Our ideals

Title

Our ideals

Language

English

Year

1947

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

.. ~' Presidential Table Talk OUR IDEALS AND THI by MARCELU\ (RADIO SPEECH OVER KZRH, 6:30P.M., SUNDAY, JULY 27, 1947) The Constitution of the Philirpines contains these brave and stirring words: "The Filipmo people" ... shall "f ecure to themselves and their posterity the blessings of independence under a regime of justice, liberty and democracy." JUSTICE, LIBERTY, DEMOCRACY! Theoe, then, are the triad of ideals towarc;l which this country shall strive. But Justice, Liberty, and Democracy cannot th,rive upon the barren soil of ignorance and lack of enlightenment. It is impossible to expect a !)eople to know and practice these ideals· if they do not know what they mean. These ideals did not thrive in the barbaric days of the Dark Ages because the people had no idea of their meaning and of the possible effect of the application of those ideals on the lives of men. Only when enlightenment became the possessiOn of many, did the better portions ot humanity begin to ask why there was so much opression, so much slavery, and so much tyranny. It can be truly said that ·enlightenment begets Justice, · Liberty, and D emocracy. Enlightenment can come upon the masses of this country only through the institution of aA . adequate school system. The kind of education that our young people are acquiring today is not enough to provide the enlightenment necessary to enable the people to cherish the ideals of Justice, Lib,erty, and Democracy. The people will know how to cherish these ideals if they have enough in tellectual acumen to distinguish between fact and propaganda, between the catchwords of cheap politics and the principles of statesmanship, between the vociferations of those who wish to perpetuate themselves in power and the ideas of men and women who render real public service. The Good Book, in the words of John, aptly tells us: "You shall know b u th, aPrl the truth shall make you free." No men can be truly free who does not know !he truth. One canuot know the truth who is not enligh tened, who does not have the necessary mental perspicacity to distinguish between truth and ficti?'• Our present school system in the elementary grades is far from hemg the medium by which the masses in this country could be enlightened. A school system "uch as ours that provides an educatior. a little better than mere literacy cannot be depended upon to inculcate in the mind of the people an understanding of the ideals of Justice, Liberty, and D emocracy. If we could attain the standards of literacy in the United States, perhap$ there would be some ho{Je. In the United StatP.s a person may be considered literate if he can read a newspaper or 'write a letter. In the Philippmts the test of literacy is to be able to write and read one's name especially on election time. (This may not even be necessary if he can vote in the election by just checking a list of names.) There is no school system in the world today that provides as meager an education as our present elementary school curriculum. 'vVhile children of other countries gu to--school ~<..ven and eight years. using their mother tongue as the language of learning, our children go to school only six years and use a foreign tongue to acquire so-called enlightenment. On top of the foreign language, which is the chief medium of instruction, we have imposed upon the minds of young people the task of learning ·another tongue to which many of them are not born. While children in 26

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