chest, black capes, and swords on their shoulders. It’s a never-to-be-forgotten sight: looking very much as if they were candidates for canonization, with their shi ny swords on their rigid shoulders and gloved hands, they remind me of Tony Fer rer ready to tangle with Jo seph Estrada or Fernando Poe in some super colossal Filipino Western (!) produc tion. Is it a mere coincidence that the Popes have almost always conferred these pri vileges on the rich? The only knight I remember who was not rich was the late Jesse Paredes. The papal decorations are given for ser vices rendered to the church. What services, for instance? Giving a few hundred pesos to some orphanage, perhaps, or a thousand to the con struction of a church, while miserable squatters beside the church starve. But these 34 Panorama papal awardees don’t care. “The poor,” they moan piously, striking their breasts like the Pharisees, ‘‘ay, the poor, I pity them naman — they smell but never mind, they’ll get a great reward in heaven because they suffer and suffering is good for the soul.” Giving a few hundred pesos to the poor (accom panied by the ubiquitous photographers n a t u rally) while they hypocritically spend hundreds at the most fashionable hotels for a sin gle dinner or their wives and daughters splashing thousands for evening dresses. Whited-sepulchres indeed! Why can’t these papal knights just wear a medal or something similar instead of wearing that ridiculous outfit? And why do Popes almost always, if not inva riably always, give these de corations to the wealthy? Or is it that the Church — in cluding our cardinals and bishops — is always on the side of the rich and the po werful? I haven’t heard of Manda Elizalde and his wife getting a papal decoration and yet I think Manda and his wife are the only real Christians (as defined by St. Paul) in the entire Philippines. With out exceptions of course. Also, why is it that I’ve never seen the cardinal or our bishops ride in a bus or a jeepney? Are they afraid to lose their diamondstudded pectorals and rings? Why not sell those stones and give the money to the orphans? Christ never wore onyx rings. The papal knights give generously to the church as insurance for heaven, but they are the type who will not give a square meter of land to their tenants, who will charge usurious interests for lending money, or will not pay decent wages and retirement pay to their em ployes or teachers. And yet they are rewarded by the {Pope. And they display their hilarious Marinduque's Moriones costumes at these useless processions. How sil ly can you get? Who gives their names to the Pope? Probably, the Apostolic Delegate whose April 1969 35 pictures, with the usual cock tail in hand, appear, with the rich and the malakas and the nouveau rich, in the so ciety pages. One question to the Church and the Pope: Why can’t you go back to the poverty of St. Francis of As sisi or the humility and sim plicity of St. Pope John XXIII? - WILFRIDO MA. GUERRERO, University of the Philippines, Manila Chro nicle. ON REVISING THE CONSTITUTION While it is the exclusive prerogative of Con gress to propose actual constitutional amendments for ratification by the people in a plebiscite, as we did in 1967, it is the right and perhaps the duty of all competent citizens to make studies of amendments which may be proposed to the 1971 Constitutional Convention. — Senator Arturo M. Tolentino 36 Panorama ■ This organization for religious freedom has a vital and meaningful message to people who are in fluenced by reason, scientific ideas, and humane sentiments. UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS FACE A NEW AGE “The genius of the Unita rian movement has been its power to adapt the vocabu lary and practices of a reli gion whose roots are sunk deep into the past to new knowledge, new conditions, and new situations. .. There can be little doubt of the need in the modern world for some organized expres sion of the liberal spirit in religion. In a time when revolution and chaos are everywhere threatening, when ideals are again forming an alliahce with tyranny and dogmatism, when intellectual confusion and social discon tent are blindly trying to fight their way out of situa tions where only the prob lem-solving temper of mind can be of real help, when a fresh birth of the nationalis tic spirit is everywhere of fering its spurious comfort to tired and discouraged people — in a time like ours there is imperative need for a re ligious fellowship that will bring order and hope and confidence to men of the li beral tradition.” Now the surprising thing about this statement is that despite its contemporary ring — its reference to revolution and chaos, to intellectual confusion and resurgent na tionalism — despite all this, it was written more than thirty years ago. It comes from the introduction to the report of the Commission of Appraisal established by the American Unitarian Associa tion, a report which became the cornerstone of the whole new thrust of our religious fellowship in the past gene ration. Here are a few more lines from that report of the Commission of Appraisal published in 1936. “For April 1969 37 more than a hundred years,” ihe Commission said, ‘‘the liberal churches of America have stood and fought for religious freedom, by which they have meant chiefly the right of each individual to think out his own religious beliefs and the right of each congregation to choose its own forms of worship and church policy. The struggle has been largely against the authority of creeds and of ecclesiastical traditions, and the principal methods em ployed have been preaching and teaching, based upon faith in the power of hu man reason to work out all the problems of human life, provided it were liberated from ignorance, prejudice, and dogmatism. Today li beral churches find them selves facing a very different world, in which different conditions impose the neces sity for a new formulation of basic purposes, principles, and methods. What is need ed in the world of 1936 is an association of free church es that will stand and fight for the central philosophy and values of liberal reli gion, as set over against any philosophy that denies the spiritual nature of man, making him merely the pro duct and plaything of a ma terial universe in which on ly blind chance and ruthless force have sway.” This was written in 1936. The “different conditions” which the Commission be lieved required “a new for mulation of basic purposes, principles, and methods,” — these new conditions includ ed the rising menace of poli tical authoritarianism in fas cist Italy and Nazi Germany, both of which were at that very time engaged in helping another dictator — Francisco Franco — crush the incipient democracy in Spain. They included the great depres sion, in whose many Ameri cans succumbed to the blan dishments of Father Cough lin and Gerald L. K. Smith, who blamed all our troubles on the Jews or the Negroes or the people with fun ny foreign-sounding names. They included the tragic failure of traditional laissezfaire economic ideas to pre vent or to cure the depres sion itself and the evident need to find new ways of massive governmental inter vention in the economy, ways 38 Panorama that would relieve the in tolerable consequences of the depression while still embo dying the attitudes and pro cesses of democracy. The ba sic philosophic issue, the Commission asserted, was that “between those who affirm and those who deny the possibility of so adapting the traditional democratic processes as to make them effectively applicable to the problems confronting modern society . . . Many intelligent and thoughtful students of history,” the report goes on, “have come to the conclu sion that democracy carries within itself the seeds of its own inevitable corruption and death. The tide is to day strongly moving in the direction of arbitrary and absolute authority; and, if the democratic processes are to be saved from something very like obliteration, there must be prompt and vigorous action. It is high time for those who believe in demo cracy to take their stand and organize their forces aggres sively. In that struggle re ligion has a part to play that may well be decisive; for . . . religion can supply the basic ideas and the inex haustible driving - force of emotion and will that are necessary to meet on equal terms the forces now arrayed against democracy, provided it be religion that is itself consistent with the princi ples of liberalism.” That was the way things looked to a group of highly perceptive and committed Unitarians in 1936.. And I must say that as I read their words, I find myself com pelled to repeat over and over again the old French observation that the more things change, the more they remain the same. So much of what they said sounds directly applicable to our own situation today. Yet surely the circum stances which seemed so com pelling to the Commission in 1936 have changed even more dramatically in the generation since then than in the generation before. If “different conditions” re quired “a new formulation of basic purposes, principles, and methods” in 1936, how much more must that be true today. There is no dearth of voices these days compelling our attention to 60 April 1969 precisely this necessity for adaptation to changing cir cumstances if we wish our kind of churches to remain relevant — to use the favo rite and much overused term of the moment. Dr. and Mrs. Josiah Bartlett, for ex ample, in the title of their new book, insist that Uni tarian Universalism now faces its “Moment of Truth,” in which the full implications of our traditional commit ment to freedom, to innova tion, and to individual dig nity must at last be re cognized and confronted. Through a plethora of study commissions, special commit tees and individual pro nouncements we have been struggling for some time to catch the elusive qualities which make our new situa tion different and to adjust our programs to meet these new conditions. We are re vising our religious education program for children, our worship materials, our deno minational structure, our theological education — al most any aspect of our com mon life of which one might think. And the cry is always the same: the old structures will not do, the old ways of doing things are no longer relevant, what was pioneer ing in the 1940’s is “old hat” on the eve of the seventies. I’m not so sure that any of the things we have come up with as bold new approaches are really any better — or in some cases even as good as what they propose to replace; but at least there is an enormous restiveness in our religious household these days — a restiveness pa rallel to that in society at large — in the search for new and more satisfying forms and structures, for a “new formulation of basic purposes, principles, and methods. Some there are who think that we are so stuck in the morass of inherited attitudes and methods that nothing short of a complete overhaul will suffice. These are the same people who are likely to see our social institutions at large as hopelessly trapped in guarding the status quo and in need of revolutionary change if the promise of the new age just over the hori zon is to be fulfilled. Now I happen to stand in point of age almost ex actly half way between the 40 Panorama young man who insists on “an unequivocal commitment to revolutionary transforma tion oi our society’’ and the older minister who is “more concerned with the inner weather than with the outer circumstances of man.” It would be very easy to say that it’s all a matter of age, that it’s characteristic for the young to be impetuous and for their elders to be more cautious. It would, I say, be easy to offer this explana tion; yet I believe that in this instance it would be ab solutely mistaken. For the real issue, it seems to me, has nothing to do with age; rather, it is the question of whether one affirms or de nies “the possibility of so adapting the traditional de mocratic processes as to make them effectively appli cable to the problems con fronting modern society.” It is a question of how ser iously one takes “the liberal spirit in religion.” Even to put it in these terms at once suggests that “the liberal spirit” is more a matter of attitudes than of program, more related to man’s inner weather than to his outer circumstances. And so I come down myself on the side of the man whose primary concern lies in this direction. I admire the moral enthu siasm of the other, his zeal for good works; but I fear his revolutionary fervor. For like many revolutionaries he has large blind spots, so that he sees the injustices and evils of our society writ large, yet sees not at all the ways in which that society functions to protect indivi dual freedom and to en hance the cause of social jus tice. And I fear that he does not take seriously en ough the logic by which the revolution that began with “liberty, equality, and frater nity” ended with the guillo tine. I am afraid of revolution aries, I say, who see every thing far more clearly than the facts warrant, who have ready solutions to the ills that plague us. I fear the radicals of the Right who think they can cure social disorder by single-minded commitment to what they call “law and order.” And I fear equally those radicals of the left who think they APRIL 1969 41 can overcome the alienation of so many people through what they call “participatory democracy.” And I fear es pecially all those who would assume what the older min ister called total responsibi lity for the world. For however lofty the motivation that inspires it, such assump tion of total responsibility cloaks a drive for power which is all the more dan gerous when it is unrecog nized. Moreover — and this is very important — concentra tion on alleged total solu tions is apt to lead one to overlook the little things near at hand which really could make things better, steps that could produce no ticeable improvement even though they would surely not solve the whole problem. Npw all this is surely not to say that we live in the best of all possible societies, that everything is progressing as well as it possibly can, and the course of wisdom and morality alike is there fore to sit back and let na ture take its course. Not this at all. If we are to be true to “the liberal spirit in religion,’’ we must be always open to the need for change, for continuing adaptation to new circumstances, new con ditions. We often speak of our new age as revolutionary, but I think that if we are careful with the use of words it is not revolutionary at all! rather, it is a wholly new situation which is the product of revolutions but is not itself a revolution. It is, one writer suggest, “a situation that is characterized by a hitherto unknown acce leration in the course of events and by a growing es trangement from the tradi tional patterns of life and thought. Historical changes are taking place today with a speed that only a short time ago would have seemed incredible. These changes and developments are, how ever, not a revolution in the course of history, but an acceleration of historical events.” This writer, in fact, invented a new word to des cribe this phenomenon: he calls it “rapidation.” Now this, it seems to me, is what the liberal spirit means: not unswerving loyal ty to old and inherited forms, nor yet an overturn ing of the old every few 42 Panorama years as evidence of our abi lity to "hang loose,” but ra ther the ability "to adapt the vocabulary and practices of a religion whose roots are sunk deep into the past to new knowledge, new con ditions, and new situations." — by Rev. Max D. Gaebler, S. T. D. in the CLF letter. SILENCE Silence is the most impregnable defense and the most subtle form of attack. — Cornelio T. Villareal 48 ■ This paper discusses a sensible approach to the problems of persons arising from their condition as man and wife. HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED! The quest for happiness is a very important locus about which we humans try to or ganize our lives; and most of us think we are organizing our lives about possible hap piness when we get married. That many of us find our selves to have been mistaken in thinking that being mar ried is the way to happiness, is a fact which merits care ful consideration. Later on, perhaps, I may imply why a good many people fail to secure happiness through marriage. First, however, a few ge neral ideas. We do want happiness. We try vigorous ly, although not always wise ly, to manipulate events, sur roundings, people and even ourselves so as to achieve this goal. Our success is usual ly quite spotty. One of the things we do in overwhelm ing numbers in this manipu lative process is to pair off two by two of opposite sexes and live in that pattern. The experience of the race has demonstrated that “sin gle blessedness” is no better way, but rather a poorer way, to achieve happiness than ' wedded bliss.” If people had not absorbed this racial wisdom, marriage would not be as popular an institution as it is. Whenever I read or hear some woe-crier declaring that marriage is falling apart, disintegrating before our ve ry eyes, I say, “nonsense!” There is no more popular institution among human be ings than marriage. Indivi dual marriages break up, of course, in numbers that alarm the woe-criers. But by far the majority of people whose marriages are terminated (by death of divorce) diligently set about seeking to estab 44 Panorama lish new marriages. Having gotten out of the married state, the thing they want most is to get right back in. As Jong as people have this mood toward marriage, I do not concede that marriage is on the way out. The simple fact is that die vast majority of us do not want to live a life-time alone. We need continuing companionship. Only a very lew choose to go it alone; and another very few to team up in a situation without full intimacy, or in which such intimacy is abnormal and under question. Hence we do not usually pair off as apartment, or house, mates of the same sex; but rather as partners of opposite sexes, and secure social confirma tion and approval by getting married. This is the way we humins live our lives. The woc-cricrs to die con trary notwithstanding, this is the way we are going to continue to live them. But sometimes we get bit ter because this accepted and popular pattern of living by pairs doesn’t automatically bestow happiness upon us. However, marriage is only one of the human institu tions upon which we call for happiness. Others are education, the church, social life, work, entertainment, material goods, etc. None of these, either, bestows happi ness automatically. We are not greatly surprised that these other things often fail to make us happy, but some how we expect more of the institution of marriage. We get bitter when it doesn’t come through. This isn’t fair to marriage, which is, after all, only one of the hu man institutions we have de veloped to help us come to terms witli life. If we could look at the whole matter objectively, as it would seem to a man from Mars unacquainted with hu man customs, human values, or the human psyche, a case could be made that in mar riage we have devised an ut terly impossible institution; and to expect happiness from it is the height of unrealism. We expect two relatively im mature individuals, or indi viduals just barely mature and with little experience in maturity, to sign a contract to share the rest of their lives; to live together and be responsible for and to April 1969 45 one another day after day for all the days they shall live, whatever changes of status or personality may take place. None of the other institutions from which we seek value (or happiness) requires anywhere nearly as much. Contracts with them are always assumed to be revokable at will. No other human relationship is so de manding: friendship, occupa tion of a common domicile, relationship with employer or employee, commitment to an educational program, commitment to a church. Even the commitment to children has an expected du ration of only a couple of decades. But in marriage you are expected to be stuck with your partner for the rest of your life, which, so far as you are concerned, is forever. To me, it’s no won der that a quarter of the marriages in our culture end in divorce. I’m a little sur prised that more of them don’t. To me it’s no shock that a good many marriages that don’t end still fail to yield much happiness to the participants. Instead, I’m surprised that as many peo ple are reasonably happy though married as are. I think we should recog nize that whatever failure marriage suffers in delivering happiness is probably less due to marriage than it is to our concept of happiness. Probably we fail to achieve happiness, in marriage as elsewhere, because we de mand an unrealistically high degree of it. We are be mused by Aristotle’s law of the excluded middle — we are either happy or unhappy and there’s no in-between. If we cannot settle for lesser degrees of happiness, for ups and downs, but insist upon idyllic bliss all the time, nei ther marriage, lack of mar riage, any other institution or its absence is going to make us happy. We need to set a more realistic goal. In terms of a more realistic goal I would guess that marriage — considering what an in trinsically impossible institu tion it is — doesn’t do too badly. Marriage is the only insti tution we have to keep from having to go through life alone. For all its defects and impossible demands, we have 46 Panorama not been able to dream up a better one lor general con sumption. We want to know what to do, how to behave, how to think and act in and about marriage so that we can derive from it more and better values. To begin with, I wish for far wiser selection of mates to begin marriages with, than often occur. Nature has thrown us a curve by install ing in us a powerful sex urge which frequently befud dles our judgment in select ing a mate for life. Of course, having said this, I must pause to consider that without this sex urge, may be we would have devised a different, less trying, but possibly much less rewarding way of arranging to live two by two. At any rate, concerning the matter of selecting spouses, I must declare that marriages are not made in Heaven. I think the Christian church, advertently or inadvertently, has contributed to this im possible fiction by the cus tom of “sanctifying” mar riages, by perpetuating the thesis that God joins people together in marriage — “whom God hath joined to gether,” etcetera. Of course, I am not saying that anybody can marry any body and be happy. But I do believe that for any one individual there are large numbers of potential spouses in the world with any of whom he would have an equal chance of making a good marriage. In the second place I wish we could learn to deal with and put in its proper place the experience of romantic love. This is, of course, ve ry closely related to the po werful sex impulse which so often befuddles our thinking and acting in the selection of mates. It involves the sex impulse but goes, I be lieve, considerably beyond it to be a longing toward con summation with a whole personality. But, from the very na ture of it, romantic love rare ly lasts very long. Its du ration is brief compared with the duration of a life-time; or what is left of a life-time from age 20. It is normal for a rela tionship between two people April 1969 47 who get married to begin witli romantic love. But this cannot be relied upon as the continuing basis for a satisfactory marriage. If there is not something else, or if something else cannot be developed to take over as the principal glue, a mar riage is not likely to last with much satisfaction. Then, in the third place, I wish people could learn to respect one another as persons. I am not propo sing that spouses should treat each other in exactly the same way they treat mem bers of the general public, but I will say that they should treat each other at least as well as they treat other people. Failure of marriages to re sult in happiness is due, in no small fneasure, to the de structive special ways we treat our spouses. These ought, of course, to be avoid ed. Among our special destruc tive treatments (which we would not think of directing toward others than our spouses) are such actions and attitudes as assuming a sort of position of ownership (like: “she’s my wife, she belongs to me"), and the right to control actions and even the attempt to control the thoughts of a spouse. Also it is a far too common practice for married people to try to make one another over, to correct alleged defi ciencies in behavior and character and to force one another into a predetermined pattern. Closely related to this is a tendency to criti cize one another, as we would certainly not presume to criticize anyone else. We should feel a special responsibility toward our spouses to try to do those things, say and think those things which will add to their stature and status as human beings. Finally, it is important to find and cultivate common interests if a marriage is to have much chance of yielding happiness. To share sleep ing and eating with another person is not enough. There is a lot of life left over after we have eaten and slept. An important part of shar ing a lifetime is to pool ener gies, concerns and interests during much of that left over time. 48 Panorama Very few ways of earning a livelihood today involve husband and wife in a com mon enterprise they can share. For both to work at different jobs (certainly a common pattern) does not fulfill this need. Hence, in the lime left over after eat ing and sleeping and after earning a living, it is im portant for spouses to find some common interest they can share together. I must close with merely pointing to the common con cern of children and noting that it, like everything else, is no sure-fire guarantee of happiness in a marriage. This common interest some times causes intolerable problemts; sometimes it goes as tray and sometimes, it doesn’t work. Yet it contains more, and more intense, potential for happiness in marriage than anything else. But in order to yield that potential it must be treated with the same high degree of wisdom, positive emotion, and com mitment as anything else in life which is expected to re sult in value. — by Rev. John G. MacKinnon in Church of the Larger Fellowship, Uni tarian Universalist Letter. SOMETHING OF VALUE If a man does away with his traditional way of living and throws away his good customs, he had better first make certain that he has something of value to replace them. — African proverb April 1969 49 ■ Scientific advances point to better world or death. LIFE IN YEAR 2000 “We are living in a new age in which predicting the future not only is interesting and fun, it is a necessity,” says Henry Still, a veteran newspaperman and aerospace industry public relations exe cutive. You’ll read that in Still’s new book, Man: The Next Thirty Years. This is no science-fiction 90-day wonder which leaves your mind free to roam in idle speculation about what is likely to happen in the last three decades of the 20th Century. It is a realistic welldocumented account of what life probably will be in the year 2000. No self-styled prophet, Still bases his material on his long experience in the aerospace business, his work with countless scientists and engineer and good, old-fash ioned homework, the kind the kids used to do at night before the invention of the electronic television tube. Still examines the techno logical and scientific marvels of tomorrow in the light of projects and experiments al ready under way. After his earlier books, Will the Hu man Rare Survive? and The Dirty Animal, a study of pollution, Still now turns his scrutiny to the two roads he claims are available to man on his journey to the millen nium. The author cautions that great though the potentials may be, the year 2000 “will differ from today only ac cording to the amount of imagination, good will, and work exercised from year to year in the scant third of a century remaining between now and then.” Man either can direct his natural and technological re sources toward making a bet ter world or be destroyed in a self-made, mechanistic nightmare, Still warns. He describes in surprising ly precise detail what we can 50 Panorama reasonably expect in the ad vances of agriculture, food, communications, city plan ning, medicine, education, transportation, automation, energy and computer techno logy. If science and technology continue to move forward at today’s pace, Still writes, these are some glimpses of what might come to pass by the year 2000. An Iowa farmer, relaxing in his air-conditioned office, will be able to order a rain storm to forestall drought and ask. his computer whe ther he should delay or speed up the ripening of his crops. Once harvested, his produce will be distributed by float ing ocean pipelines to city markets all over the world, thus evening out today’s im balance between surplus and starvation. — Copley, from The Daily Mirror 9-IV-69 TO A YOUNG DEMONSTRATOR Sonny, it takes 60 years to grow a molave, but only 3 weeks to grow camote. — Anonymous Amul 1000 51 Republic of the Philippines Department of Public Works and Communication BUREAU OF POSTS Manila SWORN STATEMENT (Required by Act 2580) The undersigned, APOL B, DE LA PENA, Managing editor, of PANORAMA, published Once a Month, in English, at Com munity Publishers, Inc., after having been duly sworn in ac cordance with law, hereby submits the following statement of ownership, management, circulation, etc., which is required by Act, 41580, as amended by Commonwealth Act No. 201. Name Editor: ARTURO G. SINCO .................. Managing Editor: APOL B. DE LA PENA Address 2131 Dr. M. Carreon St. Sta. Ana, Manila Business Manager: ARTURO G. SINCO Owner: COMMUNITY PUBLISHERS, INC. Publisher: — do — Printer: — do — Office of Publication: — do — 2105 Suter Street Sta. Ana, Manila 2131 Dr. M. Carreon Sta. Ana, Manila 2131 Dr. M. Carreon Sta. Ana, Manila St. St. If publication is owned by a corporation, stockholders owning one percent or more of the total amount of stocks: V. G. SINCO, SOFIA S. SINCO, ARTURO G. SINCO, LEANDRO G. SINCO & SYLVIA SINCO-DICHOSO, 2131 Dr, M. Carreon, Sta. Ana, Manila In case of publication other than daily, total number of copies printed and circulated of the last issue dated January, 1969. 1. Sent to paid subscribers ............................................ 3,000 2. Sent to others than paid subscribers .................... 1,000 Total ........................................................... 4,000 (Sgd.) APOL B. DE LA PENA Managing Editor SUBSCRIBED AND SWORN to before me this 28th day of April, 1969, at Manila, the affiant exhibiting his Residence Cer tificate No. A-140663 issued at Manila on January 8, 1969. (Sgd.) ANASTACIO C. RAMOS Postal Inspector Panorama Reading Association PANORAMA invites the educated public to join its Association of Readers. PANORAMA READING ASSOCIATION is dedicated to men and women who appreciate the variety and quality of its articles as sources of liberal ideas. PANORAMA READING ASSOCIATION includes stu dents, businessmen, professionals, proprietors, employers, and employees. It is also open to clubs, schools, and other ac credited organizations. PANORAMA has been in existence for over Thirty Years. PANORAMA provides excellent material for classes in history, government, economics, political and social studies, lite rature, and science. It may be adopted for secondary and college use. PANORAMA is not a fly-by-night publication. It was bom in March, 1936. COMMUNITY PUBLISHERS, INC. Inverness, (M. Carreon) St., Sta. Ana, Manila, Philippines Contents The Real Revolutions ................................................................. 1 The Increasing Responsibilities of the Schools ............. 2 Prospects for Evaluation of Learning ................................. 6 Comparison Between American and British Schools . . 12 The University for Notional Values ................................... 11 The Great Powers Facing Nationalism 16 Revolt Against the Revolters ................................................ 19 The Vietcong's Secret Weapon: Marijuana .................. 23 Privilege and Status 30 The State Council and the Schools ................................... 32 Those Papal Knights 34 Unitarian Universalists Face a New Age ....................... 37 How to be Happy Though Married ................................... 44 Life in Year 2000 ................................................................... 52 THE COVER — Some say this is "student power", while others dub it as the "revolt on the campus;" but here; in this issue, student activism as expressed In this Cover-Photo is called "Revolt Against the Revolters."