Panorama

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Title: Panorama
Issue Date: Volume XIV (No. 9) September 1962
Year: 1962
Language: English
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XIV THE PHILIPPINE MAGAZINE OF GOOD READING MANILA, PHILIPPINES NO. 9 THE PRESIDENT AND PERSONALITY CULT The President of the Phil ippines as the first citizen of the Republic, is the central figure in our national life. It is not only in politics that he occupies the topmost po sition. In the social sphere, he is a sort of reigning mo narch. Business chambers, chambers of industries, busi nessmen’s clubs vie with one another to have him in their big affairs. Whatever the President does is carefully reported in the newspapers. He may be talking about economics, reli gion, or education; he may discuss marriage, business, athletics, food, clothing, or morality. In all these fields his comments and his op inions, regardless of his knowledge of the subject matter, are always published and quoted with a great deal of interest. His pictures are given prominence in news papers a^d magazines. He is the favorite speaker in any celebration. He is m^de the recipient of academic awards. His clothes are closely imi tated; they set the fashion for the nation. This image of the Filipino^ executive is not unique. We1 see it in a much larger scale in the President of the United States. He' stands as an object of the cult of per sonality. This is a phenome non which observers have lately been analyzing. It does not seem natural im a demo cracy; but it is intentionally and actively promoted in it. For in protecting the dignity of the office, it is deemed es sential to adopt spmething similar to a royal fult. But should it be so? Is this right? Must the President be paint ed and shown as a superman to give him the dignity and the majesty of his high of fice? How has this exaltation come about? A very interesting study of the subject was made by SisSeptember 1962 1 ter Mary Paul Paye, a 32-year old member of the Sisters of Marcy. In the Nation maga zine, Sister Mary wrote: "The American public is exposed to a dangerous phe nomenon: the personality cult of the President. I pro test — vehemently, vigorously, apolitically and almost alone. The suppression or the obs curing of significant news; the amassing by the Presid ent of personal power; and — most insidious of all —the ir rational worldwide identifica tion of him with the country as a whole . . . Mr. Kennedy has become synonymous with the U.S.; his victories are American victories; his health, American health; his smile, his family, his hobbies, his likes and dislikes, be come symbolic of the coun try.” Sister Mary holds the press largely responsible for this extreme adulation of a poli tical figure, this identifica tion of the President with the character, the condition, the virtues, and the glories of the nation. She continues: "The President and his fami ly are naturals for publicity, and journalists have not been slow to exploit the co lor, the drama, the human, appeal that emanate from the White House. Galleys of type and yards of picture spreads about the birthdays of the children, the social af fairs of the First Lady, the horsemanship of the sister, the recreational habits of the Attorney General’s family,' feed the public’s desire to know all about the White House inhabitants. Every thing goes to deepen the cult, "That the mass media should so exploit the Presid ent and his family for circu lation purposes is serious enough. But even more dan gerous implications arise: the danger of the imbalance of the news. Every inclusion means a corresponding exclu sion. And, even when signifi cant news is reported, as pri soners of the cult we may be tempted to overlook it. Readers often prefer to be amused rather than informed. Who doesn’t gravitate toward the human-interest story, per haps to the neglect of the duller but more significant news? . . . The effect is the displacement, or downgrad ing, of significant events.” This state of things is not right. For this problem, 2 Panorama which is indeed a problem, Sister Mary Paul presented this solution: "Awareness, by the President, the public, the press. The White House — elections or no elections — should guard itself more stringently against frivolous reporting. Editors and (ra dio and TV) program direc tors should weigh news and features for inherent values. And the American people should be aware that we are beginning to respond to the Chief, of State as we have responded to movie stars." In plain language, what the good Sister suggested is for the press and the public to develop and use a sense of proportion and to improve our^ sense of values. THE LOYAL FRIEND We all need the good word and advice of a loyal friend to inspire and encourage us to do the things we are not quite sure we are capable of doing. Very few people have the courage to set out by themselves alone. A good push and you either sink or swim — that’s life all around. "Show me your friends and I will tell you who you are,’’ is not a mere proverb. People judge you by your friends. Just because people are shabby-looking or poverty-stricken does not mean that they would not make wonderful friends. They may possess the wisdorp of Confucious or Socrates. The good rule is to associate with the kind and the wise, and kindness and wisdom will be the reward — to do foi&them what they do for you, to go fifty-fifty in life. Never make friends for what they have to offer you and never keep friends whose only interest in you is what you have to offer them. If you associate with the ignorant, be sure you do not willfully expose their ignorance. If you associate with the intelligent, don’t try to outsmart them. Friends remain friends only when all parties concerned are themselves. No one can hide his emotional or intellectual standards for long; sooner or later tbe true colors will appear. September 1962 3 * “A people that has not yet arrived at the fullness of life must grow 3 nd develop, otherwise its life would be paralyzed—which means its death.’* MABINI: ARCHITECT OF THE PHILIPPINE REVOLUTION By Cesar Adib Majul All revolutions, as move ments affirming the worth of the individual and attempt ing to re-define social rela tions, h!ive had their prota gonists. These are the men who either participated in timately in the determination of the direction of the move ment or who, in retrospect, analyzed rhe revolutionary events in terms of theoreti cal principles, making the Revolution a fact of signifi cance and assuring it a pro per position within the pers pective of the history of a na tion. It was Mabini’s distinct character that he played this double role in the Philip pine Revolution, more speci fically in its second phase. Hifr first role refers to his ac tivities as adviser to Aguinaldo in June 1898, and then as prime minister in the first Philippine Republic from January 1899 to May of the same year. As author of the electoral and other organic laws of the Revolutionary government, he was respon sible for formulating the postulates by which the au thority of a new-born state came into operation. Deter mining the broad outlines of foreign policy from June 1898 to May 1899, he saw to it that the recognition, of in dependence should not suffer any amendment. All of these mean, in effect, that Mabini played a major and vital role in determining the route the Revolution was to take. It was a direction from which the revolutionary leaders could not deviate without abandoning the primal prin ciples which fed the initial vigorous step of the Revolu tion. These were the princi4 Panorama pies of national independence and for the construction of a new social order in conson ance with “justice and rea son,” where social disharmo nies were absent. Filipino historians • have adequately described Mabini’s participation in the mo mentous events of our his tory. Consequently, an em phasis on his other role is in order. This is his posit’iQn as a Filipino political philo sopher par excellence. Ap plying categories, properly belonging to the philosophy of history, to the evjents of the Revolution when the suc cess of American arms became patent to all, he reflected on its rationale, gains, losses, and the eventual unfolding of its implications. Thus, as it were, the events of the Re volution began 'to be coordi nated into an intelligible system, and the Revolution itself could now be viewed as an important phase in the march of the Filipino towards more freedom. As a political philosopher reflecting on the Philippine Revolution, Mabini’s descrip tion as to what the revolu tion actually consisted of must be distinguished, from what he prescribed the revo lution ought to have been. He believed that when a people were consistently de nied participation in the high offices of a government, when their aspirations for better education and an in crease of civil rights were shamelessly disregarded, and when they begin to believe that the government was biased in favor of a special segment of society, a deep re sentment among the people would result. This situation together with circumstances such as a weakening of the government and a general disobedience to the laws would inevitably develop in to a revolution. A revolu tion is thus described as “the violent means utilized by a people ... to destroy a duly constituted authority, subs tituting for it another more in consonance with reason and justice.” And to estah * lish a connection between positive law and the abstract conception of justice, Mabini leaned heavily on natural law as a corrective or model for human law. Adhering to the excellence of the mind as a value, Mabini hoped that the exercise of reason September 1962 5 would lead men to discover solutions for the settlement of differences, formalize stand ards of justice, and lay down the foundations for what was believed to constitute the common and good life. Clearly, it is problematical as to how much reason can serve to diminish social con flicts, but it can be converse ly asserted that it is rather the dissolution of social in equalities that might precise ly make men think or reason better. However, it must be pointed out that Mabini was essentially a product of Euro pean rationalism and early nineteenth century liberalism, ideologies that maintained the almost infinite capacity of the mind to better things not only in the scientific field but also in the ethical and poli tical sphere. , These influences on Mabini led him to assert that the de sire for a revolution in the Philippines was derivative from the natural impulses, found among all men, toward progress. Or rather, when these impulses were being stifled by bad government revolution becomes a neces sity. To quote: “Th * tendency for betterment or progress is a necessity or law found in all beings, whether individually or col lectively. Thus a political re volution, which is generally intended by a people to bet ter their conditions, becomes an irresistable necessity . . . A people that has not yet ar rived at the fulness of life must grow and develop, other wise, its life would be para lyzed—which means its death. As it is unnatural that a be ing should resign itself to its own death, the people must employ all its energies in or der that a government that impedes its progressive dev elopment be destroyed.' * Mabini’s intense faith in the desire and ability of the Filipinos to better their lives and contribute to the general progress and culture of the world, as well as his belief that it was natural for a peo ple to do away with the im pediments stifling the im pulses toward progress, led him not only to justify the Philippine Revolution but also to assert that it was both irresistible and inevitable. Mabini revolted from the notion that the Filipinos were doomed indefinitely to brutalization and colonial and ecclesiasitical oppression. However, to bring about a successful termination to the Revolution, it was further 6 Panokama believed that the Filipinos had to be united into a sin gle will aiming at the good of all. And once this will was directed to organizing the collective life along na tional lines, it would ulti mately prevail over the mili tary forces either of Spain or that of the United States. It yas hoped that this will was, at bottom, one that re flected love of neighbor and country and could conse quently thriist to the back ground all petty, narrow and sectarian jealousies. Conse quently, a movement that was initiated to serve the in terests of a special class in society, nullified in effect the existence of such a will, and did not deserve the name of “revolution.” To quote: All agitations fostered by a special class in order that its particular interests be bene fited, do not deserve the name [of revolution]. Conversely, Mabini main tained that genuine revolu tions were essentially popular movements. Here, his demo cratic temperament is evi dent. Consequently, a pro blem that presented itself was how social power could be organized such that the most numerous class, that is, the poor, would not be taken advantage of by special groups in society. However, it is in vain that we look for a radical economic program by Mabini! It was Mabini’s basic de mocratic temper that also led him to consider the revolu tion against the Uhited States unjustified the moment the majority of the people desired peace. And he justi fied this action of the people by appealing to the law of self-preservation which dic tated prudence in pursuing the revolutionary movement the moment superior forces not only threatened addi tional misery and desolation but actually endangered tHe very life of society itseff Thus, Mabini counselled that the violent and coercive means to attain independence should be transformed into peaceful agitatioi^ This was still, in any case, a manifes tation of the impulse for pro gress. Yet Mabini feared that the revolutionary fervor might decline with piece meal political concessions granted by the Americans. Consequently, he insisted that the revolution, as armed uprising, was simply a tech September 1962 7 nique to bring about the re cognition of individual rights and also independence as the prerequisite to an expansive life and ordered society. And as long as independence was .. possible by peaceful means, all energies ought to be utilized to attain it by such means. Once devoid of political power to pursue his ideas, Mabini contented him self with reminding his com patriots of the ideals of the Revolution and invited them to search into their hearts to discover if it were not really independence that they -wanted. Mabini was a supreme ex ample of a man willing to sacrifice sacrifice personal in terest for what he conceived to be the general interest of all. Emancipating * himself from the narrow * interests that plague an ordinary man, he was able to exercise, to use Rousseau’s term, the gen eral will, a will not neces sarily that of the people, but a will for the good of all the people. Mabini’s legacy is for all patriots and free men. THOSE THREE BIG WORDS * It is quite true, of course, that liberty, equality and fraternity are more frequently upon the lips of men who are bent on destroying them, the true believers keeping tfiem more silently at heart. But the lip service and the betrayals exist because some men are exploiters and others are exploited, because the groups are in conflict, and because the conflict can be resolved only by the end of exploitation itself. But the end of exploitation would be the beginning of actual brotherhood, the end of unequal- powers would be the beginning of equality, and the end of extreme privi lege for a few would be the beginning of genuine liberty for all. 8 Panorama One of the great defenders of human freedom re minds us of its significance. Written 160 years ago, these words are still valid today. W RIGHTS CP MAN When we speak of right we ought always to unite with it the idea of duties: rights become duties by reciprocity. The right which I enjoy be comes my duty to guarantee it to another, and he to me: and those who violate the duty justly incur a forfeiture of the right. In a political view of the case, the strength and perma nent security of government is in proportion to the num ber of people interested in supporting it. The true po licy therefore is to interest the whole by an equality of rights, for the danger arises from exclusions.^ It is possi ble to exclude men from the right of voting, but it is im possible to exclude them from the right of rebelling against that exclusion; and when all other rights are taken away the right of rebellion is made perfect. While men could be per suaded they had no rights, or that rights appertained only to a certain class of men, or that government was a thing existing in right of itself, it was not difficult to govern them authoritatively. The ignorance in which they were held, and the superstition in which they were instructed, furnished the means of doing it. But when the ignorance is gone, and the superstition with it; when they perceive the imposition that has been acted upon them; when they reflect that the cultivator and the manufacturer are the primary means of all the wealth that exists in the world, beyond what nature spontaneously produces; when they begin to feel their con sequence by their usefulness, and their right as members of society, it is then no longer possible to govern them as before. The fraud once de tected cannot be re-acted. To ^attempt it is to provoke deri sion, or invite destruction. That property will ever be September 1962 9 unequal is certain. Industry, superiority of talents, dex terity of management, ex treme frugality, fortunate op portunities, or the opposite, or the means of those things, will ever produce that effect, without having recourse to the harsh, ill-sounding names of avarice and oppression; and besides this there are some men who, though they do not despise wealth, will not stoop to the drudgery or the means of acquiring it, nor will be troubled with it beyond their wants or their independence, while in others there is an avidity to obtain it by every means not punish able; it makes the sole busi ness of their lives, and they follow it as a religion. All that is required with respect to property is to obtain it honestly, and not employ it criminally; but it is always criminally employed when it is made a criterion for exclu sive rights. In institutions that are purely pecuniary, such as that of a bank or a commer cial company, the rights of the members composing that company are wholly created by the property they invest therein; and no other rights are represented in the govern ment of that company than what arise out of that pro perty; neither has that gov ernment cognizance of any thing but property. But the case is totally dif ferent with respect to the ins titution of civil government, organized on the system of representation. Such a gov ernment has cognizance of everything, and of every man as a member of the national society, whether he has pro perty or not; and, therefore, the principle requires that every man, and every kind of right, be represented, of which the right to acquire and to hold property is but one, and that not of the most essential kind. The protection of a man’s person is more sacred than the protection of property; and besides this, the faculty of performing any kind of work or services by which he acquires a livelihood, or maintaining his family, is of the nature of property. It is property to him; he has ac quired it; and it is as much the object of his protection as exterior property, possessed without that faculty, can be 10 Panorama the object of protection in another person. I have always believed that the best security for property, be it much or little, is to remove from every part of the community, as far as can possibly be done, every cause of complaint, and every mo tive to violence; and this can only be done by an equality of rights. When rights are secure, property is secure in consequence. But when pro perty is made a pretense for unequal or exclusive rights, it weakens the right to hold the property, and provokes indignation and tumult; for it is unnatural to believe that property can be secure under the guarantee of a society in jured in its rights by the in fluence of that property. — Thomas Paine. O WOMAN! If we take a survey of ages and of countries, we shall find the women, almost — without exception — at all times and in all places, adored and oppressed. Man, who has never neglected an opportunity of exerting his power, in paying homage to their beauty, has always availed himself of their weakness. He has been at once their tyrant and their slave. Nature herself, in forming beings so susceptible and tender, appears to have been more attentive to their charms than to their happiness. Continually surrounded with griefs and fears, the women more than share all our miseries, and are besides subjected to ills which are peculiarly their own. They cannot be the means of life without exposing them selves to the loss of it; every revolution which they undergo, alters their health, and threatens their existence. Cruel dis tempers attack their beauty — and the hour which confirms their release from those is perhaps the most melancholy of their lives. It robs them of the most essential characteristic of their sex. They can then only hope for protection from the humiliating claims of pity, or the feeble voice of gra titude. — Thomas Paine. September 1962 11 TvVO CENT JiEvery student of Educa tion, Political Theory, and Sociology is familiar with the name of Jean Jacques Rous seau. There is something lacking in the reading of a person who has gone through college if one or more works of this great thinker has been totally missed by him. As a matter of fact, students of Education should be ac quainted with some of Rous seau s ideas a'bout the process of teaching. It has been said that his political thoughts have helped to form the mind of modern Europe. His great work entitled The Social Contract was published just 200 years ago this year. The political philosophy discussed in that book had such a tremendous influence on French thought that it is said to have pre pared the ground for the French Revolution. In the best institution of learning, that book is usually read and studied by those interest ed in History and Philoso phy. It should, therefore, be ■ Vz » ... - of interest to us today to know something about the life and character of that famous man and the condi tions prevailing during his days. These are briefly des cribed in an article by Char les Campbell which follows in part. Rousseau’s epoch-making book The Social Contract had been preceded by his Discourse on the Influence of Learning and Art (1750) and the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1754). Thus men’s minds had already be come disturbed when The Social Contract was pub lished. A further contribu tion to the spreading restless ness in Europe was made by the waspish wit and mocking laughter of the great sceptic philosopher, Voltaire, Rous seau’s older contemporary. His savage attacks on the power, the intolerance and the superstition of the Catho lic Church, which he regard ed as the worst scourge of humanity, stung and quick ened the public mind. In 12 Panokama deed, it may be said that if Rousseau sowed the seed of which the ideas of the French Revolution were the harvest, it was Voltaire who prepared the ground for the sowing. The conditions of life in France aroused the passionate indignation of all liberal thinkers. For the French Court, the nobles and the clergy, to quote Voltaire’s ‘Dr. Pangloss’, “All was for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” The “pri vileged orders” saw to it that their taxes kept to a minimum. They were ex empt from la taille — an im post levied on the peasants just because they were peas ants. The lion’s share of all taxation was borne by this class, the artisans, the mer chants, and the professional workers. In addition, the peasant groaned under outof-date feudal dues that had been re-imposed after long disuse, as well as dues to the Church. Rabbits and pigeons might invade his land and consume his crop, but he dared not touch them; they were reserved for his lord’s sport. Nor dared he com plain if his fences were brok en down and his crop tram pled underfoot. There were unpleasant physical penalties for such insolence on his part. It was a society that to the casual observer might have appeared ordered, secure and established in its artificiality. But it was ripening a terrible harvest er rather, one should say, it was rotten through and through. Dickens, in his grim introuction to A Tale of Two Cities, wrote: “France was rolling with exceeding smoothness downhill, making paper money and spending it.” “The Woodman, Fate, and the Farmer, Death, though they work unceasing ly, work silently, and none heard them as they went about with muffled tread — the rather, forasmuch as to entertain suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheis tical and traitorous.” The Woodman was making a framework, complete with sack and bloody knife, that was to be much in use; and the Farmer’s carts to become the dirty and evil-smelling tumbrils that would trundle their crammed loads of aris tocrats to the guillotine. ' When The Social Con September 1962 13 tract was published in 1762, more than a quarter-of-a-century was to go by before the wild mob-cry of “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!” was to echo in the Paris streets. But the new wine of the book’s doctrines burst the old bot tles, so that, more and more, men looked at each other with a wild surmise and de manded “Why need it go on?” The political philosophy of Rousseau, in brief, was that society is founded on a contract that implies a mu tual obligation as between the people and the head of the State, in terms of which he is their ‘mandatory’, or accredited representative, but in no sense their master. Man as a being is born to be not only happy but good, so that the evil within him and around him is not to be attributed to original sin but to the fact that society has departed from the natural state of things and set up new strains, false values, wrong standards of conduct. To win his way back to a simple and desirable condi tion, man must banish from life its artificial elements. Instead of giving ear to the doctrines of the warring priests and philosophers he should listen to his own in tuitions, that tell him there is a benevolent divine spirit, who rewards virtue and punishes crime, and that the human soul is free and im mortal. An attractive gospel indeed to hungry desperate down trodden serfs! The pros perous clergy promised them “pie in the sky”. But here was a new intoxicating creed that not only offered a bet ter life freely, here and now, but gave men a new vision of themselves, a new hope, a new inspiring goal. What of Rousseau himself, this man whose ideas threat ened the social order and helped to bring about its ruin? He was the son of a Swiss watchmaker, of French descent, and was born at Geneva on June 28, 1712. If his mother had not died in child-birth and had his father been less careless of his parental duty and less dissi pated, the boy might have had more balance and stabi lity of character. As things were, he had no regular schooling and developed un 14 Panorama disciplined habits that were to be a handicap for life. He was only thirteen when he was apprenticed to an en graver, from whose ill-usage, as he tells us in his Confes sions, he ran away. This highly-coloured autobiogra phy, written with a candour at times shocking, records many such instances of flights from situations that for one reason or another displeased him. He was employed with first one noble family then with another in Turin, as a do mestic servant, or footman, and was assisted to pursue his study of Italian music. But to the unstable youth the grass on the other side of the fences was ever the greener. Many people, men and women both, and some of them aristocrats, gave him thankless aid and shelter throughout his unsettled life, broken by periods of what can only be termed “vaga bondage’. Prominent among these was Mme. de Warens (‘mama’, as he called hei * ), a soulful and kind-hearted lady of easy morals who for years ‘protected’ him until at the last she wearied of his comings and goings and, to his great fury, found comfort elsewhere. An associate of a very different type was the dull unattractive servant-girl Therese Levasseur, who, ac cording to his own story, pre sented him with five illegiti mate children, which he left one by one at the door of the Foundlings’ Hospital in Paris. From place to place, from occupation to occupation, he drifted through the years, leading a wretchedly erratic life, now taken up by bene factors whose kindness he ill repaid, now in dire poverty, copying music, teaching mu sic, working as a clerk, trou bled by religious doubts and by the disparity between his principles and his practice, searching ever, it may be, for some summum bonum. In the latter part of his life he settled at last to the writ ing of the works that brought him fame, and as Saintsbury has said, "when not dominat ed by passion and prejudice, he became something of a sage.” But a mental disorder troubled him increasingly in his later years. In 1767 he came to Eng land at the invitation of the September 1962 15 philospher, David Hume; but with him, too, Rousseau quar relled violently. He accused Hume of plotting against him. Hume described him afterwards as “a man born without a skin.” When Rousseau went to England, Therese travelled separately, and James Boswell piloted her to her destina tion. But Dr. Johnson, stern moralist that he was, frowned on his protege’s acquaintance. “Rousseau, sir, is a very bad man. I would sooner sign a sentence for his transporta tion than that ,of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these many years.” The end of his troubled life was drawing near when in May 1778 he went to live on the Marquis de Girardin’s domain at Ermenonville, among the woods and heaths, where he botanized and re joiced in the beauty of Na ture that had always, through whatever vicissitudes, re mained dear to him. He was a sick man, a prey to para noid delusions, and some months later died of an apop lectic stroke — not by suicide, as was for long believed by some writers. We must turn to the poets for an epitah for this strange and complex character. Burns might well have had Rousseau in mind when he bade us, in his “Address to the Unco Guid”: "Gently scan your brother man!” And Byron, in Childe Harold. spoke of him as “the self torturing sophist who cast o’er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue of words.” Rousseau was not of the stuff of which martyrs are made, nor was he the type to lead an uprising. The revo lution he wrought was in the realm of ideas — an essential prelude to the violent up heaval that came after his death. Since then. sociology has become a branch of science and is no longer de pendent on brilliant flashes of insight. We can no longer accept the over-simplified origins in The Social Con tract, and anthropology has shown ‘the Noble Savage’ to be an eighteenth century myth. But Rousseau was nevertheless responsible for seminal ideas which helped to form the mind of modern Europe. His influence was enormous and we are still heavily indebted to him. 16 Panorama HUMANISM AND THE HUMANIST Humanism is a way of life based on the idea that man is all-important. He determines his own salvation. The super natural or the mystical has no place in the life of the humanist. His faith is found ed on man’s capacity for achievement, his potentiali ties for greatness, his in herent power for ceaseless improvement. Julian Huxley puts it in this way: “Man’s role is to be the instrument of further evolution on thjs planet—an evolutionary view of human destiny as against a theological or a magical, a fatalistic or a hedonistic one.” To the humanist, in his present life lies all of man’s opportunity and reward. He finds his glory in his work, his accomplishment. He re ceives his inspiration from his sense of self-accomplishment. His punishment comes from the realization of hav ing failed in his duty to his neighbor and himself. To cause pain to his child, his wife, his friend, his fellows, is to commit a wrong and to condemn himself for an act of inhumanity. He believes in the principle of human love, love for friends and foes alike. To him hope is a virtue that lies in the head and heart of every man as long as life endures. The sense of human dignity should be developed for without it man will fail to respect himself and his fel lowman. By the use of his own personal strength and with the assistance of such unavoidable forces as are pro vided by his cultural and so cial environment, man could direct his own growth and improvement towards the ful fillment of his destiny. Humapist societies exist in many countries today. They have not yet received the same recognition that govern ments accord to religious groups. But what they lack in privilege, the humanists September 1962 17 make up in prestige. For ex ample, the American Hu manist Association has in its ranks a good number of top scientists and intellectuals. The international Humanist union includes such influen tial leaders as the British biologist Julian Huxley and two Nobel prize winners: the British agriculturist Lord Boyd Orr and the American geneticist Herman Muller. The famous Norwegian psychiatrist Gabriel Langteldt, a prominent Humanist, declared that individuals, in the future development of mankind, would have to consider ethics as something removed from religion. He warned: “Crediting ethics to supernaturally inspired mes sages and to revelations has led and still leads to brutal wars. Ethics, anchored as it is in purely human needs, will always win where reli gion and ethics come into conflict.” Humanists maintain that their man-centered faith of fers much hope to the world. They are convinced . that their emphasis upon life here and now enables man to concentrate all his thought and energy upon the im provement of the earth he occupies. Humanist Langfeldt states: “As man be comes more educated, mysti cism and dogma disappear and are replaced by rational thinking. We believe in the goodness of men. If we can get rid of the political and religious pressures burden ing man today and encourage his honesty, generousness and intelligence instead, we can make a better world for all of us.” Unlike those whose ortho dox religious beliefs consider their life on this earth as ho more than a moment of tran sition to a life after death, the humanist lives and thinks in terms of his destiny on this earth. In the process of realizing that destiny, he makes use of mind, will, and emotion and takes advantage of the social and cultural forces or influences made available to him as a result of evolutionary progress to improve himself as a man and to contribute the best service he is capable of per forming. What this human destiny is Julian Huxley has put it in these words: “We can no longer envisage hu man destiny in such terms as 18 Panorama the will of God set over against the sinful will of man, or as the plan of a di vine creator frustrated by the imperfections and wilfulness of his creation. Human des tiny is to participate in the creative process of develop ment, whereby the universe as a whole can realize more of its potentialities in richer and greater fulfilments.” THE AGE OF PILLS Almost everyone takes pills, from the humble aspirin to the multi-coloured, king-sized three-deckers, which put you to sleep, wake you up, stimulate and soathe you all in one. It is an age of pills. Nembutal yellow as buttercups, azure amytal and the purple benzedrine; equinol, slumberol, and hey, ho, the valleyol. Vitamins to keep you strong, life pills to keep you sterile, and death pills for inducing permanent sleep and an open verdict. A thousand or so armless thali domide babies are as unlikely to discourage pill-taking as lung cancer is to discourage smoking, or road deaths motor ing, or fall-out nuclear testing. In any case, the little fel lows (thalidomide babies) can be mechanically equipped with an “educated” finger which does almost as well as 10 uneducated ones, enabling them to play the dulcimer and beach ball like anyone else. A pill a day keeps the druggist in pay. They are plentifully available, and new, interesting varieties are constantly appearing. Pills for slimming, pills for fattening and pills for potency. They help athletes to run faster, scholars to secure higher marks, comedians to be funnier, and lovers to be bolder. Little elegant boxes, like snuff-boxes, contain them. In France they are on free sale in suppository form. No one, a French chemist explains, commits suicide with suppositories. This is doubtless so. It would be too unromantic, and possibly even impracticable. — From London Diary, Malcolm Muggeridge. September 1962 19 LIKE FATHER LIKE SON! The intricacies of language took the fun out of the Jap anese conqueror’s life in Ma nila. The Jap soldier did not know English from Spanish, and much less, Tagalog, the native tongue. The Filipino, who spoke all three, could always pull a fast one on the Jap. He took Nippong-go in his stride. He learned to greet the Jap with a bow, and say, O hayo (good morning). This, he promptly changed to, O hayop! (Tagalog for beast). And the Jap was none the wiser. I remember well an amus ing incident in a street car in Manila just before the American landings on Leyte. In those days, the only ser viceable vehicles for public use were the Meralco trolley cars. The few autos that were, still in use were reserved for ranking Jap officers and the top Filipino puppets. The street cars were always packed, and people preferred to walk rather than fight their way in and sweat it out to their homes. I got into a street car bound for Sta. Ana, where the Japs had a big garrison. The motorman stopped at short intervals, even bet ween regular stops, to pick up Jap soldiers on their way to their barracks. It was te dious. There was hardly el bow space in the car. At one point, the car stopped to let some passen gers out. A Jap soldier, with a monkey pet on his shoulder, waited for the people to step out, then tried to' get in. But the ticket conductor would not let him. “No, no” the conductor said, “that not allowed,” pointing to the monkey, and to the “No Pets Allowed” sign above him. The soldier remained on the outside platform, but made no motion to step down. He obviously did not understand. The conductor kept motioning to him to get down, but soon gave up, and matters stood there for minutes. Then, an elderly man by the conductor’s side, spoke 20 Panorama up loudly in Spanish: Por Dios! Si puede embarcar el padre, porque no el hijo!” (By God, if the father can get in, why not the son!) This broke the tension. Everyone laughed, and the conductor, winking at the man who had just spoken, .motioned to the Jap with the monkey to come in. The soldier did so, bowing his thanks to the elderly man who had spoken for him — H.J.A. A GREAT UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT In the United States the president of a large university is a politician in partibus. His speeches are quoted in the newspapers. If he has ability and tact he becomes a moral authority. Wilson increased his by making himself the cham pion of democracy in the University of Princeton against the old aristocratic hierarchy of the clubs. He wanted the under graduates to live in common dormitories. The alumni and the trustees, loyal to Princeton traditions, rose in opposition. The liberal professors defended Wilson and the faculty was divided into two factions — pro-Wilson and anti-Wilson. The president’s character made any debate difficult. Among his students he was famous for his charm; his col leagues learned to know, as well, his anger and his pride. Very sure of himself, and justly proud of the clarity of his mind, he would not tolerate contradition. The violence of his character astounded those who had judged him on the basis of the austere and polished language of his speeches. Between him and the Board of Trustees there was soon open conflict, not only on the question of the clubs but on almost every other point as well. Meanwhile rumors of this battle for democracy waged by the president of the most aris tocratic of the universities reached the general public and won Wilson great popularity. From 1906 on, certain influential members of the De mocratic party had their eyes on him. In 1910 the bosses of New Jersey offered to make him their candidate lor gov ernor of the state ... He accepted. — From The Miracle of America of Andre Mauroi’s. September 1962 21 # Th® technical man or the economist fails because he overlooks cards and value?. THE TECHNICAL MAN AND THE POLICY MAKER Technical competence in government, as elsewhere, is naturally desirable. But is it desirable that it be the chief end of government? The technical man isolates one particular field or acti vity, in order to concentrate upon the procedure within it. In order for his work to pro ceed, he must assume the worth of the end to which his work is addressed; in or der to get on to his own ques tion, “How?,” he must as sume that the end he is serv ing has an assured place in a hierarchy of values that he does not himself examine. As a cobbler cannot con tinually be asking himself whether shoes as such are a good, so an economist can not continually ask himself whether "productivity” or “satisfaction” or "economic growth” is a good; he must take that for granted and get on with his job. Where the end is simple and noncontroversial, such a technical approach Taises no problems. But in social po licy the ends to be served ad mit of no such description; it is of the essence of politics that their meanings shift, that values conflict, and that men differ about them. The ends of politics, moreover, are not neatly separable from the “means” the technical man thinks he deals with ex clusively; usually he bootlegs in some assumptions about ends in his work on the means. One might argue that political leadership, which must interpret the situation and fit together these several and conflicting ends, is pre eminently the activity that cannot properly be reduced to sheer technique. But the technical man will tend to regard all "general ities,” good ones and bad ones, as airy, empty, and mis leading; he will tend to think that the "declaration” of the "objective” is "easy,” while only the attainment is really 29 Panorama difficult, requiring "hard thought.” He characteris tically will want to deal with problems only case by case, to treat each case "on its own merits,” without much regard for — indeed with some re sistance to — a general con cept. Most of all, the techni cian will dismiss considera tion of ends, principles, and purposes. These are already agreed upon, or are impossi ble to deal with, or are some body else’s job, or anyway something not to talk about; let’s talk instead, he will say, about "ways and means,” about how to do it, about "sophisticated solutions.” Policy on taxes and spend ing and interest rates in volves, along with much eco nomic fact, a whole nest of inexact judgments — really, ethical judgments — about values and interests. Though these judgments may be com plicated and require advanced economic knowledge and do not sort out neatly under existing political labels, still they are not merely "techni cal”; they are not just "admi nistrative” or “executive.” If we could just get enough moral juice back into the word, we could say that they are, exactly, "political.” "Po litics,” or "policy,” would appear to be the point at which technical considera tions (how does the thing work) and ethical considera tions (what is good) meet, and neither part of the mix should be left unexamined. The political leader’s job is to articulate an interpre tation of these larger than technical choices. — William D. Miller from The Reporter. September 1962 23 k REVOLUTIONARY FORM OF TEACHING In the last eight or nine years a new form of teaching known as automated teach ing or programmed instruc tion has been widely used in the United States. More than any other system or process of instruction introduced in recent times automated teaching has caused a stir in the entire width and breadth of the country among educa tors, parents, and leaders in industry. The revolutionary effects it is creating have been commented upon in different publications i n America. In the Reporter of last July Spencer Klaw writes an article on this sub ject entitled “What Can We Learn from Teaching Ma chines?” The Center for Programed Instruction, Inc., in New York issues a bi monthly publication of news and views on this novel way of instruction, which may be briefly described as follows: The subject to be studied by means of teaching machines is presented in a sequence of short units which are called “frames.” Each frame con tains a question that the stu dent must answer before he goes on. Such a sequence is known as a program, which may he administered either mechanically or by a pro grammed textbook. The me chanical method uses a sim ple device called a teaching machine, which exposes the program to the student one frame at a time and tells him instantly whether the answers he is giving are cor rect. There are different kinds of machines. One gives answers to questions by press ing buttons. But as stated above, this new form of pedagogy can also be administered by means of a textbook, a pro grammed textbook. This is a sort of workbook which permits a student to move from frame to frame and to 24 check the correctness of his answers by simply turning to the pages' where they are printed. But .whether it is a ma chine or a text that is used, the function of programmed instruction is to lead a pupil to a faster and firmer grasp of the subject studied. This is the claim of professors, educators, and psychologists who have been working on this form of pedagogy. It is now being actually used in thousand of schools in Amer ica. today. With the support of the government and of private foundations, researches have been carried out by psycho logists and educators at Har vard, Yale, Stanford, and other important universities. Students have been exper imentally instructed by ma chine or by programmed text, in calculus, geometry, physics, spelling, long divi sion, Russian, psychology, logic, statistics, and other subjects. Mechanics have been taught to read blue prints, engineers to use ana logue computers, retarded children to measure with a ruler. Textbook publishers are working on many program med texts for various sub jects. Encyclopaedia Britan nica Films has announced plans to program practically an entire high-school curri culum. Programs or ma chines of different makes and subjects are now being sold by a large number of com panies. Teaching machines are even being sold from house to house or by mail to anxious parents. Professor B. F. Skinner of Harvard, a distinguished ex perimental psychologist, is one of the principal origina tors of the teaching machine. What he says about it is worth repeating here: “Ex ploratory research . . . indi cates that what is now taught by teaching, lecture, or film can be taught in half the time and with half the effort by a machine.” While this might be a bit exaggerated, a good knowledge of the theory of programmed ins truction and an observation of the results it is producing in actual use prove that it works and that it will bring about significant changes in educational practices. It is going to affect the organiza tion of school courses and. September 1962 25 curricula, the preparation of teachers, the instruction of fast learners, and the way the slow learners are to be handled. The way teachers teach will be affected even when they are not using ma chines or programmed texts. Among the different teach ing machines designed by Professor Skinner was one consisting of a metal box with two small windows in its upper surface. With this machine, a student reads a short block of text, with a question, framed in one of the windows; he then answers the question by writing on a piece of paper displayed at the other window. By push ing a lever, the correct an swer to the question is shown and a new frame containing a new question appears at the same time. It was in 1957 when Dr. Skinner and James G. Hol land, a colleague of his, wrote for use in this machine a program covering part of the subject matter of a course, Natural Science 114. They were giving this course to undergraduates at Harvard and Radcliffe. When after the Russian Sputnik was launched in 1957, the American people began to complain about the inadequacies of their schools, a deeper interest in Skinner’s ideas was aroused and hopes were raised that these ideas could be made to yield spec tacular results. An exper iment was sponsored by the U.S. Office of Education in teaching spelling to sixth grade pupils by machine for a period of six months. Al though they spent only a third as much time on spell ing as their classmates who were being taught in the or dinary way, they scored much higher on standard achieve ment tests. In Roanoke, Virginia, eighth-graders of average ability learned just about as much algebra in one semester from a programmed text as ninth-graders ordi narily learn in a year. At a school near Philadelphia, mentally retarded teen-agers were made to use machines to give them practice in arith metic. At the end of the school year, tests showed gains in proficiency two and a half times as great as gains made by students in a close ly matched control group not using machines. The use of programmed texts enabled 26 Panorama IBM to reduce from fifteen to eight hours the class time needed to cover certain kinds of instruction and training. In many other instances stu dents getting programmed instruction have often learn ed more and in a shorter time than those following the conventional methods. Most practitioners use one of two ways of preparing instructional program. One is the system devised by Dr. Skinner and the other is that invented by a former Air Force psychologist named Norman A. Crowder. Crow der’s devise resembles a tele vision set, which has a screen onto which the frames of an instructional program are projected one at a time. A frame may consist of two or three hundred words and ends with a multiple-choice question. The student selects one of the answers that have been provided for him ins tead of making up his own answer, and then pushes a button. If he has pushed the right one, a new frame deal ing with a new topic appears. If he pushes the wrong but ton, however, he gets an alto gether different. frame, which tells him that he gave the wrong answer, suggests why he may have done so, and instructs him to punch a but ton that will send him back for another try. Crowder’s kind of program is also presented in a form known as the scrambled text book. It has one frame to a page. When a student comes to the multiple-choice ques tion, he picks what he thinks is the right answer and turns to a page whose number ap pears next to the answer he has chosen. If he has chosen correctly, he will find a new block of information on the designated page; if not, he will get more explanation. The Skinner program is different. It proceeds in very small steps and considers the answer of the student at each step as an essential element in the learning process. On the other hand, the Crowder program gives relatively large units of information and then presents questions intended to find out if the student has properly under stood or learned a particular unit. Another difference bet ween the two systems is that in the Holland-Skinner psy chology program at Harvard, there is but one sequence of September 1962 27 steps that everyone must fol low. Every question is an swered correctly. In the Crowder program a student could commit a mistake and, if he does, he is led out of the main line into a branch where he gets additional ins truction. Crowder maintains that his program is better adapted to students of differ ent learning ability. Skinner claims that when every ques tion is answered correctly, the student learns best. To teachers who follow the prin ciple of “learning by doing,” that feature of the Skinner program that students should be required to write their own answers has a strong appeal. It is also said that multiple-choice questions are not desirable for it may lead a student to remember one of the wrong answers instead of the right one. Also, it is probably easier to write a good program of the Skinner variety than to write one like Crowder’s. In America programs are being written by teachers, psycho logists, college students, au thors of conventional text books, and housewives with college degrees and time on their hands. But the consen sus is that a program must . be given an extensive and in tensive trial before it should be given final approval. It seems that the Skinner style program is easier to write than Crowder’s. Questions should not, of course, be made too easy, otherwise students may go through them rapidly answer ing every question correctly but learning very little. It is necessary that the program mer should know the stu dents well and what they are supposed to learn. Then the program could produce effec tive teaching. The collabora tion between teacher and his test subjects is one of the most significant aspects of this new pedagogy. Programmed instruction be nefits not only school child ren and but also adults who prefer to study at home by themselves. It is also useful in private industry where rapid changes in technology force workers to learn new processes as quick ly as possible. But it is the schools which constitute the large users of programmed instruction, and it is on them that the new pedagogy will have its most significant im 28 Panorama pact. Fear is, however, en tertained by some people that education administered through programmed instruc tion may become a process of grinding up subject matter into a kind of baby food and spooning it out to students who will never learn to eat for themselves. In this con nection, George F. Keller, professor of educational phi losophy at the University of California, L. A., said: “If we seek exact responses and re ward those who conform to the demands of the machine, we are likely to snuff out the precious spark of revolt that is necessary to healthy growth and creativity.” Some have also expressed concern that teaching machines may con vert America into a nation of robots. On the other hand, there is no established basis to sup port the argument that pro grammed instruction is neces sarily detrimental to creativi ty. Moreover, there are very few persons who think that the entire curriculum of the school should be best pro grammed. “Programmed ins truction cannot teach the en tire curriculum for the sim ple reason that it cannot edu cate a person,” Kenneth Komoski of the Center for Pro grammed Instruction has written. “We can instruct a pupil to spell, to punctuate, to use words properly. . . . However, no method of ins truction can teach a person how to write or think creati vity, for such things depend on far more subtle types of reinforcement than a pro gram alone can provide.” Programmed instruction, however, can teach certain subjects effectively, thus giv ing both teacher and student more time to read books and to study questions that chal lenge and improve the mind. It does not eliminate teach ers but permit teachers to study their subjects, to help students, and to make better use of their learning. A teacher in a New York school is reported to . have said: “As I look back on the few months of teaching the idea of step-by-step program ming in my head, I realize that programming not only helps the kids learn but it helps me learn how the kids learn.” Programmed instruction, if adopted in the schools in the Philippines, is likely to im September 1962 29 prove the learning ability of elementary children and sec ondary school and college students specially in such subjects as English, arithme tic, and algebra. It will give teachers the assistance that they all need in a very marked degree. But before this could happen, the offi cials of the Department of Education should first investi gate carefully the materials for its effective use and should be ready to sacrifice existing interests that are al most certain to fight for the continuance of old or con ventional methods and ma terials notwithstanding their failure to improve our educa tional standards. Workshops, seminars, and study groups need to be organized in order that proper understanding and direction may be given for the right preparation and use of lessons or texts. The need for this preparatory ac tivity is well expressed in one of the bulletins of the Center for Programmed Instruction as follows: “Programs used in teaching machines and texts have captured the ima gination of many members of the lay public, and more than the usual number of extreme statements have been made. For professionals the fascination lies in the issues raised by this new teaching tool. We have forced to cri tically concern ourselves with the effectiveness of our teachtechniques, clarify our view of the role of the teacher and the1 functioning of the stu dent. “Many people in the edu cational and commercial com munities wish to assemble a set of absolutes regarding the development of and use of programs. But programing by its nature demands con stant revision and updating. We have scarcely scratched the surface of the needed research.” 30 Panorama THE LONG SUFFERING STUDENT By Charles Frankling Thwing The college student of to day, like the college student of yesterday, is a member of a democratic society or of a social democracy. But be it at once said that he is more of a social democrat than was his brother of the earlier time. The increase in the num ber of individuals in the college is accompanied by a decrease in the number of individualisms. Similarities are more abounding in the present college groups than are eccentricities. Fashions in clothes are only a symbol and sign of likenesses in thought and behavior. Aca demic quality is in the sad dle. Today the health of stu dents is the subject of a care more careful, and of a de votion more devoted and wiser — quite unlike the ap parent carelessness and official indifference of an earlier time. Every large college has its bureau or division of health, and every small col lege has its doctor. Of course the gymnasium and the playing fields repre sent a permanent condition for health, equipped with competent groups of directors and coaches. The great change, however, is found in the mental health of students. For the mental ill 'health of students is more common, more serious, more funda mental, than is the sickness of body. Colleges are be coming far more solicitous for this complex side of the student’s life. This solici tude arises in no small part from the increasing know ledge of the broad field of psychology. Students are unconsciously adopting the biological me thod of intellectual growth, and consciously neglecting the method of growth by hard continuous study. The normal number of hours of September 1962 31 intellectual labor done in the college has in fifty (sev enty) years been reduced in about the same proportion as it has in the industrial plants. In the former time ten hours a day, sixty hours a week, was not exceptional for the student. Today the forty-eight hour week in the college would represent the higher and severer standard. Some would say that six hours a day is normal: two hours of recitation, confer ence, or lecture, and two hours of preparation in read ing or writing for each exer cise. The problem of the amount of study is, of course, both quantitative and quali tative. The irttfensity of mental application is at least as important as the duration of application. The question is, of course, a very indivi dual one. It is also exceed ingly complex. But for one, I do lament the decline in the hard, close, continuous working of the student. My sorrow is made the greater by reason, at least in part, of the broader, more diverse, and more agreeable program of studies that is set before the student. A simple examination of the catalogue of any college, a simple ex aminations of the courses of fered in any department, pro vide convincing evidence that the program has become broader, more diverse, and more agreeable. The revolution wrought in the knowledge of the na tural world is incorporated in the scheme of studies of fered the student — schemes covering the chemical, physi cal, geological, and biological sciences. The changes are fundamental. But changes hardly less fundamental are wrought in studies linguistic, economic, mathematical, his torical, social. The scholastic wealth now set before the student is simply incalcula ble. He is made the poten tial possessor of riches of which his father or grand father could never dream. For the student this general’ enlargement of studies has been united with the need, a keener need indeed, of con centration: of concentration on certain subjects or groups of subjects. If the student knows less of all subjects than in the former time he certainly knows more of cer tain groups of subjects. The 32 Panorama relation of these groups of subjects to one another has been well interpreted and well controlled by college au thorities. Intellectual breadth, which carries along with it self the peril of intellectual superficiality, and intellectual concentration, which carries along with itself the peril of narrowness, have been well adjusted to each other. The student becomes a student in all subjects and a scholar in some. Choosing his vocation at an earlier age than did his father, he elects studies that specially fit him to take up his professional preparation. For medicine he takes chemistry, biology, and physics; for law, history and economics; for theology; philosophy and psychology. Through such concentration he gains in power as well as in special knowledge. Know ing that all studies aid in every professional equipment, and knowing, too, that he is a citizen and an individual person, he appreciates the value of studies that seem un related to his future. — Con densed from World's Work (1928). WHAT IS FREE ENTERPRISE? Some years ago, a friend of mine was invited by a Gallup poll taker to give his definition of "free enterprise." “Free enterprise,” said my friend, "is a euphemism un der which businessmen conceal their thirst for profits.” There was a pause while the poll taker wrote this down. Then the poll taker said, "What’s a euphemism?” Such is the fate of words. They are measures of our ignorance as of our knowledge; they are sources of darkness as of light. But though they are elusive as the breath which bears them, perhaps we may put faith in this: that men who understand the world will be masters of the word, and men who are masters of the word have the rudiments of mastery over the world. — Burrows Dunham, Man Against Myth. September 1962 33 TOLERANCE MUST BE MORE THAN A PIOUS WISH E. M. Forster Tolerance is important, no one can deny that, and if it is talked about so that peopie dispute what it is, or isn’t, its importance should be maintained or increased. Let me therefore set up an Aunt Sally. Aunt Sallys are not as common in my coun try * as they were, and for all I know they may have never crossed the Atlantic. Certain ly I cannot imagine one on the Mayflower. So I had bet ter define, and definition in this case is not so difficult. Aunt Sally is, or was, an elderly doll who was set up on a fairground to be shied at. She was tied to a stick or attached to a hinge. Three shies for a penny at Aunt Sally! Perhaps there was a prize if one hit her; perhaps the pleasure of bashing her face in was in itself sufficient reward. I forget. But she has become a symbol for the • United Kingdom. tentative definition. Knock her over if you can. Let me define tolerance as tolerating»other people even when they don’t tolerate you. Risks Are Required It is an austere definition. No politician would accept it. But if tolerance is to play any practical part in the modern world, if any head way is to be made against fanaticism, if there is to be any easing of the tensions between class and class, race and race, country and coun try, then tolerance must be more than a pious wish, more than a woolly assertion of good-will. It must have courage, and it must be pre pared to take risks. At this point someone shies a ball at my Aunt Sally. It hits her. She staggers. Someone has in effect said: “The modern world is in deed dangerous, and that is 34 Panorama exactly why one can’t take risks in it. It is so dangerous that tolerance is a luxury, which we can only indulge with those who reciprocate it. I don’t like the color of so-and-so’s face — it’s green and I dislike faces — still I’ll put up with his face if he’ll put up with mine. Mine is, of course, blue, the proper color for faces, and if he com plains of it, if he threatens it, then my only remedy is to drop a bomb on him before he drops one on me. Toler ance is all very well, but there is such a thing as self preservation.” Monotony Tolerance is not only need ed to avoid disaster. It is also needed in peace condi tions, if a community is to remain healthy and creative. An intolerant community, exacting the “right point of view” is condemned to mo notony, even if the right point of view is a good one. Its citizens would lack cur iosity. They would tend to be all alike for the sake of avoiding friction. They would educate their children the same way, eat the same food at the same time, laugh at the same jokes, succumb to the same advertisements, go to the same places in the same planes, and they would denounce as subversive any one who criticized them. Money — any money alone — would distinguish one human being in that community from- another and the spirit ual tyranny of the income bracket would triumph. I would certainly soonen live in a monotonous com munity than in a world of universal war, but I would sooner be dead than live in either of them. My heart is in the world of today, with its varieties and contrasts, its blue and green faces, and my hope is that, through cour ageous tolerance, the world of today may be preserved. Risks must be taken. It’s difficult. Aunt Sally trembles on her perch as the welldirected missiles hit her. But what’s your alternative? — The New York Times, Feb ruary 22, 1953. September 1962 35 ■ “War is one of the most deeply rooted of all human institutions. Some people do not realize that in asking mankind to do away without war, they are making a wholly unprecedented deIS PEACE ON EARTH POSSIBLE? John Strachey Man in the Nuclear Age Twenty-five years ago the decisive issues were economic. Either our industrialised so cieties would surmount their economic problems or they would fall into decay. To day the threat of nuclear war is the decisive issue. A failure to surmount this new crisis would lead not to decay but to summary destruction. So much will perhaps be readily agreed. But the prevention of war, as distinct from its occasional avoidance or postponement, is a far more difficult matter than is even now realised. Many people, it is true, are tireless in reiterating that with the development of nu clear arms, peace has become * Secretary of State °for War in the last British Labour govern ment. indispensable. But those who best appreciate this truth are apt to overlook the fact that war is one of the most deep ly rooted of all human insti tutions They do not realise that in asking mankind to do without war, they are making a wholly unprecedented de mand. On the other hand those of a more realistic temperament — as they consider themselves — who have noted the histo rical record, are apt to ignore the new fact that to settle dis putes between nation-States by the time-honoured method of war has become impossibly destructive. No one can blame mankind for failing, initially at least, to face the dilemma upon the horns of which the progress of physical science has impaled us. But the fact is that for a world of fully sovereign States, war 36 Panorama remains inevitable but has be come intolerable. This dilemma of the nu clear age casts its shadow over every aspect of contemporary life. It will not be-resolved without diagnostic studies of the nature of war, sustained by many workers and over many years. To suppose any thing else would be as wish ful as to suppose that cancer could be overcome without achieving an ever-increasing comprehension of the morbid condition of the affected tis sue. The Role of Military Factors I do not take the view sometimes expressed by per sons of my political persua sion, that the military cha racteristics of the “delicate balance of terror” are unim portant. On the contrary, in the short run what is called “the stability of the balance,” which depends to a marked extent upon military factors, is of primary importance. Here I can only assert two conclusions. The stability of the nuclear balance, and so the proba bility of avoiding the early outbreak of nuclear war, is dependent, first, on both sides rendering their respective strategic nuclear forces as "in vulnerable” as possible to a surprise attack by the other. ThePe would be little hope of peace if both sides maintain ed strategic nuclear forces which could obliterate, or be obliterated by, the opposing force. For in that case the premium upon striking first would be overwhelmingly high. The second conclusion is that the stability of the ba lance, and so peace, will be gravely endangered if either side neglects its non-nuclear or “conventional" forces. For in that case the other side can seize some limited, but important, local advantage without the use of nuclear weapons, and so confront its opponent with the intolerable dilemma of submitting or of blowing up the world for the sake of what appears to be an issue of limited impor tance. Perhaps the side which has neglected its conventional forces will yield once or twice on such limited issues. But it is easy to see that a series of such issues could and would confront the neglectful September 1962 37 side with the stark choice of surrender or full-scale nuclear war. These military considera tions will be greeted by many readers with impatience. If, it will be said, the consequencies of nuclear war are as black as they are painted (and they are), ought we not to demand immediate and all-embracing measures to abolish this nightmare? Ei ther unilateral disarmament or the quick establishment of a world government is often demanded by those who have suddenly realised the peril in which they stand. It is true that no sugges tions for improving “the sta bility of the balance” can do more than procure us a stay of execution by nuclear war. But how much that is! The inhabitant of the condemned cell is ill-advised to despise a reprieve, even though only a full pardon will set him free again. In the same way it would be particularly rash for us to neglect “the stabi lity of the balance” on the grounds that it is undeniable that far more than this will be necessary to release us from that world-wide con demned cell which the human race to-day inhabits. Disarmament: (i) Unilateral We must conclude, then, that defense policy is a high ly important matter, but on ly in order to gain time for more fundamental measures. What are such measures? It is disarmament that has prin cipally attracted the enthu siasm of what may be called “the men of peace.” Disarmament, however, can be of two kinds. The kind that principally occupies pub lic attention to-day is unilate ral disarmament. It is pro posed that either this country, .or the alliance to which it be longs, should lay down its nu clear weapons without refe rence to what the other side may do. I have only one thing to say on this: if one is prepared to accept its consequences, name ly, compliance with the will, whatever it may be, of any State, or alliance of States, which does not lay down its nuclear arms, it is the obvious thing to do. For those men and women who have faced these conse quences, and accept them, I 38 Panorama have considerable respect. I cannot agree with them that this is either the right or the relevant approach to the mat ter. But it is certainly pos sible to argue that anything at all is better than to in cur even the risk of nuclear war, and that risk can be wholly avoided only by indu cing the alliance of which we are members unilaterally to disarm itself. Nevertheless I cannot find much interest in this propo sal. It is, no doubt, concep tually possible that the Cam paign for Nuclear Disarma ment might succeed not mere ly in disarming and neutrali sing Britain, which could not possibly eliminate the risk of nuclear war, but also in in ducing America, or even Rus sia, unilaterally to disarm herself. But the possibility of doing so appears too re mote to be relevant. More over, I am fortified in this view by discovering that it is fully, if unexpectedly, shared by the most eminent figure, by far, of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Ber trand Russell writes in his new book, “Has Man a Fu ture?”: — .. .there is a slogan invented by West German friends of peace: “Better Red than dead. * ’ One may guess that in some sections of Russian public opinion, there is an opposite slogan: “Better capitalists than corpses.’’ I do not think it is necessary to in quire into the theoretical validity of either sldgan since I think it out of the question that the one should be adopted by Western Governments or the other by the Governments of the East. Neither slogan presents justly the problem which East and West, alike, have to face. Given that military vic tory by either side is impossible, it follows logically that a nego tiated detente cannot be based on the complete subjection of either side to the other but must pre serve the existing balance while transforming it from a balance of terror to a balance of hope. Exactly. If “Better Red than dead” is a false issue, what is there left except to go back to the familiar, often frustrating, but indispensable path of disarmament and de tente by negotiation — of ne gotiations moreover which, as Russell writes specifically “cannot be based on the com plete subjection of either side to the other.” Disarmament: (ii) Multilateral We cannot, therefore, es cape by any sort of heroic September 1962 39 short cut from a considera tion of the whole complex and interlocked subjects of multilateral disarma m e n t, and with that, of the inter relations and intentions to wards each other of the Com munist and "Western” al liance respectively. I do not see how anyone can study the course of the disarmament negotiations since the nuclear age began without being forced to the conclusion that whenever these negotiations have been serious, they have raised the issue of the establishment of a world authority. True, they have not often been se rious, in the sense that both sides, or even either side, have actually contemplated the implementation of the mea sures under discussion. Usual ly they have been mere exer cises in "political warfare,” which may be defined as the gentle art of putting the other fellow in the wrong. On at least two occasions, however, disarmament nego tiations in the nuclear age have been serious, in the above sense that the negotia ting Governments did consi der the possibility of imple menting the proposals under discussion. The first of these occasions was in 1946 when America proposed the Baruch plan for establishing an In ternational Atomic Develop ment Authority which was to have a world-wide monopoly of the production of atomic energy. The second serious disarm ament negotiations of the nu clear age were the long-drawnout test ban negotiations at Geneva. The negotiators on both sides would agree, I think, that at various stages of these negotitaions the im plementation of the proposals under discussion was actually being considered. Here again this was because they, too, at least pointed in the direction of a world authority. A test ban treaty was at once a far more difficult thing to achieve, and would have been of far greater importance, than was widely realised. For its essence would have been that America and Russia should co-operate for the pur pose of preventing the acqui sition of a nuclear capacity by any other State — and con sequentially, I fancy, of the abandonment of their exist 40 Panorama ing, minor, nuclear capacities by Britain and France. Thus each of the disarma ment negotiations which have turned out to be serious have been those which pointed to wards the goal of a world authority. This is because the alternative goal, which may perhaps be defined as a world of “generally and completely” disarmed, but still fully so vereign, States, is close to be ing a contradiction in terms. The Goal of a World Authority There is, indeed, a growing consensus — at least in words — from the present Prime Minister, through Mr. Dun can Sandys and Lord Attlee to Bertrand Russell, that the creation of some sort of world authority, possessing a mono poly of nuclear capacity, is the sole salvation for the hu man race in the nuclear age. Russell, as usual, puts the issue with incomparable cla rity and force. He writes: — ... it seems indubitable that scientific man cannot long survive unless all the major weapons of war, and all the means of mass determination [destruction? J.S.] are in the hands of a single Authority, which, in consequence of its monopoly, would have ir resistible power, and if challenged . to war, could Wipe out any rebel lion within a few days without much damage except to the rebels. Thi9, it seems plain, is an abso lutely indispensable condition of the continued existence of a world possessed of scientific skill. Again the reader may be startled to find that Russell, and presumably the more ex treme wing of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which he leads, are not agita ting for the abolition of nu clei “ weapons after all. They are on the contrary proposing the establishment of one cen tral arsenal of nuclear wea pons in the hands of “a sin gle Authority” which “could wipe out any rebellion with in a few days without much damage except to the rebels.” A Doctrine of Total Despair However, verbal tributes to the goal of world government do not take us very far. They may be — indeed they are — brushed off by the practical, able, overworked men who run the “establish ments” of the contemporary nation-States as the lucubra tions of elderly philosophers or the perorations of parlia mentarians. Nor do these September 1962 41 practical men lack able spokesmen for their scepti * cism. Their view was put by, for example, Mr. Hedley Bull in his recent work: “The Control of the Arms Race: Disarmament and Arms Con trol in the Missile Age.” He wrote: — We cannot expect that the es tablishment of a universal Govern ments by contract amongst the na tions rather than by conquest will be brought about by governments incapable of the most modest forms of co-operation. Accordingly he stigmatises any discussion, even, of the possibility of a world autho rity as "a fantasy” and “a confusion of thinking about international relations and a distraction from its proper concerns.” Again Sir William Hayter, writing in these co lumns on February 12, 1961, comes to the same emphatic conclusion: “Aiming at world government is now in my opi nion actually wrong. It dis tracts our attention from what we ought really to be doing, which is to search for ways of living safely in an inevi tably divided world.” These are not opinions that can be shrugged off: more especially as they are tacitly shared by, at a guess, 90 per cent of all well-informed men. Indeed, were it not for one consideration, we should be forced to accept them. That consideration is that they are a doctrine of total despair. The more closely we study the state of the nuclear ba lance, the course of the dis armament negotiations, the intentions of the principal nation-States of the presentday world, or indeed the in herent nature of sovereign nation-States, the more sure ly we shall be forced to the following conclusion: though the avoidance of this or that potential war is a by no means impossible task, yet the abo lition of war as a recurrent phenomenon in the relations of sovereign nation-States re mains, as it always has been, impossible. Therefore in the nuclear age to accept the con clusion that the world must remain indefinitely a world of sovereign States is, in very truth, “to shut the gates of baercy on mankind.” We can only conclude that the practi cal men have not even yet imaginatively assimilated the probable consequences of fullscale war in the nuclear age. — The Sunday Observer, Lon don, December 24, 1961. 42 Panorama WE ARE LIKE THE BAMBOO Carmen Guerrero Nakpil The biggest single advan tage we have always had in our relations with other peo ples is that we start with the premise that we are wrong and they are right. This is not so much a sense of in adequacy as a sweet reason ableness which makes it possi ble for us to “see” a foreign er’s “point,” to conform enough to it to insure our survival and, at last, to ex tract from that contact some benefit for ourselves. This thesis is patent in an cient as well contemporary history. We paid tribute cheerfully to the Chinese emperor or the Madjapahit one. When the long-nosed white men came with their muskets and their sacred in signia, we were, with a few exceptions, more than will ing to meet them halfway. We listened courteously to their claims about the Span ish king (what, another one?) dressed up in capes and fea thers for their religious rituals and we turned our anitos into saints. When the few angry young men like Lapu-Lapu had had their day, and the encomenderos became fiercely rapacious we retreated into indolence and unproductivity — to this day the last refuge of the op pressed. After a brief spell of hosti lity towards the Americans, we were once more ready to be charmed. Indeed, how much more clever to have sanitary wells and to have everyone learn to read and write English and to play baseball and to believe, with the new evangelizer, that heaven is for those who “git up and go." It was much harder to accommodate the Japanese, but we learned how to do it in a thousand ways and who knows, if the for tunes of war and interna tional power politics had been different, whether the Nippongo teachers would have become Thomasites, too,. We seem almost glad that the Chinese are so ingenious September 1962 43 and hard-working — that leaves us more time in which to play politics. Thus, we disarm other people before titty can do us much harm. Where they expect a war or an argument, they find acquiescent smiles and nodding heads. And we rob them of the pleasure of conquest or exploitation. What pleasure can there be in victory or imperialism where the natives are so hap py to be conquered? The bamboo, rather than the tough, unbending n a r r a , should have been our na tional tree. — My Humble Opinion, the Manila Chroni cle, October 12, 1961. • • • "Dreams can be . bought and sold, or stolen," says Arthur Waley in a collection of Third Programme broad casts, and proceeds to tell an ancient oriental story of a bartered dream: "The Japan ese Regent, Masatoki, who lived in the 12th century, had two daughters, who were step-sisters. The younger dreamt that the sun and moon fell into her lap. ‘I must go and ask Masako what this means, she thought, Masako was the name of the elder sister, who was learned in history, my thology and dream-interpre tation. ‘This would be a strange enough dream for a man to have/ thought the elder sister, ‘and it is stran ger that it should come to a woman/ For she knew such a dream meant that the per son concerned would become ruler of the land. Being herself of a masterful and ambitious character, she de termined tp get hold of the dream and said deceitfully to the younger sister. ‘This is a terribly unlucky dream. You had better get rid of it as quickly as possible.’ ‘How can one get rid of a dream?’ asked the younger sister. ‘Sell it!’ said Masako. But who is there that would buy a bad dream? ‘I will buy it from you,’ said Masako. ‘But, dear sister, how could I bear to escape from misfortune only to see it descent upon you?” ‘That does not happen,’ said Masako. ‘A dream that is bought brings neither for tune nor misfortune.’ The price paid was an ancient Chinese mirror. The young sister went back to her room saying, ‘It has happened at last. The mirror that I have Panora 44 always coveted is mine.’ Only long afterwards, when Masa ko became the virtual ruler of Japan, did the young sister realise what she had lost by selling her dream.” This is one of my favorite stories because it is a stabbingly apt allegory of what happened to the Filipino dream. The generation of Rizal, Bonifacio and Aguinaldo dreamed of freedom and national dignity. But in their innocence, they bartered it for security, protection, material prosperity and the lessons of democracy and self- government. It was deemed proper to be grateful to an elder nation for having saved us from the vicissitudes of glorious but uncertain dreams. The sun and the moon on our laps, we were assured, would burn us to a cinder. Now we admire our selves in a pretty lookingglass and daily remind our selves that this is what we wanted all the time. Ah, but how dazzling and inaccessible are the sun and moon that we lost! — My Humble Op inion, the Manila Chronicle, July 11, 1958. THE IFUGAO’S “PUNNOKAN” The Ifugaos celebrate the end of the harvest season with a river ceremony called “punnokan”. On the day of the ceremony, nobody is allowed to go to the fields, where, it is believed, any “intruder” will be killed by the spirits. Instead, the folk assemble beside a river, around a human figure made of hay. This figure is called the "kinaag.” It is thrown into the water and the people try to hook as much of it as tlrey can. The group that hooks in the most hay wins the game., The “punnokan” is a welcome relief after the labors of har vest. — Jose G. Canaptn, September 1962 45 COMMUNIST EDUCATION: THEORY AND PRACTICE There are a variety of agencies engaged in elemen tary education in Communist China. Besides the regular elementary schools for child ren, there are adult schools of elementary grade and spare-time elementary schools ' for youth as well as older people; there are winter schools in the rural areas, worker-peasant schools, and various kinds of literacy classes. The complete elementary school consists of six grades, usually divided into the lower elementary of four years and the higher elemen tary of two years. In 1951, a revised school system was adopted and it was an nounced that the elementary school would be reduced to five years. It was then con tended that the six-year ele mentary school was unsuit able for new China, because the long course was a scheme of bourgeois society to pre vent the broad masses from getting the benefit of univer sal education. The change to a five-year unitary school proved to be not so easy. Here and there the new experiment was tried and much success was claimed, but there was no widespread adoption of the new plan. In December 1953, the government decided to postpone the change inde finitely on account of "inadequate preparation of teachers and teaching mater ials.' * Elementary education is not free, though attempts have been made, especially in the schools established by communes, and by some in dustries, to run the schools without tuicion fees. The principle of free universal education is accepted but the present financial situation makes it necessary to charge fees. Practices vary in differ ent parts of the country. Sometimes, the families of the pupils are asked to con tribute to the teacher’s board either by taking turns to pre pare meals or by donation of food. It is also not uncom 46 Panorama mon to fix tuition charges ac cording to the financial sta ture of the families. The distinguishing charac teristics of the curriculum are manual labour and the weekly assembly for political and civic education. Com pared with the American elementary curriculum, the Chinese curriculum is more rigidly prescribed and the subjects are narrower in scope. It is possible that the tem porary abandonment of the five-year unitary school was, in part at least, motivated by a desire to slow down the popular demand for educa tion. A campaign was launched to discourage ele mentary school pupils from seeking entrance into junior middle schools. It was em phasized that the chief pur pose of the elementary school was to produce enlightened workers and that most pupils should consider it normal to take up productive labour when they leave the elemen tary school. Entrance examinations are another means of controlling the advance from elementary schools to junior middle schools. In 1954, it was stated that no more than onethird of graduates of elemen tary schools could be accom modated in the post-elemen tary schools of various kinds. Even after 1956, when the rise of non-state schools great ly increased the number of schools, the government con tinued to pursue a restrictive policy. One reason for this may be the desire of the gov ernment to correct the confu sion and deterioration of standards which have result ed from the expansion of en rolment and the appearance of numerous schools with in adequate facilities and incom petent teachers. It is possible that, in the Communist philosophy o f education, some education of elemen tary grade is needed so that the people may be more re ceptive to indoctrination and propaganda, but education beyond the elementary must be reserved only for those whom the state wants to train for specific tasks. In that case education for the enlightenment or the ad vancement of the individual would be considered a bour geois concept that has no place in the Communist scheme of education. September 1962 47 The campaign to discour age continued schooling coin cided with the new emphasis on labour in the rectification campaign of 1957 and later with the campaign to send large numbers of youth to the countryside to stimulate lagging agricultural produc tion. Young people who had gone from elementary schools to production were asked to return to the schools to tell the pupils their joy at help ing the production program me of the state. They were honoured as successful citi zens to show the pupils that further study was not the only means of advancement. Pupils were taken to visit farms and factories to arouse their interest in production. The Communists almost at once decided to abolish pri vate education and put all education in the hands of the state. In 1952, the Ministry of Education announced a policy of taking over private schools. The enrolment in private elementary schools quickly dropped from 34.1 per cent of the total enrol ment in all elementary schools to 5.5 per cent in 1952 and 3.8 per cent in 1953. It was soon realized, however, that the state could not possibly provide enough schools for the millions who demanded education. The government then reversed its policy and decided - to en courage the establishment of schools by the “masses” and by private organizations such as factories, business con cerns, collectives, and, later on, communes. A campaign was launched to establish large numbers of non-state schools known as “min pan” schools. The mushroom growth of such schools ac counts for the big jump on elementary school enrolment after 1955. Many of the min pan schools are make-shifts of one kind or another. Classes are held in private homes or in temples, warehouses, or other unused public buildings, and pupils are often asked to bring their own desks and chairs. Teachers are un trained and, in too many cases, not too far * removed from illiteracy. Some are only “spare-time” schools; others are “half school, half farm.” They do not teach all subjects of the standard curriculum; the only teach ing that is considered indis 43 Panorama pensable is political and ideo logical indoctrination. As a matter of fact, such improvi sations are officially encour aged, and local authorities are told that they should feel free to depart from the regulations and adapt to local conditions. The Ministry of Education has encouraged the double session in elementary schools. There are even schools on triple shifts. There are a variety of forms of the double session. Sometimes, alternate sessions meet half a day each, one class in the morning and another class in the after noon, using the same class room. Or they may alternate, meeting every other day. In any case, the pupils do not attend school full-time. Ex periments have been made to keep pupils in school all day, to schedule one class in a room and another class in outdoor activities and altern ating them so as to get dou ble use of the facilities, but bad weather spoils the sche dule and causes much confu sion. Political education in all schools is carried on under the direct supervision of Party authorities. The Party is assisted by the youth or ganizations and the labour organizations, which come into the picture not only be cause the Communists ideo logy glorifies the working class, but also because labour organizations play an import ant role in promoting pro ductive labour while in school and encouraging youth to join the * full-time labour force upon leaving school. Reading newspapers, dis cussing current events, visits to factories, farms and gov ernment offices, and the study of speeches and reports of Communist leaders are reg ular features of the program me. The weekly assembly is an important occasion for political education. The Communists make a distinction between “Commu nist morality.” and “bour geois morality.” The Com mon Programme of 1949 listed the “five loves” which education should try to dev elop: love of the fatherland, love of the people, love df labour, love of science, and care of public property. Since the “fatherland” and the “people” are both symbol ised by the Communist Party, love of obedience to the Com September 1962 49 munist Party becomes the highest attributes of Com munist morality. An important role in moral education is played by the Chinese Young Pioneers, the officially sponsored youth organization for elementary school-children too young to join the Communist Youth League. This youth organ ization for elementary school children not only moulds the characters of its members but also plays a leading role in all branches of school life. The Communist way of life is the collective way. One of the tasks of moral educa tion is to train children in collective living. Here again, the Young Pioneers are sup posed to set the pace. The collective way is fostered by having children study, labour and play in groups. In recent years the scope of collective activities has been expanded and the slogan of “four col lectivisations” has gained in creasing popularity. The “four collectivisations” refer to collective study, collective labour, collective residence, and collective board. It is contended that the full devel opment of the collective way of life requires having pupils live together in dormitories under the constant supervi sion of teachers, who in turn are under the constant guid ance of the Communist Party. In the absence of dormi tories, some schools turn class rooms into sleeping quarters at night and push together chairs and tables to make improvided beds. Teachers sleep in the same room with the pupils and it is proudly reported that many a teacher has turned into a nursemaid, waking up small children at night to attend to toilet needs. Such loving care of children, it is said, is a na tural expansion of the new socialist consciousness of teachers. The teacher is ins tructor, nursemaid, and pro duction guide at the same time. Productive labour in schools has been given a new emphasis since 1958. The elementary curriculum has been revised to provide f<?r four to six hours a week of manual work for the senior classes and at least two hours a week in the junior classes. Smaller children are assigned duties such as cleaning and sweeping in school and at 50 Panorama home, elimination of insect pests, etc., while pupils in the upper classes engage in actual production on farms or in factories. The “work study plan” gained popular ity. It reduce the hours of classroom study and allows as much as half of school time for productive labour. In some schools the schedule provides for a half day of study and a half day of pro ductive labour; in other schools, pupils set aside en tire days for work. The Communist emphasis on the “complete develop ment” of man encompasses five major aspects of the dev elopment of the individual: intellectual, moral, physical, artistic and the knowledge and skills of production. In practice, little attention is paid to the artistic side, and physical development is often neglected, even endangered, as a result of the heavy sche dule of study, labour, and political activities. Quantity is not the only enemy of quality. The presure for political activities and the demand for produc tive labour must necessarily reduce the time and energy available for academic study, but here the dilemma must remain insoluble as long as the Communists adhere to their dogma that politics must always "take command” and their belief that with proper ideological orienta tion all good things in life will follow. Teachers as well as pupils . are frequently summoned by government and Party officers to do cleri cal and other chores. A post office might ask teachers to help solicit subscriptions for publications; a peasant asso ciation might ask school bands to play at weddings; such miscellaneous tasks not only meant the suspension of classes but much illness on the part of overworked teach ers and pupils.. There is an upsurge of de mand for education in China, but premature withdrawal from school constitutes one of the puzzling problems facing educators. In 1955, out of a total enrolment of over 53 millions, more than five million withdrew before the end of the elementary course. — Theodore H. E. Chen, condensed from the China Quarterly, 1962 September 1962 51 IVORY TOWERS Ivory towers are cast like castles in Spain. But while these castles are simply meant to adorn the imagination and to exist in the realm of phan tasy, ivory towers are designed for some specific conditions of life. To be sure they are not made of real ivory or of similar rare and beautiful materials. They are not even built of wood or stone and mortar standing in silent soli tude; they are rather symbols of an attitude of withdrawal and a spirit of non-involvement. Ivory towers .do not usually have certain purposes which an individual or a group may decide to pursue. They house institutions that have set themselves apart from the social milieu. Within them men may dwell for various reasons. The college professor who has no contact with the day to day problems of practical life has often been tradition ally branded as a creature living in an ivory tower. The monk in the loneliness of his convent also lives in another ivory tower. So is the hermit in the wilderness pursuing in isolation a path towards a life hereafter. He is in an ivory tower. But there are other kinds of ivory towers. The spe cialist who has concentrated his mind in a narrow subject of study to the total exclu sion of other interests lives in an ivory tower. Learning more and more about less and less, he loses contact with the significance of hu man personality. The professional, whether in engineering, medicine, law, or other profession, lives in an ivory tower when outside the narrow confines of his field he knows nothing at all. He has become a captive of his profession. Outside the pool where he moves, he is as helpless as a fish on dry land. The ivory tower has its 52 Panorama dangers, the dangers of isola tion. It could be social iso lation; but it could be worse than that. It could be in tellectual isolation which may spell moral impoverish ment and mental decay. For time in an ivory tower is not a moment for just a pause for refreshment. It is a withdrawal from other men, other thoughts, other feel ings, other influences. But it may serve a good purpose for some specific occasion. It may be used to provide a temporary place of conven ience where some special service may be performed effectively and undisturbed by a recluse of science quali fied to explore the unknown. WHAT OF THE CINEMA? Get more out of life, see a movie. MOvies are better than ever. So goes the gag line in the movie sections of our news papers. Actually, what does one get out of a movie? What does the cinema ‘teach’? As “entertainment" it passes off an entire philosophy. For instance: Movie audiences have been learning that no woman over twenty-five can be handsome or attractive, though men can be both to a fairly ancient age; that the feminine landscape should be as visible as possible (Bar dot?) without being actually seen; that the most interesting people are those who are well-dressed, well-loved, and ac quainted with cabarets. Above all, they have been learning that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with our so ciety. Cinema comment is the kind that enforces a certain set of values, and therefore influences action. September 1962 53 * Th * human dahig * potea a serious problem of birth and death controls. THE MENACING POPULATION FLOOD TIDE In biblical days, man was supposed to receive a divine order to grow and multiply. The earth was then a vast open space, much of it empty. But during the centuries that have elasped since those early times, the increase of the in habitants of the earth has been continuous and rapid. About 150 years ago a stu dious and observant English man was quite alarmed at seeing the growth of the po pulation practically in all countries. He was the Rev. Thomas Malthus who point ed out the tendency of popu lation increasing at a rate faster than could be provided with the supply of food that could be produce. And he warned that if allowed to continue unchecked it would result in widespread misery and even starvation. While the statements of Malthus set men to thinking about the population problem most people paid little, if any, attention to his ideas. The eminent scholar and scientist Julian Huxley tells us that as late as the 1930’s it had been quite customary to ridicule Malthusian fears. He said: "For one thing, the opening up of new land to agriculture, coupled with the introduction of better agri cultural methods, had al lowed food-production to keep up with population increase, and in some areas even to outdistance it. Ff>r another, attempts were being made to impugn the whole basis of Malthus’ argument. It was pointed out that he was incorrect in saying that food-production tended to in crease in an arithmetical pro gression, as against the geo metrical progression of popu lation-increase: food-produc tion during the nineteenth and early twentieth century did actually increase in a more than arithmetical pro gression.’’ But Huxley now tells us that "the nineteenth-century 54 Panorama spurt in food-production was a temporary historical inci dent: it cannot be expected to continue at the same rate, and indeed must slow down as it approaches an inevitable limit; and secondly that, though Malthus' particular formulation was incorrect, there is a fundamental differ ence between the increase of population, which is based on a geometrical or com pound - interest growth - me chanism, and of production, which is not.” Among primitive peoples some kind of control on population growth has exist ed as a result of famine, sickness, and war. At times infanticide, or abortion, or sexual abstinence over long periods are also practiced by them. But in more civilized countries there had not been any socially accepted system of population control until quite recently when the im mense increase of population and the growing difficulties of securing a sufficient and substantial means of support have started some studies to discover more acceptable methods of birth-control. The problem has become very- pressing as a result of the report on the survey of the population of the world which was first undertaken by the United Nations Con ference on World Population held in Rome in 1954. The UN statistics tells us that the world’s population today stands at the 3-billion mark. In the 1920’s, it did not yet pass the 2-billion mark; and in the mid-eighteenth cen tury, it was still in the 1-billion mark. Huxley writes that at about the time of Christ, the world population could not have exceeded onefourth of a billion or about 250 million. But this increase in abso lute numbers is not the only significant fact. What is even more impressive is that the rate of increase itself has kept on increasing almost by leaps and bounds. Human numbers have tended to grow not only by geometrical pro gression, as Malthus estimat ed, but by compound-interest rate. The prospect is, there fore, quite alarming. Population growth has not, however, followed a constant acceleration. The increase has taken place in upward jumps depending upon new discoveries in physiology, hy Sbptember 1962 55 giene, and scientific medicine which have cut down death rates. Where these scientific discoveries are fully applied, the expectation of life at birth has more than dou bled. In the days of the Roman Empire, the life expectancy was only 30 years. In this day this has gone up to 70 years in some countries in Europe and in the United States; and even in some lessdeveloped countries this in crease in life expectancy is noticable. Now that new methods of birth-control are discovered and being more widely used, the population problem is no longer solely a race between population and food-produc tion, but between death-con trol and birth-control, Hux ley says. But the case for birth-control has been made difficult by the opposition of the Roman Catholic church and coincidentally by Rus sian Communism specially during the Stalin rule. Catholic authorities have taken the stand that artificial birth-control is immoral, to say the least, and the Com munists have ridiculecl__ibe notion of overpopulation call ing it an invention of the imperialists and the colonial ists. But those who consider this problem of population objectively cannot disregard its serious aspect. In the Philippines today, the population is more than 28 million. This represents an increase of more than 3 per cent a year. If this rate continues in 15 years or in 1977, the popula tion of our country will ex ceed 50 million. With better means of production, im proved methods of- manufac turing, farming land utiliza tion, and scientific exploita tion and use of our forests, fishing, grounds, and other natural resources, the Philip pines may still have enough room to support that size of its population. But with that figure, a continued in crease at a geometrical ratio will mean a population with a size sufficient to bring down the standard of living of the people. Without birth-con trol, the nation may have to face serious difficulties in meeting not just its food and other physical needs but also its educational, social, and cultural needs. 56 Panorama It takes a Britisher, Mr. Gerald Wilkinson, who is a prominent businessman in Manila, to bring to the at tention of our public the menace of population explo sion to the Philippines as it is already felt in the other countries of the world. In a speech before the Manila Rotary Club about three years ago, W. Wilkinson made these statements: “The fact that most of Asia is in a worse plight does not reduce the urgency of the Philippine problem. For what is this mounting wave of population going to ex pect? The same standards of living as in the past? Are the children of today going to expect to have more or less things than their grand parents? “If the Philippine popu lation was under communist control, I suppose that coer cion, brain-washing and regi mentation might for a time induce our acceptance of lower standards of living, which in turn would curb the strain upon the economic apparatus of the Philippines. “But under our democratic processes, with a fret press, competitive political promises for a better life for everybody in every election campaign, and with commercial adver tising, the radios, the tele visions, the magazines, the movies and the billboards, all stimulating to everybody, everywhere, to expect the luxuries of yesterday to be come the necessities of today, surely the people of the free world including the Philip pines are being stimulated to demand more and not less things per person than they now obtain.” A large, steady, and rapid increase in population is bound to result in the ex pansion of the areas occupied by barrios, towns, and cities. More people require more residential sites, more busi ness and industrial centers. Recreational places, play grounds, parks, and other spots needed for cultural ac tivities will be either sacri ficed to'give way to the need for space for food-production or maintained at the expense of health and other material necessities. Julian Huxley puts this question in this manner: “The space and the re sources of our planet are limited. Some we must set September 1962 57 aside for the satisfaction of man’s material needs — for food, raw materials, and energy. But we must set aside others for more ulti mate satisfactions — the en joyment of unspoilt nature and fine scenery, the interest of wild life, travel, satisfying recreation, beauty in place of ugliness in human build ing, and the preservation of the variety of human culture and of monuments of an cient grandeur. “In practice this means limiting the use to which some areas are put. You can not use ploughed fields to land aircraft on, you cannot grow crops in built-over areas, you cannot permit ex ploitation or unrestricted “development” in national parks or nature sanctuaries. In the long run, you cannot avoid paying the price for an unrestricted growth of hu man numbers: and that price is ruinous. “It is often asserted that science can have no concern with values. On the contrary, in all fields of Social Science, and (in rather a different way) wherever the applica tions of Natural Science touch social affairs and affect human living, science must take account of values, or it will not be doing its job satisfactorily. The popula tion problem makes this ob vious. As soon as we recall that population is merely a collective term for .aggrega tions of living human beings, we find ourselves thinking about relations between quantity and quality — quan tity of the human beings in the population and quality of the lives they lead: in other words, values.” WHAT IS SELFISHNESS? Selfishness is the satisfaction of desire at somebody else's expense, so that the one’s gain is the other’s loss. It may be supposed that everyone, at some time or other, has done things of this sort; but no one can be a Machiavellian unless he makes such a behavior a rule of life. Panorama HOW TO DRIVE YOUR CAR SAFELY The increasing number of accidents caused by driving of cars, busses, and trucks should turn our attention to better ways of driving. It is not enough that a car or truck be mechanically in top condition. Of course, this should not be neglected. But the fact is that new machines have often figured in acci dents. In this article we have two assumptions to be gin with: (1) that the car is not defective and (2) that the driver is not just learning how to handle the wheel, how to shift from first to second, how to turn around in the back yard, or how to park the car. We make good time between widely separat ed places, running around fdrty to seventy kilometers an hour on the open road and pushing through towns and lines of traffic as quickly as common sense will permit. From an experienced driver’s article on the subject of good driving we learn the follow ing ideas: The most im portant single principle for open-road driving is: that you must constantly drive not only your own car, but you must drive the car (s) in front of you and th&car (s) behind. Let’s take the one (s) behind first. First, you have got to know, at all times, just what is be hind you; that means that you have to look in your mir ror perhaps every ten to thirty seconds (depending on the road) to see what’s going on there. You may protest that on a straight road, with little or no traf fic, there’s no use. To this I reply that on a straight road, with little or no traffic, there isn’t any use. But if there is a fairly good chance that a car will come up be hind you, you must know if it does. Let’s see how it works. Sometimes I push the speed limit a bit, particularly when I think the limit does not make sense. In a situation of this sort, I keep track of every car in sight behind me. I say to myself: there are September 1962 59 three in a bunch, a quarter of a mile back, and they are respectively red and blue and a convertible. It is vital that I know what is behind me, and what changes are taking place, so that I have the knowledge necessary for action, whether I take it or not. But let's take a more usual case; you look in your mirror two or three times, and you see that a car is coming up behind you and getting fair ly close. Obviously that car is making better time than you are. What do you do? What you do is so import ant that I think it needs to be established as an extreme ly important principle: any car traveling faster than you must be allowed to get ahead of you and out of the way just as fast as is safely possi ble. Sometimes you may see that the driver can’t pass you (or if he does he is a suicidal maniac), but let’s assume that he can pass you, and that he and you will come through the experience in tact. Your first move is this: pull over a little closer to the right side of the road to show that you are aware of his presence behind you and to give him as much room for passing as you can. Sup pose that the driver doesn’t pass you right away. There are two chief reasons for this: (a) the road or the traffic conditions don’t allow him to do so; or (b) he is what I should like to call a ’’fol low-traveler.” Saving this second reason for a moment, what can you do to /help in the first situa tion? Here is what you don’t do: you don’t say to yourself, ‘‘There’s a poor chap behind who’s in a hurry and who can’t get by, so the best thing for me to do is to speed up a little so that even if he can’t pass he can, perhaps, go as fast as he wants to.” If you speed up, that just makes it all the harder for him to pass, and even if con ditions ahead improve some what at this new, higher speed, he may be even more seriously stuck behind you. The best thing to do is to slow down (and, if necessary, even pull over onto the shoulder); this may slow him down momentarily, but it’s much easier now for him to pass, and if he really wants to he shouldn’t be so long in doing it. To me, every driver 60 Panorama who wants to go faster than 1 do is a person I admire (not revile, as some drivers do). The general rule in this case is: do whatever is necessary to get him past in the short est possible time. You won’t do it by speeding up. And now let’s take the "follow-traveler.” Even as I consider him I begin to feel my blood pressure going up. I mean to give him his due importance. The most dan gerous average driver on the road today is the one you will find behind the wheel of the second car in a line. Think this over. To be second, he must have been going faster than the car (or truck) now leading the line, and his duty was to pass as soon as he could. Perhaps for a few moments, or even for a few minutes, he couldn’t pass. But that length of time is seldom long enough for two or five or twenty cars to come up behind him, and be stuck there. Most "secondcar” drivers don’t pass, not because they can’t, but be cause they have some com pletely irrational habit of following. If I have seen it once, I have seen it ten thou sand times. He is always un decided. I believe he is in capable of thought. He is just a “follow-traveler”; he wants someone else to do his thinking for him. You know as well as I do the result of this irrational following: much of our traf fic on the open road moves not car by car, but in bunches and often in long lines. (I am not talking about week end traffic jams on inade quate, over-travelled high ways where there is no choice but to follow as there is no open space ahead.) A line is a group of drivers who were and are anxious to make better time than the cars in the lead. They may restrain themselves for a while, but you know what happens to them after ten minutes of it, or half an hour. They get, to put it mildly, impatient. Then at one swoop, they start to pass the six or eight or ten closely spaced cars ahead of them. Theoretical ly, with everything just right, it is no more difficult to pass a hundred cars in a bunch than to pass one. Practical ly, since nothing is ever com pletely right, the difficulty and danger of passing more than one car at a time goes September 1962 61 up, I believe, in some sort of geometric ratio. There are just a few things about the treatment of "follow-traveler” behind. First, remember that you have complete control over the car behind. You can keep it from passing (by just moving over to the left, or by other wise scaring the driver); you can force it to pass, and get rid of it; or you can very easily run it off the road by swerving out at just the right moment. The way you be have is fully as important as the way he behaves, if not more important. Second, some progress is being made in the mechanics of the car itself. Improved rear-vision mirrors are advertised and praised, and many new cars have more window space in the critical direction. Now let us take the case of the car ahead. The essential truth about that car is that you can’t control it. If it is coming toward you, and is weaving or keeping in the middle of the road, or pass ing in an impossible spot, the only thing you can do is to protect yourself. You can slow down and pull out to the right, if necessary into the ditch, or you can (if you’re lucky) run up a side road. One salient fact about the car coming toward you is that it seldom gives you much time to do anything, and most of what you do is not your choice — it’s forced upon you. The situation with the car you are about to overtake is a little different. First, you must choose your own time and place for passing. If your man ahead is helpful, there won’t be any trouble. But if you can’t see ahead, don’t let him make up your mind for you, even if he is a co-operative truck driver, who waves that all is clear. Second, as you approach him, you have time enough to get some idea of how he is driving — whether he ob viously sees you and pulls over slightly to the right, whether he is going fairly fast or is just poking along, or whether he is unaware of you and is in the middle of the road. You can’t control him except by getting up close and trying to blow him off the road with your horn, a disagreeable process that I find necessary only a few times a year. 62 Panorama The main thing that you can do is to size up the pro babilities ahead. If he is driving very slowly, he is par ticularly dangerous, for then he is able to turn or step sud denly. (If he is going fifty miles an hour and makes a sudden left turn, he is going to turn over; not many peo ple do that, what with the high price of automobiles.) Another thing is to see if there are any places into which he could possibly make a left turn — a side road or driveway. You can always watch his front wheels (as you come up alongside), for you can see his wheels turn before the car as a whole moves any appreciable amount. And as you come up abreast, if he makes any not-too-suddent swerve or turn, you can often brake fast enough so that he doesn’t run you off the road. The chances are that when you brake, he will not, and that he will pass ahead of you. (If he is determined to cause an accident, and is clever about it, there is nothing you can do.) My ideal way of getting rid of a car I want to pass is to keep my speed, watch the road ahead, but at the same time watch the driver and how he is driving, and get past him quickly. How neat ly this work depends, of course, on the kind of road you are traveling, and the amount of oncoming traffic. There are a few other fami liar types that you cannot control. One is the driver who sticks firmly in the mid dle of the highway and won’t move over. Do you pass him on the right? I do, but I don’t like it, or him. I try to be prepared for the worst, for if he swerves over to the right and runs into me, I am not only unhappy but may be legally in the wrong. And then there’s that really des picable person who, with plenty of room on the side of the road, stops or parks with a piece of his car on the road. Then again there is the driver who suddenly halts right before you with out warning of any kind. The only remedy for these “smart” guys is to have their license cancelled. What about turn signals? Sure, if they are needed. But it’s a great deal more im portant to put your car in the proper position to turn, September 1962 63 than, (or example, to get in the right lane and then signal that you are going left. If there is nobody behind you, there is not the slightest rea son for signaling. How about yielding the right way, and being polite? My rule: don’t ever do either. The road is no drawing room. Rules have been formulated so that one car in a certain position, or on a certain road, has precedence over another. Don’t ever give up your right, for although you and another driver may carry on in a pleasant Alphonseand-Gaston manner, a third car coming along may well ram into one of you, or be in a serious accident trying to get around you. But don’t take this advice to mean that you lose all common sense; if a large truck comes out of a side road, taking your rightof-way, your resentment should be tempered with wisdom. I have never yet tangled with anything much larger than I was; something my own size usually gives me the right of way, when it be longs to me. What’s the best thing to do about the appalling head light problem in night driv ing? I almost never drive any distance at night. If you can’t avoid it, I have only one suggestion to offer: when the oncoming car is some distance away, use his headlights to size up the part of the road that you will come to in a moment, while blinded. The best thing to do is to stay at home and go to bed. How often should you use your horn? My first impulse is to say never, and I ajmqst stick to it. If it is your in tention to annoy or confuse other drivers, don’t hesitate. Certainly, there are occasions for tooting — heedless child ren playing in the road, some one driving in the middle of the road who doesn’t know you are behind — but most horn blowing takes the place of looking and thinking. 64 Panorama By Peter F. Drucker To the young man or woman who wants to be a lawyer, an engineer, an ac countant, or a physician, schools have specific lessons and ideas to give. But ac cording to Peter Drucker, an American social scientist, they do not seem to know what is best for a future em ployee to learn. The one thing of most value to him is "the ability to organize and express ideas in writing and in speaking." As an employee has to deal with people, his success de pends very much on his abi lity to present his own thoughts and ideas to them so they will really know what you want to tell them and be persuatkd. The letter, the report, the memorandum, the ten-minute conference are basic tools of the em ployee. Of course, if one’s work is largely manual and menial, the ability to use pen or tongue will not be of great importance. But as one rises to a higher position away from just manual work and when he finds himself in a larger organization or a pro gressive office, whether it is a government or a large pri vate corporation, this ability to express oneself, Mr. Druc ker assures us, is perhaps the most important of all skills a man can possess. Of course, one must have something to say which should be of value and rele vance. He needs to study and understand what he should write or speak about. Mere skill in expression is not enough. Expressing one’s thoughts is one skill that the school can really teach, especially to people born without na tural writing or speaking talent. While other skills can be learned later, ."the foundations for skill in ex pression have to be laid early: September 1962 65 an interest in and an ear for language; experience in organizing ideas and data, in brushing aside the irrelevant, in wedding outward form and inner content into one structure; and above all, the habit of verbal expression. If you do not lay these foun dations during your school years, you may never have an opportunity again." Drucker believes that one of the best ways a school should have for training skill in expression is the rule of writing a "theme a day” which has virtually disap peared. His advice now is the writing of poetry and the writing of short stories. This work is not necessarily going to make poets or short-story writers out of the students. But he says "these two courses offer the easiest way to obtain some skill in expression. They force one to be econo mical with language. They force one to organize thought. They demand of one that he give meanings to every word. They train the ear for lang uage, its meaning, its preci sion, its overtones — and its pitfalls. Above all they force one to write.” The typical employer may not know this as yet; but sooner or later he is going to see that the young college graduate who has done much short-story writing iff the one who can turn out a good, simple, and readable report. There are two types that are not effective employees. One is he who is good only at painstaking detail work and has no imagination. His usefulness is limited. The other is the self-styled "genius" who has big and high-sounding ideas but is incapable of intensive appli cation to detail. Most of our young graduates have a de cided leaning one way or the other. This fact may be ex plained in terms of basic per sonality. One's experiences do not change very much his personality, which he ac quires from birth. “The need for economic security is often as not an outgrowth of a need for psychological security rather than a pheno menon of its own. But pre cisely because the difference is one of basic temperament, the analysis of what kind of temperament you possess is so vital. A man might be happy in work for which he has little aptitude; he might 66 Panorama be quite successful in a job for which he is tempera mentally unfitted” There are two groups of activities where qualities of aptitude and temperament are in demand in different degrees. There is greater emphasis on conscientious performances of well-organ ized duties rather than on imagination — especially for the beginner — for instance, in the inside jobs in banking or insurance which normally offer great job security but not rapid promotion or large pay. The same is true of most government work, parti cularly in the clerical and engineering branches, and of most public utilities. But in such areas as buy ing, selling, and advertising, the emphasis is on adaptabi lity, on imagination, and on an eagerness to do something novel and different. “In those areas, by and large, there is little security, either personal or economic. The rewards, however, are high and come more rapidly. Major pre mium on imagination — though of a different kind and coupled with dogged persistence on details — pre vails in most research and engineering work. Jobs in production, as supervisor or executive, also demand much adaptability and imagina tion.” In small business close at tention to daily routine is needed. But here, there is also room for quite a few people of imagination and with a desire for introducing new things. If successful, a man of this type could trans form the tiny company into a big success. Our country is surely in need of this type of personality. In the small business personal contacts spell effectiveness. In large ones, ability to form policies is essential; and those within the organization are practi cally cogs of a big wheel. In every organization, even the smallest, there are posi tions that, while subordinate, modestly paid, and usually filled with young and begin ning employees, nbnetheless are not at the bottom. The private secretary, the cost accountant, the man in charge of personnel, and a few others have some view of the whole rather than of only one small area. Their jobs are near the top, as it were. September 1962 67 Drucker warns the nearthe-top employee that his job is in a way insecure. He is exposed to public view. To this employee, he ad dresses these words: “Your position is ambiguous; by yourself you are a nobody — but you reflect the boss’s status; in a relatively short time you may even speak for the boss. You may have real power and influence. In to day’s business and govern ment organization the hand that writes the memo rules the committee; and the young staff man usually writes the memos, or at least the first draft. But for that very rea son everybody is jealous of you. You are a youngster who has been admitted to the company of his betters, and is therefore expected to show unusual ability and above all unusual discretion and judgment. Good per formance in such a position is often the key to rapid ad vancement. But to fall down may mean the end of all hopes of ever getting any where within the organiza tion.” Specialization is emphasized in engineering and in ac counting, in production, in statistical work, and in teach ing. But there is an increas ing demand for people who are able to take in a great area at a glance, people who perhaps do not know too much about any one field — though one should always have on area of real compe tence, They are classified as "generalists.” The specialist deals with technique, tools, media. His educational background is properly technical or profes sional. He is strictly what is called a trained man. The generalist, especially the ad ministrator, deals with peo ple. His field is leadership, planning, direction - giving, and coordination. He is strictly what is called an educated man. The study of the humanities is his source of strength. The specialist seldom qualifies as an admi nistrator. We rarely find a good generalist who is also a good specialist in a parti cular field. An effective or ganization needs both kinds. One should not change jobs constantly. People be come suspicious of the char acter or ability of a person who flits from one job to an other. But at the same time, 68 Panorama one must not look upon the first job as the final job. Rather he should take it as a training job, an opportu nity to discover yourself, to find out what you are good for as an employee. "To know when to quit is there fore one. of the most import ant things — particularly for the beginner. For on the whole young people have a tendency to hang on to the first job long beyond the time when they should have quit for their own good. The advice of Drucker to the young employee is as follows: "One should quit when self-analysis shows that the job is the wrong job — that, say, it does not give the security and routine one re quires, that it is a small-com pany rather than a big-organization job, that it is at the bottom rather than near the top, a specialist’s rather than a generalist’s job, etc. One should quit if the job demands behavior one consi ders morally indefensible, or if the whole atmosphere of the place is morally corrup ting — if, for instance, only yes men and flatterers are to lerated.” A young man should not spend much time in a job which does not offer the training one needs either in a specialty or in administra tion and the view of the whole. This does not mean formal training but a chance to develop into a more use ful work that gives one a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction. The chance of promotion should be deemed as the essence of a job. A young employee is likely to end in failure if he considers his present job "as but one rung in the promotional ladder rather than as a job itself that deserves serious effort and will return satisfaction, a sense of accomplishment, and pride. And one can be an important and respected member of an organization without ever having received a promotion; there are such people in practically every office.” Of course, a progres sive organization should offer fair promotional opportuni ties. Otherwise it becomes stagnant and corrupted; it is bound to cause demoraliza tion of its employees. One should not waste his time in such a place. September 1962 69 There are three situations which Drucker suggests should be carefully watched: "The entire group may be so young that for years there will be no vacancies. If you find yourself caught in such a situation, get out fast. If you wait it will defeat you. "Another situation without promotional opportunities is one in which the group ahead of you is uniformly old — so old that it will have to be replaced long before you will be considered ready to move up. Stay away from organiza tions that have a uniform age structure throughout their executive group — old or young. The only organ ization that offers fair pro motional opportunities is one in which there is a balance of ages. "And finally there is the situation in which all promo tions go to members of a particular group — to which you do not belong. Some chemical companies, for ins tance, require a master's de gree in chemistry for just about any job above sweeper. Some companies promote on ly engineering graduates, some government agencies only people who majored in economics, some railroads on ly male stenographers, some British insurance companies only members of the actua ries’ association. Or all the good jobs may be reserved for members of the family. There may be adequate promotional opportunities in such an organization — but not for you. "I have only one more thing to say: to be an emplo yee it is not enough that the job be right and that you be right for the job. It is also necessary that you have a meaningful life outside the job. I am talking of having a genuine interest in something in which you, on your own, can be, if not a master, at least an amateur expert. This something may be bota ny, or the history of your county, or chamber music, cabinetmaking, Christmas-tree growing, or a thousand other things. But it is important in this "employee society” of ours to have a genuine in terest outside of the job and to be serious about it. I am not, as you might sus pect, thinking of something that will keep you alive and interested during your retire 70 Panorama ment. I am speaking of keeping yourself alive, inter ested, and happy during your working life, and of a perma nent source of self-respect and standing in the commu nity outside and beyond your job. The man who will make the greatest contribution to his company is the mature person — and you cannot have maturity if you have no life for interest outside the job. “Being an employee means working with people; it means living and working in a so ciety. Intelligence, in the last analysis, is therefore not the most important quality. What is decisive is character and integrity. If you work on your own, intelligence and ability may be sufficient. If you work with people you are going to fail unless you also have basic integrity. And integrity — character — is the one thing most, if not all, employers consider first.” THE NEED FOR RE-THINKING The great German poet, Goethe, who also lived through a crisis of freedom, said to his generation: “What you have inherited from your fathers, earn over again for yourselves or it will not be yours.” We inherited freedom. We seem unaware that freedom has to be remade and re-earned in each generation of man. One reason for this failure is, I believe, passing at last. Our foolish languor has been shaken, if not shattered. We are more ready to examine ourselves and our record. And it is a privilege of our society that every citizen should make his own inquiry. The urgent thing is to feel the need for re-thinking and to set to work the ultimate energies of free society — which cannot be done by the fiat of government but only by the troubled conscience of responsibile men and women, x x x And if we cannot — by a certain discipline, by readiness for reflection and quiet, by determination to do the difficult and aim at a lasting good — rediscover the real purpose and direction of our ex istence, we shall not be free. Our society will not be free. — Adlai Stevenson. September 1962 71 Most of us seldom use our own thinking faculty. We feel we do not have to; it is not necessary. Today it seems to be generally believed that what is important is to take things as they are. We should not be different. We should learn to adjust our selves to our social and ma terial environment. It is so convenient and safe to drift with the current. In political life, we should watch and wait for the elec tion results and then make peace with the victors or keep quiet? In the field of religion, we should avoid following the lonely path of our choice and should take instead the crowded road, for where traf fic is heavy business is good, brisk, profitable. After all there is much of the element of business in organized reli gion. In business, we need not bother ourselves with ethics. Honesty is not a practical policy. If others have made a lot of money by unethical methods, why not do like wise? This is the pattern used these days. Success in selling does not go to the honest man. We heard from some peo ple that there is a great deal of confusion in our country at present. Why not leave things as they are. One man’s effort is just useless. Dissent does not count. So let us stand by and just watch to enjoy the show. — Cynicus. 72 Panorama i|i In hia face the agony of an age of faith put to death by torture. THE FACE OF FREUD Leo Cherne For sixteen years cancer ate relentlessly at Freud’s lip, gums, jaw, and palate. Eat ing became a torture, speak ing an agony. Pain was never more than a swallow away. If pain and courage reside in the jaw, purpose is found in the eyes. Here are eyes that look inward — a direc tion no human eyes had wholly turned to before, nor looked at so long, nor seen so much. Never until Freud had a personality been excavated sb systematically, never had there been so relentless an attempt at self-confrontation. The search was on alien dif ficult ground, unfriendly, un happy, dirty. And as the hunt reached its climax, it was almost as though the body rebelled against Freud’s intellectual inquisition and tried to draw attention away from the soul to the jaw, from emotion and memory to the tangible terrors of death reproducing itself in his flesh. Freud was not easily sub dued. The. struggle added compassion as it deepened the lines that are etched just below the corners of the nose down to the sides of the mouth. Freud knew that Man had always had the power and the wish to destroy himself and this knowledge cut deep, deep, deep into the furrows across the forehead, the ridge across his nose. In his famous letters to Einstein on the inevitability of war, Freud’s pessimism is reluct ant, resigned, pervasive. He had faced rejection on every side. The medical pro fession disowned him. Close family friends deserted him. Collaborators faltered and disappeared. Newspapers called him "that evil Vien nese.” Anti-Semitism dogged him much of his life. Rather than fight these outside September 1962 73 forces, he made himself in accessible. There was strug gle enough inside. If there is no contempt, no vengeance in the face, there is also no sentiment, no soft humanity. In one sense, Freud strides with those intellectual giants who stripped Man of his dignity as they increased the sum of human knowledge. If Copernicus made Man less than a speck in the uni verse, if Darwin anchored man in slime, it was Freud who brought a truth even more difficult to accept: be neath the outer crust of Man’s civilized personality Freud pried open the volcanic caul dron of violent, possessive, unreasoning, and primitive impulses which he insisted are Man's real nature. But if Freud stripped Man of his illusions and dignity, he offered a way of earning them back. Through selfknowledge, courage, growth, the barbarian could be paci fied, the primitive harnessed, the civilized fortified. Freud himself refused to be misled into the hopeful belief that the victory would be easy, that larger freedom could be readily attained. His life and work rang down the curtain on the nineteenth century, on the age of op timism and the inevitably of progress. The eighteenth and nine teenth centuries held that Man was good, only his insti tutions needed changing. The institutions were changed — Man remained as he al ways was. In Freud’s face is the agony of an age of faith put to death by torture — an age that had begun with Man's supreme faith in himself and his works, that ended with mass destruction and the birth of total tyrannies. History wrote the tragic closing lines in the drama of his life. A refugee from Na zism, he died in London, on September 26, 1939. — The Saturday Review. 74 Panorama ■ “Wisdom no longer cries from the skyscraper roof tope. She whispers from ignored comers of the tick, aad world. And still no one listens.” LETTER TO MY FOUR SONS Wolf Mankowitz My dear sons: I write to you because while I am involved in the vanities and follies of my life, and you in yours, we get very little time to communicate wisdom to one another. While you four struggle with the London General Schools Biology and chess gambits and shove-ha’ penny tactics; and folk songs on the re corder, Daniel; and, in the case of you, my eight-monthsold Benjamin, the enormous problems involved in learn ing to sit upright, I try to make a musical entertain ment out of the Crippen mur der. Now, which of us five is in the most ridiculous situation? Which of us is wise? Which one has an undoubted answer to any of our bizzare pro blems? As I am your father, we sometimes assume that I am less confused than you are. As I have survived more follies both of my own, it is suggested that I may be able to give you some advice which will help you to nego tiate the follies ahead of you in your own lives. The truth is, of course, that I can’t. The only essen tial difference between us is that, being older, I have had more moments of sadness in which to reflect upon the need for wisdom. Having you to cherish and raise, 1 have had to learn practical ities which are not yet your concern. Having had failures and successes to live through, I have developed defense tac tics and survival equipment which you so far have not needed. Having the blind impulse of all living creatures to survive, I have learnt means which help, but do not dignify. But wise I am not, and though I am sup posed to be shrewd, I don’t think that I’m even as care September 1962 75 ful as those people who, ner vous of flying, take out an insurance at the airport be fore departing. I’m always under-insured. These other people put 2s in a machine and they arrange for their heirs to collect Pl 0,000 should the gnawing in their stomachs prove to be secondsight rather than mere an xiety. Perhaps with four sons I ought to do this whenever I fly. I don’t, because I feel safer in the air than 1 do on the ground. While I am up there it’s almost impossible for me to get involved in the dangerous projects with which I continually frighten myself down below. For a few claustrophobic hours I can t start anything, I'm per haps nearer to heaven than I will ever get again and the enforced suspension of life gives me a foretaste of the boredom which being dead and inactive must constitute. To be far up in the air is for me safe and tedious be cause I am a creature of earth: I spring from it, I 2—letter to my four ... cef love it, I detest it, and I shall crawl back into it. You can’t say that a man who has spent a large propor tion of every day of his life, whether on the ground or in the air, thinking about stories is a normal man. And for t.wenty years L have been pre occupied with fantasies and techniques for making them seem real. The only prac tical mechanics that I have ever succeeded in learning, from typing to scriptwriting, I’ve done only because of the pressing need I have to try to make these stories happen. I’ve learnt also the mechanics of selling the products of my compulsion. But there is no wisdom in all that. No, I know very little that is wise. All 1 can say is that, with my head-start over you, I have managed to accumulate more good quotations, that’s all. But on the other hand this is not such as small ad vantage either, because what ever is to be lived through has already been lived through by some wild man in the past, whatever can be understood has already been understood by some wild man cooling off from his own wildness. I don't refer to the development of more effi cient car gears, my car-me chanic son; or the conquest of space, my space-conquer 76 Panorama ing son; or the plitting of the neuton, my son with the scientific inclinations. Such futile follies have nothing to do with wisdom. Wearily enough, there is no foresee able end, other than perhaps the most desperate one, to the scientific vanities ahead of us. But to wisdom there is an end; it has been reached and recorded often enough; it lies now mouldering in books, waiting to be burnt at regular intervals by tyrants to whose idiocy it is an af front. It waits, quietly burn ing like live coals under dead ash, and it will always be there, waiting to be blown into a furnace of invigorating fire,' and doubtless waiting in vain. Wisdom no longer cries from the skycraper roof tops. She whispers from ig nored corners of the sick, sad, world. And still no one listens. I suppose that today if Moses or the Buddha or Christ — or that, to me, greatest of all teachers, the pre-Christian Rabbi Hillel — was to suddenly take over from some popular comedian down with flu and appear on television at a peak hour one night, ten million people would listen for a few mo. ments and then switch off their sets with a single hand, for what these wise men would have to say we have already heard. We do not wish to hear it all over again. We have ignored it all so often. We have called them false prophets and persisted in the ways of our idiocy. There seems little reason to assume that we shall change this habit of our history. The Buddha would say: ‘Give, sympathize, and con trol’. But we know all that. Moses would tell us that there is no Good but God, and that man's only contact with Him is through the healthiness of his relation ships with other living crea tures. But we are over-fami liar with that thought. Christ would give us that sermon which for 2,000 years self-styled Christians have quoted, but acted against. And that sweet man, Rabbi Hillel, who brought together the most loving thoughts of the Greeks and welded them with the highest thinking of the Jews, would instruct us not to do to others what is hateful to ourselves. As a story writer I have September 1962 77 always been intrigued by that kind of story in which the hero chases through ex citing picaresque dangers in order to acquire a small box or a sealed bottle or a talismanic ring, or a sword or grail containing the answer. Many of the characters I’Ve written stories about are en gaged in such a search, and they imagine that the answer, when found, will be happi ness or wealth or satisfaction or freedom, or sometimes just a very good dinner. But after their dragons have been defeated, my searchers have always found that the mes sage in the box or the bottle says ‘Search on regardless’. So that after a good night’s sleep they, typically, sell the box or the bottle or the sword or the grail, and they finance the next stage of this eternal search. So the char acters that I observe or in vent, and who, I suppose, are all of them myself in some particular, do not appear to have benefited from knowing the quotations which I know so well. At least, it would seem that if there is no end for them to search for, if the purpose of their lives is in the living, if they have no alternative but to go on mak * ing the same mistakes, living the same idiocies, what point is there in their efforts? Neither they nor I know or can ever know the point. But I’m reminded of a slightly encouraging thought of Bertrand Russell at this point. He observes that the function of work is not to make man happier, but less bored. I have observed that those who do not work are continually bored, and that the boredom sluices out of their life the juice and the blood and the joy, and I would only add to what Lord Russell has written this, that the by-products of work, nurturing, as they do, life and living, do offer pleasure to those for whom life is a pleasurable process to parti cipate in. This, too, I sup pose, is a talent. And I sup pose if I could give you any thing at all in the way of wisdom it would be the talent for this, the enjoyment of life. Russell also observes that intensive working makes re laxation sweeter. So perhaps to revert to those sad search ers of mine, those heroes of my stories, there is some wis 78 Panorama dom in their endless pursuit of the message — though they will find no final solution, that’s for sure; nor be remem bered any longer than those who do no harm to the rest of mankind are ever remem bered. So, my dear four sons, I come to the point of discov ering to you the wisest sum mary of man’s pointless ex istence that I personally know of. It is, not a very superior, quiet, relaxing, con templative, at-one-with-eternity sort of wisdom. It be longs more to the no-alterna tive, practical group for which there is no happy, happy land ahead, but only the land on which we live now, once and for the only time. ‘Go thy way’, says Eccle siastes, the anonymous Old Testament philosopher, ‘eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart’. This voice from the past is no scarescrow puritan, but a lover of flesh and sunlight. ‘Let thy garments always be white’, he says, ‘and let not thy head lack ointment’, meaning that what is to be enjoyed should be enjoyed. ‘Live joyfully with the wo man whom thou lovest; and in thy labour wherein thou labourest under the sun all the days of thy vanity, what soever thy hand findest to do, do it with all thy might, for that is thy portion in life; and there is no wori, nor de vice, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest.’ And he also ob served that it was purpose less to strive overmuch, or to attempt to be too good, or too clever, or much more than merely human. Now that, to me, is the greatest piece of practical wisdom I know. And I don’t doubt that you will ignore it in the course of living the vanities before you, much as I have done in living my own. So perhaps it’s best for us to return to our personal follies, you to your biology and chess and playing shove ha’penny, and cheating at it, Jonathan; and the recorder, Daniel; and you, my Ben jamin, to learning how to sit upright which you are very near to accomplishing; and 1 to the making of a musical entertainment out of an old murder. But before we do, let me tell you now a very September 1962 79 short story, adapted, like so many of mine, from the Yid dish: There was this old vio linist who had, it so happens, four sons, all of them violin ists. And on his deathbed he 5—letter to my four ... cef called them to him and briefly and pointedly con fessed his failures as a father and as a husband and as man generally. But when his sons tried to console the old man, he said: ‘I’m not apologizing, nor am I excusing, I’m sim ply explaining that if I hadn’t been all these bad things, I would never have been such a good violinist’. After which he requested that they play him out to a quar tet of his own composition, which they did, very beauti fully for they were all good violinists. And though they had their doubts about their father in other respects, they had no doubt about his qua lity, or at least his intentions, or at least his ambitions, or at least his hopes as an artist. — Home Service, The Listen er, May 4, 1961. AN EDUCATIONAL VIEW Education is not universal. A radical change in educa tional policy cannot be ordered as an automobile manufac turer orders a new model, x x x Totalitarian education may assign children to allotted tasks as free education will not do. It may screen out the cleverest students and determine the field of specialization appropriate to each one by pro cesses not available to American examiners. If may thus provide far larger numbers of young men and women pre pared to serve the State in predetermined capacities than the colleges and universities of a free society could produce. Indeed a free society precisely because it is a free society, neither could compete, nor would compete in any such mani pulation of human lives. But it does not necessarily follow that the totalitarian system is destined to overrun the earth. For in matters of human life and human intelligence, quan titative statistics do not measure differences One Einstein or one Bohr is worth an inculculable crop of mediocrities, whether they are designated physicists by their diplomas or not. — Archibald MacLeish. 80 Panorama Attention: All organization beads and members! Help your club raise funds painlessly... Join the Panorama “Fund-Raising by Subscriptions” plan today! The Panorama Fund-Raising by Subscriptions plan will get you, your friends, and your relatives a year’s sub scription to Panorama. The Panorama is easy to sell. It practically sells itself, which means more money for your organization. The terms of the Panorama Fund-Raising by Sub scriptions plan are as follows: Cl) Any accredited organization in the Philippines can take advantage of the Plan. (2) The organization will use its facilities to sell sub scriptions to Panorama. (3) For every subscription sold the organization will get Pl.00. The more subscriptions the organization sells, the more money it gets. CONTENTS The President end Personality Cult .......................................... 1 Mabini: Architect of the Philippine Revolution Cesar Adib Majul ..................................................... 4 The Rights of Man ...................................................................... 9 Two Centuries of Rousseau ........................................................ . Humanism and the Humanist ................................................... ’l" Like Father Like Son! ................................................................. 1? The Technical Man and the Policy Maker . . . .................. A Revolutionary Form of Teaching ......................................... 24 The Long Suffering Student Charles Frankling Thwing .................................... 31 Tolerance Must be More Than a Pious Wish E.M. Forster .............................................................. ^34 Is Teoce On Earth Possible? John Strachey .......... 36 We Are Like The Bamboo Carmen Guerrero Nakpil ....................................... Communist Education: Theory and Practice ........................ 46 Ivory Towers ............................. 52 The Menacing Population Flood Tide .................................... 54 How To Drive Your Car Safely .............................................. 59 How To Be An Employee Peter F. Drucker ...................................................... 65 The Fashions of the Day .......................................................... 72 The Face of Freud Leo Cherne .................................................................... Letter to My Four Sons Wolf Mankowitz ............................................ 75