Panorama

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Part of Panorama

Title: Panorama
Issue Date: Volume XIX (Issue No. 3) March 1967
Year: 1967
Language: English
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extracted text: JwmIa mA fellow ^ikp 'uun: PANORAMA needs intelligent readers of: 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. All 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, middleJaged, 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 TNI PNILIPPINl MAGAZINE OF SOOD BEADING Entered as second class mail matter at the Manila Post Office on Dec. 7, 1965 Vol. XIX MANILA, PHILIPPINES No. 3 FACING THE REALITY If it be true that peace is a craven illusion, national independence a dangerous myth, and universal brother hood a dream of the weak in spirit, and if it be true that we must make war to find peace and learn to hate in order to understand the meaning of fraternity, then let us meet our fate 'with our eyes open, and not in the tragic folly of the wilfully blind, the self-enslaved, and the fanatic kamikaze, dashing himself to his doom in unquestioning devotion to the glory of a master power. If there must be war, let us be prepared for it with all the formal guarantees we can obtain, all the armament we can amass, all the allies we can enlist; and if we must fight, let us at least fight with some hope of victory and survival, not with the fealty of the serf to his lord, but as equals among equals, free among the free. — Claro M. Recto. ■ Effective education ®nd inspired nationalism are the qualities needed for students who must build their country. EDUCATION FOR NATION BUILDING The young Filipinos whom we find in our colleges and universities today are under stood to be preparing them selves for work and partici pation in the activities here in their country now and in the days ahead. They should realize, as they face their task, that we are all part of a world community which is not static and standing still but in constant change at different rates of speed de pending upon the energy and the ambition and pre paredness of every component nation. Every college or university should also realize this in contestable fact, and, there fore, each one of them should know that it cannot give the student all the knowledge and skill he needs for his entire lifetime. An educa tional institution may, there fore, consider its duty well done only when by its efforts its students acquire the abi lity and willingness to learn how to learn. Possessing this competence, they may be able to help themselves ef fectively and to serve as builders of a better Filipino nation. A well directed education concerns itself with the culti vation of personal discipline and of the will to work with others for community better ment. It recognizes the exis tence of differences among individuals in their interests and potentials for growth. It makes a reasonable allowance for unavoidable limitations of human effort and attain ment. More concretely, it seeks to develop students in to men and women able to perceive and comprehend their environment, to or ganize their efforts for im provement, to appreciate matters of social value, and to make decisions of wider significance. It endeavors to make of each man a free in dividual, able and willing to face facts and situations in 2 Panorama telligently and courageously and to use his own reasoning power and judgment. At the same time, it also impresses upon the individual the va lue of working with others, the need for thoughtful and constructive leaders, and the indispensability of enlighten ed followers acting not as blind drones bat as respon sible, productive, and selfreliant members of the com munity. 2J Education of this nature and purpose receives ample encouragement only in a free nation where the indivi dual enjoys the widest oppor tunity for economic and so cial mobility.' In a general way this condition exists in* our country. ' Here a man’s advancement depends in greater measure on personal merit, dedication, honesty, and purpose than on such factors as inherited status, family position, influential connections, or official rank. The idea of education for nation builders in the- sense here described is not coex tensive with the nation of special education for an ex clusive group known as the social elite. It is an educa tion aimed at producing un selfish men and women who love their country and ex press that love not by mere words but By" a deep and honest commitment to honor and duty and by a feeling of pride for? superior perfor mance in their chosen occu pations. People who have received this kind of educa tion may be expected to con tribute, much of their know ledge, their strength, and even their life for the im provement of their mother land. This has actually hap pened in the history of our country when prompted by the idea of education for na tion building our leading men and a host of their fel lows dedicated themselves to the establishment of a united and independent Filipino Republic and the cultivation of a free and democratic en vironment. The tradition of national growth cannot be established apart from education; and for our national growth can best be promoted in and by institutions of higher learn ing under the leadership of responsible Filipino educa tors inspired by a deep sense of national pride and pur pose. As a free nation, our March 1967 3 country is still very young and, as such its character bears the tender plasticity of youth. To develop our people towards national ma turity, the instruction of their sons and daughters should be entrusted to Fili pino colleges and universities under the direction of edu cational leaders of honest convictions. No progressive country to day leaves to aliens the ma nagement of its institutions for higher education. Every important nation realizes that no amount of rational ization can change the fact that for a people, such as the Filipinos, to cultivate a gen uine love for their own coun try and an enduring faith in its destiny, they have to look for ' aid 'and encouragement to institutions under the di rection of their own educa tional leaders. As the late Dr. Jose P. Laurel stated: “No one can love the Fili pinos better than the Filipi nos themselves.” The education that a Fili pino College should consis tently offer should be based on this criterion of quality and inspired nationalism. No alternative or substitute for this practice can ade quately take its place in a program looking towards the strengthening of the Filipino nation as an independent com munity. Consequently, the Filipino student should learn thoroughly the purpose and value of freedom and the responsibilities freedom entails. He should be steeped in the ideas and the spirit of democracy as conceived and lived by Filipino leaders. The selection of students considered fit for higher edu cation is an essential step in the process of preparing men for building a better nation. There is not one sure and satisfactory method of doing it. Observers have noted that most of our elementary and secondary schools, the usual sources of materials for higher education, are not producing enough students adequately prepared for col lege or university studies. The possession of a high school diploma or the acqui sition of a general average grade of 85 per cent or more has not often indicated in tellectual fitness for superior learning. Consequently, res ponsible educators have dev 4 Panorama eloped an attitude of skep ticism towards formal school ratings as indubitable evi dence of sufficient mental preparation for college edu cation. Many have thus adopted the practice of using less formal or less rigid en trance requirements and of placing those admitted on probation for a period of time sufficient to show their ability and interest in higher education. The experience of many a responsible institution has been that a student of fair intellectual ability but with sufficient ambition and a willingness to concentrate on his educational work may be expected to acquire the bene fits of higher education. Not a few of those who have had an unimpressive secondary school record but with a de termination to do their best in their subjects have not only managed to finish the prescribed courses but have also succeeded in passing gov ernment examinations for the practice of particular profes sions. In preparing Filipinos for the work of building a better nation, a college or univer sity with a responsible head realizes that dedicated teach ers and ambitious students play an important role. The acquisition of modern tools and facilities and the adop tion of effective courses, cur ricula, methods, and tech niques, are necessary; but they only provide the means and instrumentalities for mentors and learners in their efforts to achieve superior performance. Both teacher and student should therefore understand that unless they are properly used or applied, they will be of no great va lue to education. On paper or in catalogs they may attract and impress the gullible. In shelves, la boratory equipment and tools may have the same effect. But for effective instruction, they must be actually handled by qualified teachers and by students under their gui dance. — V. G S. March 1967 5 ■ This youDg but intellectually mature columnist of the Manila Times gives us a sensible approach on the question of developing a national language. THE FILIPINO LANGUAGE If the national language is to finally take shape it will have to evolve into some thing different from Tagalog and accepted on a nation wide basis. Those who seek the preservation of Tagalog will naturally resist this; while those who hope to create a national language of a logical system will only be disappointed to find that public acceptance regarding language is peculiar if not irrational. We have not hurled any charges at the Institute of National Language; there are many voices including public officials, who have imposed' their own views about lan guage on the community. What we are saying is that the approach to dissemina tion of a national language through education, is a long, arduous, and futile process if it is not accompanied by usage in the spoken form, acceptance through mass me dia, and creative bodies of written literature. In other words, to simply leave the task to the INL through grammar school training is unrealistic. The INL needs support. Argument over form is healthy, not obstruc tive because acceptance is the only arbiter and shaper of language. What we need is more dis cussion, not less; more cri ticism and observation, not less, of the shape and form that the national language is taking. Because such discus sions will involve and in terest the people who will use this language. It will make it a real, vital, living question involving their daily lives instead of a cold, academic, pedagogic, lofty, and nationalistic devise. Our culture is undergoing intense transition. The quality of readership in classical Taga log or Pilipino has barely increased, whereas mass me dia has managed to propa gate a spoken one through 6 Panorama movies and radio. The qua lity of English, according to teachers of English, has gone down, and of course Spanish is slowly vanishing as a spoken language here. How are we supposed to talk to on another? Each side could state its position without re sentment and the public it self would be placed within the market place of this evolving language so that they can, through usage, and the peculiarities of human nature, give final form to the expression of their ideas. — By Alfredo R. Roces in Manila Times, March 15, 1967. REVERENCE AND SELF-CONTROL “It is an old saying that monarchies live by honour and republics by virtues. The more demo cratic republics become, the more the masses grow Conscious of their own power, the more do they need to live not only by patriotism, but by reverence and self-control, and the more essential to their well-being are those sources whence reverence and self-control flow.” — Bryce in The American Com monwealth. March 1967 7 ■ A great man tells us what qualities and attitudes a truly conscientious and productive worker should develop and possess. LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his liv ing, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecu niary sense, it would be eco nomy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for mo ney, but him who does it for love of it. The community has no bribe tha,t will tempt a wise man. You may raise money enough to tunnel a moun tain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a. man who is minding his own busi ness. An efficient and va luable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The in efficient offer their ineffi ciency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who con sumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are selfsupporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planning-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving. But as it is said of the merchants that ninety-seven in a hundred fail, so the life of men gen erally, tried by this standard, is a failure, and bankruptcy may be surely prophesied. Merely to come into the world the heir of a fortune is not to be born, but to be still born, rather. To be supported by the charity of friends, or a government pension, — provided you con tinue to breathe, — by what 8 Panorama ever fine synonyms you des cribe these relations, is to go into the almshouse. On Sun days the poor debtor goes to church to take an account of stock, and finds, of course, that his outgoes have been greater than his income. In the Catholic Church, espe cially, they go into chancery, make a clean confession, give up all, and think to start again. Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up. To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world in them selves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, and flat ter and study effect only more finely than the rest. We select granite for the un derpinning of our houses and barns; we build fenses of stone; but we do not our selves rest on an underpin ning of granite truth, the lowest primitive rock. Our sills are rotten. What stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in our thought with the purest and subtilest truth? I often accuse my finest acquaintances of an immense frivolity; for, while there are manners and com pliments we do not meet, we do not teach one another the lessons of honesty and sin cerity that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solidity that the rocks do. The fault is commonly mutual, however; for we do not habitually de mand any more of each other. Those things which not most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human so ciety, but should be uncons ciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body. They are in/ra-human, a kind of vege tation. I sometimes awake to a half-consciousness of them going on about me, as a man may become conscious of some of the processes of digestion in a morbid state, and so have the dyspepsia, as it is called. It is as if a thinker submitted himself to be rasped by the great giz zard of creation. Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of so ciety, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its two opposite halves, — sometimes split into quar ters, it may be, which grind on each other. Not only in dividuals, but states, have March 1967 9 thus a confirmed dyspepsia, which expresses itself, you can imagine by what sort of eloquence. Thus our life is not altogether a forgetting, but also, alas! to a great ex tent, a remembering, of that which we should never have been conscious of, certainly not in our waking hours. Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but some times as eupeptics, to congra tulate each other on the everglorious morning? I do not make an exorbitant demand, surely. — By Henry David Thoreau, from the Atlantic Monthly, 1863. HOW GOOD ARE CATHOLIC SCHOOLS? How good are Catholic schools and how do they compare with public schools? On the basis of com parative records, students in Catholic schools are “superior” both in academic achievement and in learning potential — even though the Catholic schools are almost scandalously overcrowded, their teachers have less academic preparation, and they operate on a much lower budget. The Notre Dame authors modestly point out that the superiority they found can be attributed to the “relatively selective” ad missions policies of the schools. Unruly and undis ciplined pupils often end up in the public schools because the nuns are in a position to demand a cer tain standard of behavior. — From Catholics and their Schools in Saturday Review, Oct. 15, 1966. 10 Panorama ■ The conscientious teacher is described in this article. THE ESSENTIALS OF GOOD TEACHING The famous Toscanini once arrived in a new city and took over an orchestra he had never conducted be fore. He started them on something easy, like Semiramide. After a minute or two he noticed that the first vio lin looked odd. He was playing well enough, but his face was all distorted, and when he turned a page to begin a new section, he really grimaced as though he was in great pain. Toscanini stopped the orchestra and said: “Concert-master! Are you dll?” The first violin’s face at once returned to normal. “No, thank you,” he said, “I’m quite all right, maestro. Please go on.” “Very well, if you’re sure you’re fit. Begin at D, please, gentlemen.” And off they went again. But the next time Toscanini glanced at the first violin, he saw him looking worse than ever. His face was all drawn up to one side, his teeth were showing between wolfish lips, his blow was furrowed with deep clefts, he was sweating pain fully and breathing hard. “One moment, please. Concert-master, you really look ill. Do you want to go home?” “No, no, no, Mr. Tosca nini, please go ahead.” “But I insist,” said Tosca nini. “What’s wrong, are you having an attack, would you like to lie down for a while?” “No, I’m not ill,” said the first violin. “Well, what on earth is the matter?” said Toscanini. “You look awful, you have been making the most ago nizing faces, you’re obvious ly suffering. . .” “To be quite frank,” said the first violin, “I hate mu sic.” March 1967 11 Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? But there are millions of people doing the same thing every day all over the world. They have a job they hate, they perform it grudg ingly and inefficiently, they make it more difficult for themselves and for everybody associated with them. Some times it scarcely matters. If the girls in the music shop can’t find the music, the cus tomer can wait until Mr. MacWhirter comes in, or at worst he can order from the publishers. But it is terribly important when a teacher, whose job is to awaken young minds to a valuable subject, shows his pupils by every gesture, by every intonation of his voice (and remember, young people notice such things very quickly and sen sitively), .that he thinks the subject is not worth while learning; and that learning anything whatever is a waste of time. The first essential of good teaching, then, is that the teacher must know the sub ject. That really means that he must continue to learn it. The second essential is that he must like it. The two are connected, for it is almost impossible to go on learn ing anything year after year without feeling a spontaneous interest in it. Think how astonished you would be if your doctor told you that personally he really cared nothing about the art of healing, that he never read the medical journals and paid no attention to new treatments for common com plaints that apart from mak ing a living he thought it completely unimportant whe ther his patients were sick or sound, and that his real interest was mountain-climb ing. You would change your doctor. But the young can not change their teachers — at least, not until they reach university age, sometimes not even then. They have some times to submit to being treated by doctors of the mind, who seem to believe the treatment useless and the patient worthless. No wonder they distrust educa tion. — By Gilbert Highet. 12 Panorama ■ The Philippines needs a new constitution after an experience of over 20 years of complete political independ:nee. After considering for about 6 years the question of changing the present Constitution, the Congress of the Philippines at last decided this month of March, 1967, to call a constitutional convention to meet in June, 1971. But egoism or fear made them propose an amendment permitting them to run for seats in the convention. A CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION FOR A NEW CONSTITUTION The present Constitution of the Philippines leaves to Congress the privilege of choosing one of two methods of proposing amendments to it; one is for Congress itself to make the amendment pro posals and the other is for Congress to call a convention to prepare and pass neces sary proposals. In both cases the proposed amendments have to be submitted to the electorate, for final approval. The opinion of many in dependent and serious stu dents today is that proposals for any change in our present Constitution should be made by a convention to be called by Congress. Among the reasons for this view are: 1. Some observers have felt that Congress did not show sufficient political acu men or foresight or indepen dence in all the cases when in the past it made the amendment proposals to our Constitution. In adopting those proposals for constitu tional changes, Congress per mitted itself to be dictated upon by one man, first by President Quezon and then by President Roxas. The Congress proposals made un der Quezon destroyed some valued features of the Cons titution which made for sim plicity in our national lawmaking and provided the Presidency and the adminis tration with a great degree of freedom from constant po litical harassment by parti sans and friends. The congressional proposal made under Roxas was a ve ritable surrender of the sove reignty and independence of the Filipino people. Known Makch 1967 13 as the Parity Amendment, it was an acceptance of humi liating terms and a confes sion of unwillingness to stand on our own feet. These two cases offer extremely strong reasons why it is not advisable to let Congress do the proposing for new consti tutional amendments this time. It may not bow down to the President but it may simply accommodate its lead ing members who may be bent in retaining provisions that could advance their in terests for the time being without proper regard for the public welfare or the future interests of the nation. 2. The changes needed in our present Constitution, in the opinion of many respon sible citizens, are not just matters of slight significance or routine. They involve substantial subjects. To cor rect constitutional provisions deemed ill-adjusted to our national modes of thinking and to curb undesirable practices in our political and social life, what is need ed is constitutional revision, which may mean some major alterations. Obviously, this should not be left to Con gress to decide for the follow ing reasons: (a) Congress has not been elected for this work; (b) its regular legisltive duties require most if not all of its time and atten tion; and (c) revisions may call for elimination of cer tain legislative privileges, functions, or units which could be against the interests of present legislators. All these need concentration of thought and unbiased atten tion which can best be achieved by a convention elected by the people solely and exclusively for this pur pose. 3, The people should have the opportunity to elect de legates to a constitutional convention now to enable them to use their constituent power fully and freely for the first time in their history as an independent nation. The present Constitution was made when the Filipinos were not yet free and sove reign. They had to follow the guidelines set down by the American Congress. For instance, they were not free to choose between a pres idential and a parliamentary system of government under the terms of the Philippine Independence Law. They 14 Panorama were practically harnessed with blinkers by the fact that the approval of the Ameri can President was a condi tion precedent to the final adoption and promulgation of the Constitution. Strictly speaking, there is neither in tellectual honesty nor legal validity in any claim that the present Philippine Cons titution is solely and exclu sively the mandate of the sovereign people of the Phil ippines. The plain fact is that this Constitution was only made possible by an enabling act of the Congress of United States. That was its original source. It was similar to the enabling acts passed by the same authority for previous American terri tories to adopt constitutions before they would be admit ted 'as states of the Union. Our nearest approach to a constitution drafted by Fili pinos was the Malolos Cons titution drawn some 68 years ago. But even that document lacked the ingredient of the sovereign approval of the Filipino people. In fact, Mabini strongly opposed its adoption by the Malolos Congress on the ground that that body was not originally called to meet as a consti tuent assembly and that the critical conditions then pre vailing would make it im practicable to put into effect certain provisions which a good democracy needs. Tech nically, the Malolos Consti tution was a revolutionary constitution. The Constitu tion we adopted under the American rule should have been properly limited to the organization of the gov ernment of the Philippine Commonwealth. The present is the first opportunity open to the Fili pino people in the entire period of their history to prepare for adoption the basic law of their nation. Congress should not deprive them of this rare opportu nity. Under these circums tances, for Congress to insist on its right to make propo sals of amendment would be to stretch its discretion to a point of doubtful wisdom by ignoring strong consider ations in favor of the people’s alternative right. How should we proceed in adopting revisionary changes or amendments on our Constitution? I propose certain points for consider March 1967 15 ation. Others may perhaps be deemed as important or more important than these; but for the present brief dis cussion, the considerations that follow might well serve as starters. After 32 years of expe rience, we should now be in a position to raise the follow ing questions affecting the Constitution — the desirabi lity of some of its parts, the inadequacy of others, the in adaptability of certain pro visions, and the impracticabi lity of certain rules or pro hibitions: (a) What provisions have been abused? We may examine perhaps the power to tax, to appropriate, and spend public funds. They affect the basic economic life of the nation. Measures to raise t^xes and issue bonds should be given wide pub licity and submitted to all local governments for com ment at least 40 days before final action by Congress. This is a form of referendum. We may reexamine the vast powers of the President, particularly the power to declare martial law and to suspend the habeas corpus writ. We might set limits on the power of Congress and its committees to investigate not only public officials but also private persona so as to prevent legislative usurpation of purely judicial authority. (b) What parts have been violated with impunity? We might lqok into the salaries of our legislators and other public officials and their allowances, and the violation of provisions prohibiting congressmen from holding other positions without for feiting their congressional seats. (c) What government or ganizations or functions should be placed outside the reach of political decisions? We might mention the con trol of currency and mone tary policies by the Central Bank, the administration of other government business corporations, the conduct of public and private educa tion, the establishment of an effective police system, in addition to the maintenance of the independence of the courts and civil service. (d) What constitutional principles have not been cor rectly understood or honest ly applied? The rule of the 16 Panorama separation of powers should be defined or modified, con sidering the effect of the party system upon it. The rule that a public office is a public trust, not a means of enriching its occupant, should be effectively pro tected. (e) If democracy is to be a reality and not just a myth or a mere rule by the ignorant, the irresponsible, or the rich, what basic regulations and modifications should be adopted affecting suffrage and elections? Direct elec tions for local officials and indirect for national officials may perhaps be seriously considered; and certain de finite qualifications may be prescribed for candidates for all public appointive and elective positions to secure the choice of persons of in tellectual maturity and tested sense of moral, social, and personal responsibility. At present the qualifications for elective positions refer only to age, residence, citizenship, and mere ability to read and write or bare literacy. At present, one of the type of Adam Clayton Powell of the American Congress could sit in our Senate or House of Representatives to the detri ment of our national dignity and the dishonor of the oc cupancy of a government position. (f) What measures should be adopted to preserve the Two-Party System if we are convinced of its value as an essential ingredient in the orderly and practical func tioning of a viable political democracy? One way may be to remove or dismiss an of ficial elected to an office under one party when he transfers to another party during his term. Another way may be to disqualify an opportunist or turncoat from holding any public office whether political, adminis trative, academic, judicial, or technical, appointive or elective. (g) Should the present Presidential system be mo dified to embody same fea-. tures of the Parliamentary system? Many of our past political leaders of expe rience, maturity, and respon sibility — Osmena, Laurel, Recto, Briones, and a few others — were of this opinion. The change may mean a President elected by a Pres idential Electoral College March 1967 17 — composed of all the pro vincial governors and board members, city and municipal mayors and councilors — and a Cabinet headed by a Prime Minister chosen by the members of the majority party in a unicameral legis lature on the advice of the President. (h) The present Senate is a rare political phenomenon based upon a strange rule, practice, and theory of re presentation. It weakens in principle the idea of a united national leadership in the office and person of the Pres ident, it prevents a fair and just distribution of represen tation, giving each senator a claim to a right of national representation which when se riously exercised is bound to result in chaos and confu sion, the nation speaking through 24 separate and dis tinct voices, each one being theoretically entitled to speak for the whole nation as each is legally a senator of . the Philippines, being elected at large and not by a province, or district, or region, al though he is conveniently but confusingly addressed as the Senator from Manila or from Davao, etc. The Senate should be either abolished or modified radically so as to establish the democratic prin ciple of definite representa tion in legislation. (i) What can be done to protect and maintain the de mocratic rule of, equality of opportunity and the basic axiom of rotation in political offices? Just as we favor the limitation of the tenure of office of the President to two terms, there is absolute ly no reason why we should not limit the tenure of all law-makers to no more than 2 successive terms of 4 years each without further reelec tion until after an interval of at least 7 years. Elective public offices in a democracy should never be converted into professional careers. This should be an inflexible rule in a country such as the Philippines where the people have been reared in paterna listic practices and modes of living.’ As President Eisen hower recently wrote, the holding of a public office should be but “an interlude in a man’s career, time he took out from his business.” Repeated reelections tend to revive the embers of caciquism. 18 Panorama (j) As the administration of justice is a fundamental function of every govern ment and state, what changes should be introduced through constitutional amendments to assure the establishment of an honest, impartial, independent, and competent judiciary? Candi dates for judicial positions should be persons of proven integrity and ability to be determined on the sworn statement of a fixed number of persons of high reputation and should pass competitive tests in law and government. Then instead of merely re quiring them to have been in law practice for 5 to 10 years, they should prove that they have handled at least a hun dred cases and have given written opinions on actual controversial matters of great variety — civil, criminal, and administrative — or have been known for their legal scholarship by their author ship of critical publications and their teaching law in re putable law schools for at least ten consecutive years. Consequently, only renowned 1 a w practitioners, highly competent judges of lower courts, or law scholars of re cognized erudition should be appointed to the Supreme Court. (k) Local govern ments should be guaranteed an ade quate measure of autonomy subject to such regulatory rules to protect the integrity of the nation and to main tain the national defense and stability. (l) There is need to pro hibit the practice of dividing or subdividing provinces and municipalities into smaller units for the mere purpose of creating additional political positions without securing the consent of the communities affected and without taking into account the economic, social, and other pertinent conditions' involved. All these suggested changes, if seriously considered, should obviously require a substan tial revision of the Constitu tion of the Philippines. They may result in a longer document as in the case of American State constitutions which are lengthened after almost every revision or amendment because of popu lar dissatisfaction with the loose and careless way with which state legislatures used March 1967 19 to exercise their powers and privileges. But even constitutions of sovereign states drafted after the last World War are much longer than their older or ganic charters. They actual ly express the general feel ing of distrust of the people in their governments, parlia ments, and parties. The ex treme cases are the constitu tion of India which has 315 articles and that of Burma with 234 articles. But even those of older states which have adopted new constitu tions are much longer than the American Federal Cons titution which has been largely reproduced in the present Philippine constitu tion. Italy today has a cons titution of over 139 articles and that of West Germany contains about 140 articles. On the other hand, the Phil ippine Constitution has only 18 articles, a condition which clearly gives to our govern ment organs unusually broad powers and have therefore been susceptible to abuse. On this interesting subject about the length of a consti tution, Professor Karl Loe wenstein’s views deserve care ful consideration. He said: “The ideal constitution will contain only the essentials of the national political order —organs, functions, jurisdic tional delineation — but, at the same time, all the essen tials. If a constitution wishes to be crisis proof — that is, in practice, to avoid dead locks between the consti tuted organs — it can leave nothing to chance and must spell out all contingencies.” Considering the question of amendment or revision of our present Constitution as a whole, it should appear that there are certain provisions in it that shotild remain un changed of with very slight modifications as for instance Articles II, III, IV, XI, XII, and XIII which deal on the Declaration of Principles, Bill of Rights, Citizenship, The General Auditing Office, The Civil Service, and the Conservation and Utilization of Natural Resources. Most of the remaining provisions can stand partial or complete alterations on the basis of the circumstances and the experience which the coun try and the people have had during the last 32 years when the operation of the princi pal agencies of government, 20 Panorama — the executive, the legis lative, and the judicial de partments — has had ample time to be tried and observ ed. It may be safely asserted that in many instances they have shown to be not well adapted to the needs of the people and the conditions of the nation. This is not sur prising, especially to careful observers and serious students of constitutions and constitu tional law, since these or ganizational organs are mere reproductions of the Ameri can idea and system of gov ernment under the Constitu tion of the United States based naturally on the histo rical, economic, social, and political conditions of the American people. Our coun try and our people are still quite different from America and the Americans despite the claims of a few of us who adore America as their Mother. — By V. G Sinco, from a lecture in Foundation College, Dumaguete. GOVERNMENT AND CONSTITUTION “A Constitution is a thing antecedent to a gov ernment, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people consti tuting a government.” — Thomas Paine in his “Rights of Man.” March 1967 21 ■ Delivered as a speech by the chairman of the com mittee on education of the Philippine House of Representatives, this piece is a sensible expo sition of the unsatisfactory methods used by the Institute of National Language in developing a common language for all Filipinos. DEVELOPING THE FILIPINO LANGUAGE The Institute of National Language after these past 30 "years has not truly developed a national language. The language which is now called Pilipino is, according to the critics, merely an improved Tagalog — we cannot really say whether the Tagalog has been improved by the Insti tute of National Language — the Institute having ac cepted a very insignificant number of words from the other native dialects and has insistently refused to revise the 1 20-letter alphabet, the ABAKADA, in order to ac commodate foreign words. In addition, there is the, present phenomenon which has been variously called the “communications gap” or the “crisis in understanding.” If there is such communi cations gap, the officials are partly to blame. Sometimes they tend to adopt grandiose poses and use abstruse phrases, perhaps to promote the building of their own image in the eyes of the pub lic. Instead of-using the sim ple, direct language of every day conversation, they would rather employ the compli cated, roundabout expression of what we may call “offi cialese” and this special lan guage can be understood only by those who have the pa tience to master its intrica cies. If there is a communica tions gap between the peo ple and the government, the mass media are also partly to blame because the mass media are supposed to tell the people what the govern ment is doing — or is not doing — for them. But how can the mass media, parti cularly the newspapers, con vey this information to the people effectively if they use a language that is understood 22 Panorama only by a small percentage of their readers? A strange feature of the problem is the fact that most of our newspapers are print ed in English; The news paper which Kas the biggest circulation, The Manila Times, is printed in English. The other major newspapers, The Manila Chronicle, The Philippines Herald, The Ma nila Daily Bulletin, even the principal magazines, The Philippines Free Press, the Weekly Nation, the Graphic, are all written in English. On the other hand, in other Southeast Asian coun tries like Japan, Taiwan, In dia, Thailand, South Viet nam and Indonesia, the news paper with the biggest circu lation is printed in the na tional language. It is only herein the Philippines where a majority of our people get their news in the foreign lan guage. I am not, of course, be littling the work of our Eng lish language newspapers. But what I would like to point out is that our news papers in the national lan guage or Pilipino, which is actually Tagalog, and which is not really the national lan guage, could play an im portant role in bridging the communications gap between the people and the govern ment, if, in the first place, they were to make them selves understandable to the people/ But how can they be understood by the masses if they insist in using pure Tagalog, which is called by the purists, pure Pilipino? The purists Tagalog is not even understood by all the Tagalogs but only by a select group of writers. For instance, how can the average reader of a newspaper in Pilipino understand what is “salipawpaw,” -that is the word for airplane; or “salumpuwit,” which means chair, or “dalubhayupan,” which means zoology, or “hapnayan,” which means biology? Do you think that we would understand "malimtala”? What does “malimtala” mean? That is the word for “astronaut.” I am not a Tagalog nor am I an expert on Pilipino and my know ledge of the national lan guage is limited to what I have assimilated in daily con versations with the people who speak this language and with my wife who is a Ta March 1967 23 gala, but from what I under stand the growth of Filipino newspapers has been ham pered by the fact that they tend to use a Pilipino that is more purist than free. The principal function of language, most especially lan guage as it is used by mass media, is to communicate. Language is a tool for en abling us to make others understand our thoughts, and therefore, language fails in its function when it is not understood by the receiving end of the information sought to be conveyed. Dead language are dead because they have outlived their use fulness as vehicles for com munication. Greek, for in stance, need to be the lan guage of the ancient civilized world. But now it is prac tically a .dead language and at njost it is used only by a small portion of the popu lation of the world. Thus we say, Mr. Speaker: “That is Greek to me,” when some thing is said to us which we cannot understand. The purists, therefore, in a manner of speaking would insist on using Greek in an era where English is the most widely understood lan guage in the world. The purist would stifle the growth of a language by imposing unrealistic restrictions on its spelling and grammar. The purists have tried to keep Tagalog pure by refusing to assimilate anything which is not originally Tagalog, or at least which is not Tagalized. And sometimes a word that is Tagalized becomes mutilated beyond recogni tion. In this way,’ it seems to me, the purists have done the most disservice to the na tional language by hamper ing its evolution and develop ment into a dynamic and living language fit for use everyday, everywhere, and in every field of human en deavor.' In the field of education, especially in the teaching of science, technology and law, a purist Filipino, or to be more accurate,: a purist Ta galog, as a medium of instruc tion, will be a vehicle of re trogression not of progress/ I would like to quote from the magazine Katas on the attempt to Tagalize some technical terms. I quote: “There are only 666 root words in the National Language English Vocabu 24 Panorama lary. This Vocabulary is adequate for fiction writ ing, tolerable for journalis tic language, but impossi ble for legal, technical and scientific writing. In con trast, Anglo-Saxon has 50,000 words. Modern English has 650,000. Sup posing our purists can coin one technical term a day, or 365 terms a year, it will take them 137 years to coin a vocabulary of 50,000 technical terms.” But it is encouraging to note that there are people and institutions who would break down the wall of un realistic restrictions erected by the purists so that the Pilipino could be developed into a dynamic, living lan guage that can be used for everyday conversation for speeches, for writing and for reading. I make particular mention of the Taliba, the Pilipino language newspaper that has the biggest circulation among the papers in the vernacular, for undertaking a bold ex periment. )The secret of this experiment is the use of con versational Pilipino — mean ing simple Tagalog with bor rowings from English and Spanish — in news stories, in articles, in columns and in editorials. I would like to quote here a portion of the New Taliba style sheet which gives the justification for the bold ex periment, and I quote: “The extent of the iso lation of Tagalog can only be guessed at. Textbooks in so-called Pilipino, which is actually Tagalog, use a restricted number of let ters. Substitutes for tech nical terms (“kapnayan” for instance) are being coined and imposed on teachers and pupils to the detriment of effective teaching and learning. A formal, academic style, whose failure to communi cate with large masses of people has been demons trated, is being taught. In the guise of Pilipiho or Pilipino language that is impractical, hard to learn and rigid in its structure is being taught partisans. ‘‘The New Taliba is- get ting away from these res trictions in its effort at reaching millions of poten tial readers. ‘We believe,’ says the Taliba, ‘that this pure Tagalog will be read March 1967 25 only by a select few in the Tagalog areas. On the other hand, a newspaper in Pilipino — in simple, direct language which used simple Tagalog as the ba sis, accepts widely spelling and uses all the letters of the alphabet — is bound to have a readership much bigger than that enjoyed by any English language newspaper in the Philip pines.” The results of the experi ment have so far been heart ening. In December, 1966, before the changes in Tali ba style were made, the ave rage daily circulation of the Taliba was 19,000. After changes were introduced last January 9, the circulation of the Taliba jumped to an average of 25,000 daily. Last month, the average paid cir culation was 30,000. On a single day — last February 27 — the circulation went up to a record high of 65,453. The increase in circulation simply means that more people now understand the language used by the Taliba thus gaining more and more readers. In undertaking this experi ment, what has the New Ta liba done? 1 The level of writ ing in the New Taliba is conversational Pilipino which uses simple Tagalog as the main basis, with heavy bor rowings from English and Spanish. Let us read some of the news items in the issue of the New Taliba dated February 27, 1967. For instance, we have this, and I quote: “Inalisan ng baril ang limang pulis sa Gordon.” Another news item: “Defensa kay Gov. Villarama. Ipinagtatanggol ng mga Liberal ang suspendidong Governor Jose M. Villarama ng Bulacan.” Another news item, Mr. Speaker: “Joint session sa Carta. Magtitipon uli ngayon (Lunes) ang Congress sa isjang joint session para tiyakin kung magkakasundo ang Senado at ang Camara sa mga pagbabagong gustong gawin sa Constitucion.” “Sinabi ni Espiker Jose B. Laurel, Jr., na ang nadarama niya ang maraming Senadores ang ayaw pumayag sa ilang pagbabago na minungkahi ng bi-partisan commit tee na gumawa sa mga amendments na dapat ga win.” 26 Panorama Another news item: 10,000 aliens ang mapag-alisan ng pagka-Pilipino.” The lead sentence of the item head lined “May pag-asang maging Pilipino” reads: “May pag-asa ang may 10,000 (sam pling libung) extranjera na kasal sa mga Pilipino na maging Filipino citizens o mamamayang Pilipino uli. Nilalakad ng Attorney ng extranjerang ito na kinabibilangan ng dalawang internacional beauties na mari-consider ng Supreme Court ang decision nito sa Cita-Ngo case.” That is not Filipino. “Ngo” must be Chinese or Siamese. Another newspaper item: “Huling- balita sa sports. Champion si Hsu sa 1967 RP Golf Tournament. Hsu Ching Chang (that is the name of the champion), ama teur sa golf sa Nationalist China ang naging champion ng 1967 sa Philippine Open Golf Championship na idinaos sa Wack-Wack Country Golf course na nagkaroon ng 283 a score, may limang un der par pagkatapos ng final round sa 1967.” These are samples of the language being used by the New Taliba and we have here a liberal infusion of English words such as “or der” or Spanish words such as “grave," “situacion,” “ciudad.” English words again such as “control,” Spanish words such as “cuerpo ng pulisya.” In this news item on sports, the New Taliba adopted the English words, “sports,” "champion," the English words, “RP Open,” the English words “Philippine Open Golf Championship,” “Wack-Wack Country Golf Club course.” In another news item which I quoted, the follow ing words were used: “aliens,” “extranjera,” maging “Filipino citizens,” Sup reme Court, dalawang 'inter national beauties’ marereconsider ang “decision.” These are some of the words, Mr. Speaker, from English and Spanish which were adopted into the Filipino or Tagalog being used by the new Taliba. I think that all these sen tences, Mr. Speaker, will be understood by at least 90 per cent of the readers from Aparri to Zamboanga. Where before, the old Taliba was understood mostly by people in Rizal, Bulacan, Nueva March 1967 27 Ecija, Laguna, Batangas, Ba taan, Zambales and Quezon, now the New Taliba could be understood even by peo ple in Batanes or readers in Sulu. The conversational level of writing employed by the New Taliba is characterized, it seems to me, by directness, clarity and simplicity. It avoids words and phrases used in literary works or in essays in pure Tagalog. It also avoid coined words as a rule except those which have gone into common usage. The basic principle govern ing the style of the new Ta liba, which the Institute of National Language may adopt as a basis for the dev elopment and evolution of our national language, is to use the simplest words avail able. An example given is the word "mayor” to designate the chief executive of a mu nicipality. The coined word in Filipino is "gatpuno” which is understood only in Manila and perhaps, in the suburbs. I understand that some people have also coined another word for “gatpuno” and that is “gathukay” be cause of the proliferation of diggings in Manila now. Not everybody in the Phil ippines knows the meaning of "gatpuno” but everybody understands the meaning of the word “mayor.” And an other consideration, apart from the factor of compre hension, is the fact that the word "mayor” links the Pili pino, the language being used, with English and Spa nish. This linkage is what experts in linguistics call “a linguistic junction with the major languages of the world?’ But not all English or Spanish words are borrowed or used by the new Taliba. In some instances it prefers the adopted version or the corruption of Spanish or Eng lish words which are Tagalized and which have gone into common usage. An in stance is the word “sibuyas.” This is a corruption of the Spanish word "cebolla.” Or the word “kabayo.” You understand the meaning of the word "kabayo” — horse. It is, of course, derived from the Spanish word "caballo.” The draft style sheet of the new Taliba lists other words which are preferred 28 Panorama over all others, being simple and understandable words. For instance, the Taliba uses the words “no parking” in preference to “bawal humimpil,” or “emergency exit” instead of using the words “1 a g u s a n g pangkagipitan,” the word “diario” or “periodico” to the word “pahayagan,” “customs,” instead of “adwana,” "pinatay” instead of “pinaslang,” extranjero” to “banyaga” or “dayuhan,” “barrio” to “nayon,” “departamento” instead of “kagawaran,” “Corte Suprema” or “Supreme Court” instead of using the words “Kataastaasang Hukuman,” “commit tee” or "comiter to “lupon” and “demanda” instead of “sakdal.” The Constitution and the law .whicji created the Insti tute of National Language provide that steps shall be exclusively and purely one of the major language or dialects of the country. The new Taliba, therefore, in adopting a realistic policy with respect to style in Fili pino writing, is encouraging the development of such a language — a truly national language to be understood by all the people. The language or, to be more accurate, the language mixture called ’ Pilipino should be the natural result of the search for a practical working means of oral com munication in a country which speaks different lan guages Pilipino, or what ought to be the national lan guage, is a language mixture, in the same way that Eng lish is a language mixture with Anglo-Saxon as its main ingredient and with liberal infusions of Latin, French, German and words from other languages as its other ingredients. Pilipino is a developing language and is far more dynamic than scho larly Tagalog. Scholarly pu ristic Tagalog has tried to keep itself pure by refusing to assimilate anything which is not originally Tagalog or Tagalized. The'Tagalization has taken two forms. One school would assimilate foreign words only after they have spelled the words in the Tagalog way. For instance, we have the word “molecule.” They will spell the word “molecule” as follows: M-O-L-E-K-I-Y-U-L. Or "battalion” as B-AT-A-L-Y-O-N. March 1967 29 Another school would coin an entirely new word al though its non-Tagalog equi valent is already widely ac cepted and understood. This school would' sa.y “salumpuwit” instead of *‘silla,” “sipnayan” instead of ‘‘mathe matics/’ and “dalubhayupan” instead of “zoology.” For instance, in the teach ing of science, we may have this sentence,, and I quote: ‘If we assume that the molecules of hydrogen and chlorine are equally distomic, the same number of hydrogen and chlorine molecules will be needed for reaction.” One way of translating this into Tagalog or Pilipino is as follows, and I quote: “Kung ipalagay natin na ang mga molecule ng hydrogen at chlorine” — they are spelled as they spelled in English — “ay parehong distomic, lea sing darning molecule ng hydrogen at chlorine ang kailangan para sa reaksiyon.” But the purist who would Tagalize the spelling would say that same thought in the following words: “Kung ipa lagay nating na ang mga molekiyul ng hydrodiyen at klorayn ay parehong dayatomik, kasingdaming molekiyul ng hydrodiyen at klorayn ang kailangan para sa reaksiyon.” But a pure-blooded purist would say it this way and I quote: “kung ipalagay natin na ang mga mulatip ng mulatub at gamutub ay pare hong dalamulapik, kasindaming mulatip ng mulatub at gamutub ang kailangan para sa bago kem.” That is the Rendition in very, very pure Tagalog as incubated or ma nufactured by the Institute of National Language of the English sentence mentioned a while ago. The result is confusion of the kind which has impeded progress in the adoption of a common tongue and the isolation of Tagalog or socalled Pilipino from the ma jor languages of the world. The purists’ group refuses to use the entire existing range of letters in the Eng lish and Spanish alphabets. And that is why foreign words which have to be as similated into Tagalog, in the view of this group, should be rewritten and spelled to conform to the Tagalog way of spelling. The new Taliba, and any mass medium, however, would not and should not be 30 Panorama bound by this restriction. While the purists’ alphabet has only the 20 letters of the Tagalog alphabet, the new Taliba alphabet of the na tional language has 31 — the 20 of Tagalog plus the c, f, j, q, v, x, and z of English and Spanish and the ch, 11, n and rr of Spanish. ’This “expanded” alphabet would give any mass me dium, such as the new Ta liba, a more flexible tool for assimilating words in the in ternational vocabulary for use in * its conversational style of writing. The use of the “expanded” alphabet is premised on the presumption that the readers of the Ta liba have had some school ing and would readily recog nize borrowed foreign words and' know their meanings when he comes across them in articles on the newspapers: Thus, instead of using “aksiyon,” spelled A-K-S-I-Y-O-N the new Taliba uses the ori ginal Spanish word “accion” spelled A-C-C-I-O-N; instead of “kombensiyon, spelled K-O M-B-E-N-S-I-Y-O-N, the Taliba uses “convenccion,” C-O-N-V-E-N-C-C-I-O-N; in. stead of “pabor” the new Taliba uses “favor.” This seems to me, to be a reasonable rule in spelling. It will avoid the curious spelling of borrowed foreign words which have been Tagalized and at the same time render these words imme diately recognizable and un derstandable. For instance, the word “chlorine” would be spelled K-LO-R-A-Y-N and that would not be im mediately recognizable as meaning chlorine in English. And it would be worse should we use the incubated or manufactured Tagalog words such as “mulatip,” “mulatub” and “gamutub.” Therefore, the Taliba is to be congratulated for em barking on this bold experi ment in the use ot language in a mass medium. By em barking on this bold experi ment, the Taliba has pro vided us with practical proof of what method we should adopt to develop and evolve a living and dynamic na tional language. To be sure, this experi ment is bound to trigger off a heated controversy among partisans of the purists and liberal schools. This is all for our own good because such a controversy would March 1967 31 awaken us to the need for adopting a practical, dyna mic, and growing Pilipino language, bound by as few restrictive rules as possible, as our national language. After all, a language grows not through the dictation of arbiters of language, but through usage. This is the natural way a language should grow, and as shown by the bold experiment of the new Taliba, this is the way our national language, the Filipino, should evolve and develop in order that it shall become a useful and practical tool of communication among the people. — From a speech in the House of Representatives, March 6, 1 9 6 7, by Representative Aguedo F. Agbayani. POETIC JUSTICE What is meant, for instance, by poetic justice? It does not mean a justice that differs by its object ■ from the ordinary justice of human jurisprudence, for then it must be confessedly a very bad kind of justice; but it means a justice that differs from com mon forensic justice by the degree in which it at tains its object, — a justice that is more omnipotent over its own ends, as dealing, not with the refrac tory elements of earthly life, but with the ele ments of its own creation, and with materials flexible to its own purest preconceptions. — Thoma? Dequincey. 32 Panorama ■ This is an excerpt from the classic work of a pro minent English biologist and advocate of the theory of evolution. A LIBERAL EDUCATION; AND WHERE TO FIND IT There is a chorus of voices, almost distressing in their harmony, raised in favor of the doctrine that education is the great panacea for hu man troubles, and that, if the country is not shortly to go to the dogs, everybody must be educated. The politicians tell us, “You must educate the masses because they are going to be masters.” The clergy join in the cry for education, for they affirm that the people are , drifting away from church and chapel into the broadest infidelity. The ma nufacturers and the capi talists swell the chorus lustily. They declare that ignorance makes bad workmen. And a few voices are lifted up in favor of the doctrine that the masses should be educated because they are men and women with unlimited capa cities of being, doing, and suffering, and that it is as true now, as it ever was, that the people perish for lack of knowledge. By way of a beginning, let us ask ourselves — What is education? Above all things, what is our ideal of a tho roughly liberal education? — of that education which, if we could begin life again, we would give ourselves — of that education which, if we could mold the fates to our own will, we would give our children? Well, I know not what may be your con ceptions upon this matter, but I will tell you mine, and I hope I shall find that our views are not very discrepant. Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and for tune of every one of us would, one day or other, de pend upon his winning or losing a game at chess. Don’t you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the March 1967 33 names and the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check? Do you not think that we should look with a disapprobation amounting to scorn, upon the father who allowed his son, or the state which allow ed its members, to grow up without knowing a pawn from a knight? Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our know ing something of the rules of a game infinitely more dif ficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has .been, played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Na ture. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and pa tient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never over looks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows de light in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated — without haste, but with out remorse. My .metaphor will remind some of you of the famous picture in which Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at chess with man for his soul. Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture a calm, strong angel who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win — and I should accept it as an image of human life. Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this mighty game. In other words, education is the instruction of the intel lect in the laws of Nature, under which named include not merely things and their forces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws. For me, 34 Panorama education means neither more nor less than this. Anything which professes to call itself education must be tried by this standard, and if it fails to stand the test, I will not call it education, whatever may be the force of authority, or of numbers, upon the other side. It is important to remem ber than, in strictness, there is no such thing as an un educated man. Take an ex treme case. Suppose that an adult man, in the full vigor of his faculties, could be sud denly placed in the world, as Adam is said to have been, and then left to do as he best might. How long would he be left uneducated? Not five minutes. Nature would begin to teach him, through the eye, the ear, the touch, the properties of objects. Pain and pleasure would be at his elbow telling him to do this and avoid that; and by slow degrees the man would receive an education which, if narrow, would be thorough, real, and adequate to his circumstances, though there would be no extras and very few accomplish ments. And if to this solitary man entered a second Adam, or, better still, an Eve, a new and greater world, that of social and moral phenomena, would be revealed. Joys and woes, compared with which all others might seem but faint shadows, would spring from the new relations. Happiness and sorrow would take the place of the coarser monitors, pleasure and pain; but conduct would still be shaped by the observation of the natural consequences of actions; or, in other words, by the laws of the nature of man. To every one of us the world was once as fresh and new as to Adam. And then, long before we were suscep tible of any other mode of instruction. Nature took us in hand, and every minute of waking life brought its educational influence, shap ing our actions into rough accordance with Nature’s laws, so that we might not be ended untimely by too gross disobedience. Nor should I speak of this process of education as past for any one, be he as old as he may. For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first March 1967 35 day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them. And Nature is still continuing her patient education of us in that great university, the uni verse, of which we are all members — Nature having no Test-Acts. Those who take honors in Nature’s university, who learn the laws which govern men and things and obey them, are the really great and successful men in this world. The great mass of mankind are the “Poll,” who pick up just enough to get through without much dis credit. Those who won’t learn at all are plucked; and then you can’t come up again. Nature’s pluck means extermination. Thus the question of com pulsory education is settled so far as Nature is concerned. Her bill on that question was framed and passed long ago. But, like all compulsory legislation, that of Nature is harsh and wasteful in its operation. Ignorance is visit ed as sharply as wilful dis obedience — incapacity meets with the same punishment as crime. Nature’s discipline is not even a word and a blow, and the blow first; but the blow without the word. It is left to you to find out why your ears are boxed. The object of what we commonly call education — that education in which man intervenes and which I shall distinguish as artificial edu cation — is to make good these defects in Nature’s methods; to prepare the child to receive Nature’s education neither incapably nor igno rantly, nor with wilful dis obedience; and to understand the preliminary symptoms of her pleasure, without wait ing for the box on the ear. In short, all artificial educa tion ought to be an antici pation of natural education. And a liberal education is an artificial education which has not only prepared a man to escape the great evils of disobedience to natural laws, but has trained him to ap preciate and to seize upon the rewards, which Nature scatters with as free a hand as her penalties. That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all 36 Panorama the work that, as a mecha nism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, lo gic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself. Such as one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education; for he is, as com pletely as a man can be, in harmony with Nature. He will make the best of her, and she of him. They will get on together rarely; she as his ever beneficient mo ther; he as her mouthpiece, her conscious self, her minis ter and interpreter. . . — By Thomas Henry Huxley, from Lay Sermons, 1870. March 1967 37 ■ The development of good human relations depends not on being “nice” to fellow workers but on one’s ability to create a sense of common purpose. THE LIMITS OF HUMAN RELATIONS The more an executive fo cuses upward and outward, the better he usually fares in managing his own people. Executives do not have good human relations because they are nice guys; warm feelings and pleasant words can be all too often a false front for wretched human relations. What pulls people together in an organization is a com mon sense of purpose. If I were asked to name the men who, in my own personal experience, had the best human relations, I would nanje three; General C. Marshall,' Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army in World War II; Alfred P. Sloan Jr., the head of General Motors from the early 1920’s into the mid Fifties; and one of Sloan’s senior associates, Nicholas Dreystadt, the man who built Cadillac into a successful luxury car in the midst of depression (and who might well have been chief execu tive of General Motors some time in the 1950’s but for his death soon after World War II). These men were as different as men can be: Marshall, the “professional,” sparse, austere, dedicated, but with great, shy charm; Sloan, the “administrator,” reserved, courteous, and very distant; and Dreystadt, warm, bubbling over, and, super ficially, a typical German craftsman in the “Old Hei delberg” tradition. All three paid little attention to the rules of “human relations.” Yet every one of them inspir ed deep devotion — indeed, true affection — in all who worked for him. All three, in their very different ways, built their relationships to people — their superiors, their colleagues, and their subordinates — around con tribution. All three men of necessity worked closely with people and thought a good deal about people. All three had to make crucial “people” decisions. But not one of the 38 Panorama three worried about “human relations.” They took human relations for granted. Another outstanding exam ple of “right” human rela tions achieved by emphasiz ing contribution — and achieved by someone who is all “wrong” in his own hu man relations — is certainly Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the atomic submarine. Like so many people of incandescent intel lect, Admiral Rickover finds it hard to tolerate us lesser mortals. In addition, like so many pioneers, he tends to consider anything but uncon ditional support of his ideas akin to high treason. His human relations outside his own organization are, as a result, problematical in the extreme. But within his own organization, the U.S. Navy’s nuclear submarine fleet, he commands loyalty and per sonal devotion. He so com pletely focuses on contribu tion that even the harshest treatment of an individual is seen as in the common in terest and devoid of personal bias or self-seeking. — For tune, Vol. LXXV No. 2, Feb. 1967. TO THE PRETENTIOUS FOOL Life is “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” — Shakespeare. March 1967 39 ■ This article written by a noted biologist explains the nature of science a9 involving methods of ob servation, comparison, and analysis of facts and the formulation of a generalization; and it tells us the effects of science on men’s habits, customs, attitudes, beliefs and ideas. SCIENCE AND THE FAITH OF THE MODERN Let us briefly compare some aspects of the old faith and the new knowledge and then inquire what is the duty of forward-looking men in this age of intellectual, so cial, and religious unrest. The old cosmogony, phi losophy, and theology sought comfort, satisfaction, and ins piration rather than unwel come truth. It magnified man by making him the cli max and goal of all creation. It placed the earth, man’s home, at the center of the universe. The sun, moon, and stars were created to give light to the earth. All things were made to minis ter to man’s welfare. Man himself was created in the image of God, perfect and immortal. In this old philosophy and theology supernaturalism was universal; there was no proper conception of nature and of natural law. The earth was peopled not only with godlike men but also with manlike gods, angels, spirits, witches, demons. Some supernatural being was responsible for every pheno menon. The movements of sun and stars, the return of the seasons, wind and rain, lightning and rainbow, vol canoes and earthquakes, pla gues and pestilences, were willed by some supernatural being. All nature was the expression of wills, big or little, good or bad. The old ethics was based primarily on the will of God, supernaturally revealed in code or book, and to this certain rules were added from time to time by Church or State under divine gui dance. Right was what God approved, wrong was what 40 Panorama He forbade, and if ever doubts arose with regard to these there were not lacking those who would interpret the will of God. Man him self was a free moral agent. No bonds of heredity or ne cessity rested on his mind or soul. He was the architect of his own character, the ar biter of his own destiny. All good w£s the result of good will, all evil of evil will, and good would be rewarded and evil punished either in this life or in an eternal life of bliss or torment. There was enormous satis faction in this view of the universe and of man. It not only glorified man, explained evil, and promised redemp tion, but it was a great sti mulus to efforts for better ment and a source of high idea'ls and aspirations, and undoubtedly its commands and sanctions worked power fully to preserve the ethical code. Furthermore, there was admirable directness and positiveness in the old ethics regarding right and wrong, truth and error, freedom and responsibility, rewards and punishments. There was no hazy middle ground between these, no relativity of truth or right or duty to confuse the mind. Things were ab solutely true or false, com pletely right or wrong. This old faith with its specific commandments was especially well suited to immature minds. In the childhood of the individual and of the race there is need of author ity and obedience before it is possible to appeal to rea son. Childhood is predomi nantly the age of obedience, adolescence of imitation and example, maturity of reason and judgment. Society is compelled to re press many of the primor dial reactions and instincts of the natural man. Our whole culture rests upon the suppression of antisocial im pulses and the cultivation of social and moral reactions. If such reactions are to be built into character and be come “second nature,” they must be cultivated early, preferably in the home, and ethical teaching must be clear-cut and authoritative. The old ethics, when wisely inculcated, was admirably suited to this purpose. It did develop men and women of high moral character, and to a large extent it forms the March 1967 41 foundation of our present social systems. Contrast with this older philosophy, theology, and ethics the newer' revelations of science. The man of scien tific mind seeks truth rather than comfort or satisfaction. He would follow evidence wherever it leads, confident that even unwelcome truth is better than cherished error, that the permanent welfare of the human race depends upon “the increase and dif fusion of knowledge among men,” and that truth alone can make us free. Science is not an esoteric cult and scientific methods are not mysterious or magical pro cesses. Huxley once defined science as trained and orga nized common sense, and scientific methods of inquiry are only the careful and ac curate methods that are used by intelligent people every where in the affairs of every day life. These methods con sist in observation, compa rison, analysis, and general ization. Every sensible per son uses these methods in his business or profession, and in his judgments of men, policies, and institutions. It is only in its greater accu racy that the scientific me thod differs from those in universal use. It is true that no scientific observation, comparison, analysis, or gen eralization is ever complete or perfect; it is true that in science, as well as in affairs of life, we deal with proba bilities of a higher or lower order rather than with cer tainties; it is true that all generalizaions are theories rather than facts and that all scientific knowledge is re lative and not absolute. But in spite of these limitations, no other method of inquiry has been found as reliable as the scientific method. It would seem incredible, were it not an actual fact, that anyone should object to the use of such methods of inquiry regarding the origin and nature of man, society, government, ethics, religion, the Bible, or anything else; but, alas! there are thousands, if not millions, of people in this country, some of them educated and intelligent with respect to things with which they have had experience, who refuse to apply common sense methods of inquiry to such subjects, who charac terize those who do this as 42 Panorama atheists, blasphemers, dis honest scoundrels, and who denounce science and scien tists for laying impious hands on sacred things which must never be studied by the methods of common sense. To those who refuse to apply scientific methods of inquiry to the study of man and society, cosmogony and theology, ethics and religion, but who base their whole conception of these upon an cient traditions or unreason ing emotions, science has no message; they neither under stand the language nor ap preciate the methods of science. But to the increas ing number of those who re cognize that man, society, and human institutions are proper subjects of scientific investigation, and who also realize th^it neither authority, tradition, nor prejudice is a safe guide in the search for truth, the question may arise as to what effect the scien tific study of these subjects will have on human ideals, aspirations, and conducts. Accordingly, these remarks are addressed to those only who accept the methods and results of science in their application to man but who are concerned that mankind shall grow not only wiser but also better as the ages pass. The methods and results of science have shaken to their foundations the old cosmogony and philosophy. It is now universally recog nized that the earth is not the center of the universe, but a. mere dot in a mediocre solar system whirling through immeasurable space. Man is only one of some millions of species of living things on the earth, and although in mind and soul he is the pa ragon of animals, it is be coming increasingly certain that the traditional views re garding h i s supernatural creation and divine perfec tion are no longer tenable. On the contrary, the sciences of geology, biology, psycho logy, sociology, and anthro pology are furnishing an ever-increasing amount of evidence that the body, mind, and society of man are pro ducts of evolution. The old philosophy of universal su pernaturalism is giving place to a philosophy of universal naturalism; everything that has been scientifically ana lyzed is found to be natural March 1967 43 — that is, orderly, lawful, causal — and many men of science claim that “nature is everything that is.” Belief in an anthropomorphic God, a big man in the skies who made us little men in His own image, established so ciety, ethics, and religion by His commands, and governs the world as a human auto crat, is rapidly yielding placej to more idealistic concep tions. It appears probable that the universe and man are subject to immutable natural laws; that causality is univer sal in the living as well as in the lifeless world; that the entire man, body, mind, and soul, develops from a germ and is the product of heredity and environment; that will itself is no excep tion1 to .universal causality, since it is merely a link in the chain of cause and effect, being itself the effect of pre ceding causes and the cause of succeeding effects; that freedom is the result of in telligence acting as cause; that intelligence is the capa city of consciously profiting by experience; that instincts and emotions are causally related to body functions; that society, ethics, and even religion are based primarily on instincts, emotions, re action patterns, and ductless glands. Some of these conclusions are tentative and may be modified by further research, but there can be no doubt as to the general trend of the scientific study of man and his activities. These conclu sions, or others of a similar nature, are now accepted by most of the recent investiga tors in human biology, psy chology, and sociology. The application of science and the scientific method of observa tion and experiment to hu man behavior has revealed much concerning the physio logy of mind as well as the hidden springs of action, the unconscious complexes that determine our constitu tional hopes and fears, our prevailing loves and hates, our delusions and failures, and “the sin which doth so easily beset us.” Recent stu dies indicate that there is also a physiology of ethics, and that our conceptions of right and wrong, of good and bad, are associated with par ticular body functions, re action patterns, and instincts. Panorama In short, man himself, in all of his manifold complexities and activities, is a part of Nature. There can be no doubt that science has given us grander conceptions of the universe that were ever dreamed of in former times. Even in its revelations concerning man, science is giving us not only truer but also grander views than the old ones. There is sublimity in the conception of man as the climax of vast ages of evolution, as the highest and best product of this eternal process, as the promise of something better still to be. The evolution of man from lower forms of life is not degrading but inspiring. Nature and human history love, to proclaim the fact that a humble origin does not preclude a glorious destiny. “The real dignity of man consists not in his origin, but in what he is and in what he may become.” If all our activities are the results of natural causation, it means that the will is not absolutely free, but practical people have always known that freedom is relative and not absolute; that we are partly free and partly bound. We know that we are able to inhibit many reactions, instincts, and forms of be havior and to choose between alternatives that are offered. But howevet we may ex plain that which we call free dom, it is plain that for practical purposes it exists, though in varying degrees in different persons or in the same person at different times, and that it entails a corresponding degree of res ponsibility. The universality of natural law does not des troy ethics or the basis of ethics; on the contrary, it places morality upon a na tural, causal, understandable basis. Furthermore, it leads to a more rational view of human behavior and to a more sympathetic attitude toward the criminal or the offender. As long as men regarded nonethical conduct as the result of absolutely free will, or of an evil spirit within man, it was logical enough to exercise the demon by torture and in general to “make the punishment fit the crime” rather than make it fit the criminal. But an understanding of the fact that nonethical conduct is March 1967 45 causal rather than capricious and is the result of natural rather than supernatural causation leads society to look for and to correct these causes rather than to seek vengeance or retribution. In deed, the only justification for punishment of any kind is the correction of the of fender or the protection of society; there is no longer any place in civilized society or in a rational theology for retributive or expiatory pu nishment. A study of human history and prehistory shows that there has been a wonderful development of ethics and of religion. There is no satis factory evidence that these were handed from heaven in perfect form, but there is abundant' evidence that they, in common with all other things, have been evolving and that this process has not yet come to an end. Whatever the ultimate ba sis of ethics may be, Whether divine commands, intuitions and instincts, utility or plea sure, the content remains es sentially the same: however much codes and practices may change, our ideals and instincts remain much the same from age to age. Nevertheless, the decline of faith in lhe supernatural origin of man and of ethics, the decreasing fear of hell or hope of heaven, and the in creased freedom of thought and action brought about by science and education have led, in some instances, to a general weakening of the ethical code. When increas ing freedom carries with it an increasing sense of respon sibility and duty it never en dangers progress, but when liberty degenerates into li cense it marks the beginning of social and moral decay. Freedom is one of the prin cipal goals of human endea vor, but the best use man can make of his freedom is to place limitations upon it. We can be safely freed from external restraints only in so far as we replace these by internal inhibitions. Partly as a result of this increased freedom from the old restraints, but largely as one of the terrible aftermaths of the World War, lawless ness, immorality, and selfish ness seem to be more than usually evident throughout the world today. The war 46 Panorama gave social sanction to mur der, arson, and theft; it un chained the wild beasts in men that long had been res trained; it glorified acts which in times of peace would have been abhorred; and it is no wonder that we are reaping the whirlwind. Grafters in high office and bandits in high-powered cars are preying on society. Law lessness and selfishness are widespread. The real problem that confronts us, and it is a great problem, is how to adjust religion to science, faith to knowledge, ideality to reality, for adjustment in the reverse direction will never happen. Facts cannot be eliminated by ideals and it is too late in the history of the world to attempt to refute the find ings of science by sentimental objections or supposed theo logical difficulties. If science makes mistakes, science must furnish the cure; it can never be done by church councils, state legislatures, nor even by popular vote. The only possible remedy for the present deplorable condition is not less but more and better science and educa tion; science that recognizes that the search for truth is not the whole of life, that both scientific reality and religious ideality are neces sary to normal, happy, use ful living. We must keep our feet on the ground of fact and science, but lift our heads into the atmosphere of ideals. "To the solid ground of Nature trusts the mind thjit builds for aye.” Educa tion from the earliest years must teach love rather than hate, human brotherhood rather than war, service ra ther than selfishness; it must develop good habits of body and mind; it must instill re verence, not only for truth but also for beauty and righteousness. — Excerpt from the article of Edwin Grant Conklin in Scribner’s Magazine, 1925. March 1967 47 ■ The purpose and value of the 9tudy of humanities and how the subject should be taught. THE HUMANITIES: PLUS CREATIVE TEACHING Webster defines the hu manities as the branches of learning concerned with hu man thought and relations; especially literature and phi losophy and, often, the fine arts and history. The National Foundation of the Arts and the Humani ties Act of 1965 (NFAHA), Section 12, defines the arts and humanities as all those subjects in the elementary and secondary school pro gram which involve the stu dent in the consideration of aesthetics/ social and ethical values. Harold Taylor, chairman for the University of Ken tucky Symposium on the Hu manities and the Schools, held in Lexington in 1965, states: “The humanities are not culture-containers or value-containers or courses in the higher things. . . When we speak of the hu manities we are speaking of an area of concern which makes all social, moral and cultural questions a matter for new and continuing en quiry. A recent seminar designed to develop a better under standing of the interrelation ships between the arts and the humanities, sponsored by the Illinois State Office of Education, defined the hu manities to include history, literature, art, and music. There are many defini tions of the humanities, and there are just as many defi nitions of the objectives of a humanities program. The seminar concluded that the purpose of the humanities is to increase the students’ gen eral knowledge and appre ciation rather than to teach a definite skill. Some of the instructional objectives in regard to the humanities and the arts are: 48 Panorama To introduce all students to the study of man — his nature, the full develop ment of his faculties, the realization of his aspira tions, and the securing of his well being. To help the student come to know himself, to understand what has shap ed his beliefs, attitudes, and fortunes and to dev elop a critical sense which will allow him as an indi vidual to select and pre serve the best in human societies. To lead the student to understand how the arts interpret and communicat ed man’s view of himself and of his world. To develop the student’s capacity for esthetic judg ment. Unquestionably, a humani ties program has value. The humanities course is a basic and necessary program added to the curriculum. That there are difficulties in presenting a humanities program is obvious, and per haps the greatest difficulty lies with the students’ pri mary source, the teacher. It would require a sensitive teacher, deeply rooted in all of the humanities, or highly developed and cooperative teaching team, to correlate and weave such a course into the curriculum effectively. Another difficulty in pre senting a humanities course is that we are sometimes tempted to broaden our sub ject areas to such an extent that nothing has value. Here broadening subject areas really means stretching subject areas so thin that only a potpourri of high lights of the related arts may be taught at the sacrifice of the real content of each one. A humanities course can not and should not be ex pected to replace any course. Individual disciplines should continue to be taught by creative teachers, primarily concerned with one disci pline but having a deep well of knowledge from which to draw information concern ing all disciplines. For example, when the music classes are learning about the modes, or are sing ing plainsong, or discussing the history of notation, why not point out the artistry of illustrated manuscripts evi dent in examples of early notation as typical of the art March 1967 49 of the medieval period? Pic tures of exteriors and in teriors of cathedrals could foster speculation and discus sion, not only concerning art of the period but also possi bly, the reason for the aus tere and absolute music of the time. Another approach to the humanities — based program could be the composer ap proach, for example, a study of Mozart. Mozart’s creative achievements transcend all time barriers. He brought to the classic era what Mi chelangelo, Raphael, and Da Vinci gave to the renaissance; and he was also an inspira tion to the romanticists who followed. Reportedly, Tschaikowsky stated that be cause of Mozart he devoted his life to music. Today, the sonatas of Mozart have given food for thought to contem porary composers. Or, socio logically speaking once again, one might point out that it was Mozart who was the first composer to revolt against the system of patronage pre valent in his time. In our present era, an iso lated study of rhythm might prove interesting. This pre sentation might be made in reverse order, starting with listening in contemporary idioms, both popular and neoclassic. Listening lessons should be included with any study. But listening should be ac tive and purposeful listening, cultivating listeners to, and not passive hearers of music. “The first essential of good teaching,” according to Gilbert Highet in The Art of Teaching, “is that the teacher must know the sub ject.” By knowing the sub ject, we must be aware of the relationship of the subject to other disciplines, to events and to people/ Every teacher should be teaching our “hu man ties” to the past and to the present. A humanities program is not primarily intended to teach skills — and this is as it should be — but without performance and skills there would be no humanities. Let us advocate a required course in the humanities for all students — and all teach ers. But a humanities course in addition to, not instead of, the individual disciplines. — Ila B. Lowery in the DKG Bulletin, Volume XXXIII-2. 50 Panorama ■ A bill was presented in the Philippine Congress to abolish the death penalty. Here are the arguments for and against on the subject as presented in Bri tish newspapers. SHOULD THE DEATH PENALTY BE ABOLISHED? Britain abolished the death penalty on Nov. 9 last year, for an experimental period of five years. Parliament re sisted all attempts by opponents of the change to retain capital punishment for categories of killing — the murder of a police or prison officer, murder by poison, murder in the course of sexually assaulting a child, and types of mur der considered specially heinous or exceptionally preventible by the threat of hanging. The British Parliament has been concerned with the question of the abolition of the death penalty since 1929. A committee, duly appointed, found: 1. That abolition had not caused an increase in mur der in other countries — in most, a decrease had resulted. 2. That the eight states of the United States which had abolished the death penalty were among those with the lowest murder rate. 3. That nowhere had abolition led to an increase in the carrying of firearms, in murder by “professional” cri minals, or in the resort to “lynch law.” These findings stilled many misgivings, and the select committee recommended in 1930 that the death penalty be abolished experimentally for five years. Public opinion was against this. But though the re port was pigeonholed, it was not forgotten by the reformers. March 1967 51 However, in 1957 an Act of Parliament limited the application of the death penalty for murder to murders of police and prison officers, murder with firearms of explo sive, murder accompanied by stealing, murder done to avoid arrest or to assist escape, and multiple murder. The act also set up a new defense to a charge of mur der, namely, that the offender might be of "diminished responsibility" because of the state of his mind. Because of its anomalies, the act was considered a failure — especially by judges and lawyers. The difficulty of "grad ing" types of murder, a point the abolitionists made, be came clearer when theory was put into practice. Four years later Parliament was given another opportunity to abolish the death penalty totally through a Private Member’s Bill. It decided to do so for an experimental period of five years. Many impartial observers believe that the death penalty will never be reinstated. Arguments for and against this important change in the law, as they have been presented to the public in the past 40 years, may be summarized in this way: For Retention The text talionis — "an eye for an eye;” he who kills should be killed. Murder stands in a class by itself and should have a punishment of its own. The safety of the State is the supreme law; and mur derers are enemies of the State. For Abolition This is primitive and sole ly retributive. You might as well draw the teeth of a man who has knocked another’s teeth out. Murderer’s are seldom the worst of people — they offer unusual promise of reform. This is totalitarian. All criminals, in developed coun tries, are enemies of the State. That is why their con duct is called crime. 52 Panorama The fear of death is the greatest of ail fears; the death penalty therefore is the greatest of all deterrents. The death penalty is more likely than any other to arouse in the criminal a sense of his wrong-doing and bring him to repentance. Prolonged imprisonment is worse than death. For certain types of crimi nal there is no hope of recla mation. Even if abolition does not increase murder, it probably increases other crimes (bank robberies for example) from which murder may often arise. The abolitionist countries afford no' parallel to Britain. They are mainly pastoral, not industrial, and their peo ple more widely dispersed. What are abolitionists go ing to do with reprieved murderers who kill their war ders? Why should the State keep a murderer alive at the tax payer’s expense, perhaps for 20 years or more? The evidence of the abo litionist countries disproves this. The murderer, it seems, ponders about penalties less than, say the embezzler. How can this be proved? And of what value, once he is dead, is his repentance so cially? No murderer has ever been known to refuse a reprieve. This may be true of the insane, whom we should not put to death anyway. Among the sane, few such criminals are murderers. Where shall we stop? The evidence from the abo litionist countries refutes this absolutely. Belgium’s population den sity is rather greater than that of Britain’s and its trade is highly industrial. There has been no execution there since 1863, and murders have steadily decreased. They don’t, even in aboli tionists countries. Let the prisoner earn his keep, and his family’s, as in Sweden. If necessary, train him in productive work. March 1967 53 This is how the abolitionists have always answered the retentionists. But their positive arguments have always been more abstract and ethical, drawing less on forecasts of practical consequences. This is how they go, with the retentionists answers: For Abolition Human life is the gift of the Creator. No man is em powered to take it away. This sanctity of human life is as binding on the State as on the individual. The deterrent effect of the death penalty is much exag gerated. Reliance on the death penalty merely satisfies and makes secure the public mind, instead of encouraging the elimination of crime by an attack'on its social causes. The death penalty abandones all hope of reforming the criminal. An execution adversely af fects all who must have con tact with it, distressing or brutalising the prison staffs. Executions lead to imita tive crime. For Retention Few of the great religions have ever regarded human life as inviolate, because a future existence is the basis of their belief. States have never behaved as though these were true. The acceptance of war as an act of State is an entire re jection of it. That is mere supposition. No one has ever known how many it deters. One could say the same of any penalty. Until the social causes are known and elimi nated the public mind must be satisfied and, as far as pos sible, “made secure.” The murderer is not, in most cases, likely to repeat his crime. The question of his “reform” is therefore of little relevance. Representatives of the pri son staffs have always denied this. Even if this were true one cannot order society accord ing to the possible behaviour 54 Panorama There are worse crimes than murder. Fraudulent conspiracies, for example, re sulting in the ruin and (sometimes) the deaths of many people. They deserve the highest penalties. The death penalty is irre parable. Innocent men have been hanged. In putting a man to death one removes the mainspring from any move ment there may be to reverse the verdict. Executing a criminal in flicts life-long suffering on his relatives, who are inno cent of blame. of its few unbalanced mem bers. This sounds like a plea for more hanking, not less. Mur der is the most abhorrent crime of all to most people, because their minds can en compass it. This is true, and deplor able; and no effort must ever be spared to prevent miscar riages of justice. But it does not outweigh the need for a supreme sanction. So does the murder. And so does life imprisonment. It keeps the murderer alive and prevents his wife from starting a new life, through remarriage. — By C. H. Rolph. WIVES AND MEN It is one of the best bonds, both of chastity and obedience, in the wife if she thinks her hus band wise, which she will never do if she finds him jealous. Wives are young men’s mistresses, compa nions for middle age, and old men’s nurses; so as a man may have a quarrel to marry when he will. — Francis Bacon. March 1967 55 INCREASING MILKFISH PRODUCTION “The fishing industry in the Philippines offers vast potential for expansion, and if milkfish can be induced to spawn in ponds and rivers, production of this protein rich food can be increased by ten times.” This is the gist of a report by Dr. Howard P. Clemens, professor of zoology and fish culture expert of the Uni versity of Oklahoma, who spent a month in the Phil ippines as consultant of the US-AID mission. Clemen’s observation is that the Philippines could boost milkfish or bangus production many times its present level of output by the improvement of farm ma nagement techniques. A director of the Fisheries Research Center at Norman, Oklahoma, Clemens spent much of his time with local fish culturists, assisting them in the use of hormones for artificial spawning. Milkfish culture is under taken in widely-scattered sec tions of the country. How ever, Dr. Clemens observed, local fish farms depend on the sea for their supply of milkfish fry. He said fish farmers would not have to resort to natural sources, if the “sabalo,” mo ther bangos, which provides the fry, were caught and stocked in fishponds or hat cheries for spawning pur poses. To undertake the technique, the sabalo is need ed in large quantities. Clemens suggested two ap proaches to spawning milk fish: 1. Obtain the “sabalo” just before spawning and in ject the fish with hormones to induce the activity. 2. Catch the “sabalo” on its migration to the sea and place it in salt water ponds to be nourished and later in jected for gonadal growth and eventual spawning. 56 Panorama “If the mature specimens, in the case of the first ap proach, are difficult to ob tain,” Clemens explained, “a method for handling the ‘sa balo’ in captivity would have to be developed.” He said that the second ap proach would be a long-term process, but that once the requirements were worked out, it would be just a matter of administering the materials for spawning the fish. Clemens cited the need for building more fishponds, both brackfish and freshwa ter, and adopting improved fish farm management tech niques in order to have an immediate increase <in milk fish production. Milkfish production in the Philippines now totals 63,000 metric tons annually. — Adapted from the Manila Times, February 15, 1967. CIVILIZATION AND GOVERNMENT The more perfect civilization is, the less occar sion has it for government, because the more it does regulate its own affairs, and govern itself; but so contrary is the practice of old governments to the reason of the case, that the expenses of them in crease in the proportion they ought to diminish. — Thomas Paine. March 1967 57 IMPROVING OUR ENGLISH This section of Panorama will be regularly published for the benefit of Filipino students of English. It will be devoted to idiomatic English — nouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, and expressive phrases. Idiomatic expressions are distinctive ways or peculiarities of using words and phrases in English. They are usually forcible, terse, and vivid. They are the most difficult part of the language for a person to learn who is not an American or Englishman. They must be committed to memory and frequently used in speaking and writing. VERBS WITH PREPOSITIONS 1. Abide by a statement, a decision; He must abide by our agreement. 2. Abound in. Our seas abound in fish. 3. Abstain from food, from drink, from harmful practices. 4. Accede to a request. Accept it. 5. Accommodate a person with a sum of money he needs. 6. Account to the librarian for the book you borrowed. 7. Accuse a person of bad conduct. 8. 1 Acquit oneself well is to do one’s work well. The student acquitted himself well in his lesson. 9. Act under. They act under orders of their chief. 10. Adhere to one’s party, to principles of truth and honour. 11. Admit of. This rule admits of no exception. 12. Back out means to withdraw from a promise. He tried to back out of the contract. 13. Back up means to support. He backs up his classmate in a discussion with another student. 14. Bear out, is to confirm. If some proof bears out the accu sation, this party will go to jail. 15. Bear upon or on: applies or relates. Your statements do not bear on the question. 58 Panorama 16. Bear with, means, to tolerate, to be indulgent to. Bear with me while I point out the error you made. 17. Beat off, is to drive back. It is not easy to beat off a swarm of bees attacking us. 18. Beat upon, is to strike upon continuously. The rain des cended, and the floods dame, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell. — Bible. 19. Blame for. He blames you for neglect of duty. 20. Blow over is to pass away without injurious effect. The storm speedily blew over. 21. Blush at, for. She blushed at the mention of her lover’s name. I blush for the vices of my countrymen. 22. Boast of. One boasts of his strength and riches. 23. Boil down to is to be reduced to a point. His reasons boiled down to this. 24. Border on. His loud yelling bordered on madness. 25. Break away from control. The student broke away from all discipline. 26. Break into is to enter suddenly and forcibly. His carabao broke into my rice field and did much damage. They break into a run, is to change from walking to run ning. 27. Break out is to burst forth, to appear suddenly; also, to escape from restraint. The sun broke out and bright ened the horizon. Cholera has broken out among the barrio inhabitants. The fire broke out in the lower floor and soon the whole house was in flames. 28. Break with, means, to stop being a friend. 29. Bring down, is to cause to come down, to humble; to shoot down. To bring down proud looks. 30. Bring out, is to expose, to cause to appear. The investiga tion will bring out surprising stories. 3). Bring up. To bring up a child, is to educate or train him. 32. Call at one’s house; to come to the house and ask about its residents. This boat does not call at Cebu. 33. Call on or upon. To pay a brief visit to. Of what use is it to call on people who are not your friend. I hope March 1967 59 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 60 to call on you at your office today. You will be called upon to explain your conduct. Care for or about. He did not care about wealth. I don’t care for sugar, means, 1 do not like sugar. Carry out, is to execute instructions given. A dutiful son likes to carry out his father’s wishes. He has no doubt about this ability to carry out his plan to study in this college. Cast aside, is to reject, to throw aside as useless. Do not cast aside the love of truth. Cast in one’s lot with, is to share with him in happiness or misfortune. Cast out, is to reject, to expel. The Jews cast him out of the temple. Catch up, is to snatch or take up suddenly; to come up with, to overtake. You catch up a companion in a walk, or in his studies, when he has got ahead of you. Clear a person of or from an accusation. Close down. A shop is said to have “closed down” when it stopped business. Come across, is to meet with accidentally, to discover, Searching for things in the library, I came across an old book. Come by. To come by way of or by means of. This package came by boat and not by plane. He would not tell me how he came by his watch. Come up to, is to conform to, to be equal to. This book comes up to my idea of what a school book ought to be. Compete with a person, for a thing. These young men competed with others for the first prize. Complain of a thing, to a person, against or of a person. He complains of a pain in his leg. I have to complain against him for his bad manners. Comply with, is to fulfill or to do what has to be done. They will comply with the order of the President. They asked him to comply with their request. Panorama 48. Confide in a person; confide a thing to a person. Do not confide your secrets to a stranger. I confided in him because he is truthful. 49. Consist in, of. His ability consists in his strong college preparation. The group consists of men, women, and children. 50. Correspond to or with: resemble or agree. The wing of a bird corresponds to the arm of a man. His opinion does not exactly correspond with mine. 51. Crave for, is to yearn for. The thirsty man craves for a glass of water. 52. Cut off, is to separate or to put an end to something. He cut off the head of the chicken. When all roads are guarded, his retreat is cut off. 53. Dawn on, means gradual realization, getting clearer, as morning dawns. It dawned on me, after careful thought, that his report was not true but merely in vented. 54. Deal in, is to do business in. This merchant deals in as sorted articles. 55. Deal with, is to have to do with. This subject deals with legal questions. Teachers should know how to deal with new students. 56. Deprive of. A man is deprived of his right to work for a living. Sickness deprives him of eyesight. 57. Dig up the soil in his piece of land is to turn over the soil by digging. 58. Disagree with. He disagrees with him on the question of politics. 59. Dispense with, is to get rid of something. He can easily dispense with his services. 60. Dispose of, is to sell or to give away. He has disposed of all his belongings. 61. Dissent from an opinion. 62. Distinguish between two or distinguish one from another. The light is so dim that I cannot distinguish a dog from a cat. An honest judge does not distinguish between the rich and the poor. March 1967 61 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 62 Do away with, is to put away, to remove, to destroy. We need to do away with bad habits. Do without a thing, is to get along without the thing. He can do without sugar for his coffee. Draw off, is to take away. He has drawn off a gallon of water from the barrel. Draw on or upon. One is said to draw on or upon a bank when he issues a check in order to get money from his deposit in it. Drive at, is to aim at, to intend. I listened to his long talk but could not make out what he was driving at. Dress up, is to adorn by dressing. He just now met his father dressed up in fine style. Drop in, is to visit casually. On my way home, I dropped in at the grocery to buy a few things. Drop out. To drop out is to leave the ranks. The teacher was so unreasonably strict that some students dropped out. Egg on, is to urge on. He egged him on to fight with a bigger man. Engage in battle, in controversy, in business; to be engaged in writing a letter. Entrust a person with a thing; entrust a thing to a person. I entrusted my money to him to take to the bank. I entrusted him with my money to take to the bank. Excel in painting, music, mathematics, running. To be superior to or better than others in some work or ability. Exchange a thing with a person for an equivalent. Will you exchange seats with me? I exchanged an old dress with my cousin for a hat. Fall on or upon, is: To drop on, or to attack. The Cons tabulary fell on the Huks capturing them. Fall out with a person, is to quarrel with him. Fall through, is to fail, to come to nothing. As neither of us would agree, the plan fell through. Feed on or upon. His dog feeds on poor meat. He feeds his horse on corn and molasses. Panorama 80. Feed with. I have fed the baby with milk, not with rice. 81. Ferret out, is to search out by patient efforts; to follow out till discovered. The police did not stop till he ferreted the thief out. 82. Flare up, is to give out a dazzling light. Also, to suddenly grow angry or irritated: He flared up when he was scolded. 83. Fly at, is to rush upon suddenly, to attack suddenly with angry words. The dog will fly at a man’s throat. The cat flew at the mouse. 84. Fret at, or about, is to be irritated. What is the old man fretting at? 85. Furnish a thing to a person; furnish a person with a thing. You furnish food to the hungry, medicine to the sick. You furnish a family with provisions, and a relative with money to buy articles for you. 86. Get along, is to advance; to prosper; also to live pleasantly together. He seems to be getting along well in his business. These two brothers never could get along. 87. Get at, is to reach, to attain to. The phrase implies effort. Our object in our study is to get at the truth. It is no easy thing to get at the meaning of every new Tagalog word. 88. Get behind, is to fall behind. It is the opposite of get • before. A man gets behind in business. It means he does not succeed and therefore is not able to meet the claims upon him. A man gets behind with his rent, when he is unable to pay his rent when it be comes due. 89. Get in, meaning, to enter. I went to your house today, but could not get in, i.e. enter it. A man gets in debt, meaning becomes indebted. 90. Get over, is to overcome, to surmount. To get over an illness, to recover from it. The boys got over the garden wall and ran away. The habits of a lifetime are not got over immediately. This man never got over the death of his son, meaning he was not able March 1967 63 to recover from the shock he received from his son’s death. 91. Get to, is to reach, to come close to, to attain to. I re solved if possible to get to the ship. When do you get to your destination? 92. Give in to, is to submit to, to agree to, to yield assent to. He gave in to the wish of the majority. The old gentlemen must give in to him. 93. Give off, is to produce odor or vapors. Some flowers give off their sweet fragrance at night. 94. Give up, is to abandon or relinquish, or to fail utterly. I gave up possession of my house today. We have given up all hope of our father’s recovery. The law yer said his client would not give up his claim to the property. To give up, is to die. He gave himself up to all kinds of low vices. We waited dinner for you till seven and then we gave you up. 95. Glance at, is to take a quick look at; or to touch on lightly, as in a speech. He glanced at the stranger’^ face. This newspaper article glances at our relations with America. 96. Go after, is to follow, to pursue. The dogs went after the wounded deer. 97. Go at. To go at a problem-means to try to solve it. 98. Cro on'with a work, is to keep on doing it. The good student goes on steadily with his studies. 99. Grieve at, for, over. They grieved at my misfortune. I grieve for him over the death of his father. 100. Grow in, is to increase or advance in respect of. Our friend grows in wisdom as he grows in years. 101. Guard against, from. He should guard against mistakes in his work. Her mother tried to guard her from dangers. 102. Hand down, is to leave to one’s successor, as from father to son. Our parents handed down to us their house and land. (To be Continued') 64 Panorama 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 Facing the Reality .......................................................... 1 Education for Nation Building .................................. 2 The Filipino Language ......................................................... 6 Life Without Principle ....................................................... 8 The Essentials of Good Teaching ..................................... 11 A Constitutional Convention for a New Constitution . . 13 Developing the Filipino Language ................................... 22 A Liberal Education; And Where to Find it .................. 33 The Limits of Human Relations........................................ 38 Science and the Faith of the Modern ............................ 40 The Humanities: Plus Creative Teaching ........................ 48 Should the Death Penalty be Abolished ........................ 51 Increasing Milkfish Production .......................................... 58 Improving Our English ............................ 58