Panorama

Media

Part of Panorama

Title: Panorama
Issue Date: XV (Issue No.7) July 1963
Year: 1963
Language: English
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extracted text: Zell yout 'friends about the Panorama, the Philippines’ most versatile, most significant magazine today. (five them a year’s subscription — NOW! they will appreciate it. Subscription Form ................ 1 year for P8.50 ................2 years for P16.0t ................Foreign subscription: one year $6.00 U.S. Name ............................................................................................. Street ...................................................................................................... City or Town................................ Province ................................ Enclosed is o check/money order for the amount specified above. Please address all checks or money orders in favor of: COMMUNITY PUBLISHERS, INC. Invernes St., Sta. Ano, Mariila, Philippines THE HONOR OF A NAME The news buildup was fine. An explosion in the Stone hill case was imminent. The TV viewers’ thirst for blood had been whetted by Justice Secretary Marino’s first “it appears" expose a week before. Now the promised MacapagaLStonehill link was up. Candidate Diokno was back on the TV screen. Keyed-up and bug-eyed, TV viewers clung to every word as Diokno read, and showed a photostat, of an alleged memo of a Stonehill aide in New York to his boss in Manila on certain dollar disbursements to visiting Stonehill “friends” in the Big City in which the names of the LP’s Big Three — Macapagal, Marcos and Villareal — appeared. But in justice to Marcos, Diokno said, he re turned the Stonehill money. The Palace hatchet men were ready with a counter-blast. A bare half hour after Diokno had said good night to his viewers, Marino let go a big one. He linked 20 big names to Unk Harry’s ‘web of corruption,’ including Palace hopefuls Pelaez and Marcos. The press splurged it; the public feasted on the juicy fare. Pelaez and Marcos were furious. The LP teetered on the brink of a great schism. What added to the hurt was that the Pa lace had given them no hint of what was coming. Pelaez quit as foreign secretary. At an LP powwow in Malacanang, he balked at seeing DM alone in his study, stalked out of the meeting when Hechanova told him they had merely “borrowed” his honor to “save” the party. Said Pelaez: If he could do this to me, your vice president, what can he not do you? It appears the answer is obvious. ■ The advancement of legal education depends upon the results of researches of internatiqhal law soaeties. LEGAL EDUCATION AND RESEARCH Vicente G. Sinco The promotion of world peace through law requires for its success the employ ment of education, in gen eral, and legal education, in particular. This condition is practically indispensable and should go hand in hand with other activities that make for peace. It is generally admit ted that the use of political and economic measures alone does not effectively abolish war. On the contrary, it makes war at times necessary and even profitable. But to confine ourselves to the subject of legal educat ion for world peace, it ap pears desirable that an un derstanding of law, particu larly international law and its institutions, should not only be acquired by mem bers of the legal profession but should also be widely spread among the educated inhabitants of every country. The problem of peace through law is not merely the concern of the individual; It is a problem that faces all nations and all men. Conse quently, a measure of legal education should be enjoyed by the general public in or der that it could serve as a pervasive and persistent so cial influence for the adopt ion of peaceful methods of adjusting international dif ferences. In the long run, it is the diffusion of an effective edu cation for peace through law that could create an intellec tual atmosphere adverse to war and other violent forms of remedial action. Hence, the development of a human environment of this nature should be the concern not on ly of the professional school teacher but also of the law yer and of every educated person. Of course, this is a long, tedious, and difficult process. But so far there 2 Panorama seems to be no method bet ter than this that could change and ultimately sup press war as an ancient prac tice or a deeply rooted habit which mankind has collect ively followed or has taken for granted since time imme morial. The pursuit of peace must of necessity be consider ed a priceless goal of the ad venture of legal education. It cannot be done, much less achieved, by political edicts, administrative decrees, or le gislation. To carry it out, it has to be started on the bas is of a. well-studied plan and a carefully conducted' imple mentation. No plan of mass education may thus be considered ade quate as an instrument for world peace unless it makes provision for some acquaint ance with the fact that there exists a system of laws which precisely lays down certain standards of conduct among the different nations of the world. A satisfactory prog gram of general education on the availability of rules should place sufficient stress on law and courts for the peaceful settlement of inter national conflicts. It should describe the horrible effects of another world war which may likely be fought with the present terrible means and methods of wholesale murder and devastation. In a word, basic education for the masses would be incom plete unless it could help arouse in them a strong cons ciousness of the rule of law as an instrument for world peace. Mass education of this na ture and with this goal as an essential objective should serve as the ground work, the foundation, for a system of legal education which could be an effective medium for the establishment of world peace. The vast multitude of the world population to day even if we should ex clude the ignorant and the illiterate, are not aware that there are legal and peaceful mthods which could be used in settling international dis putes. They only know that governments and political leaders have always resorted and may always resort to war to settle differences between nations as long as they have the weapons and the resour ces for such purpose. Relatively vast sums are being set aside today for mass July 3 education. Even small coun tries devote a large propor tion of their national bud gets for so-called fundamen tal education. But for legal education there is nothing but niggardly amounts. For the advancement of the inter national law aspect of legal education not much has been done .Colleges and univer sities do not generally give enough attention to the sub ject except in their graduate courses. Oftentimes, it is merely made a minor part of the course in political science and is discussed in only one or two chapters of textbooks in international relations. The small value assigned to it in this manner has the ef fect of belittling the import ance and purpose of inter national law in the mind of the average student in a col lege or in a law school. • As a subject for graduate or post graduate work, inter national law is studied by on ly a limited number of stu dents, persons who take it for purposes of specialization. To give more impetus to its study by all students in our law schools and thereby develop greater interest in its rolex as an instrument for would peace should be a se rious responsibility which the legal profession should con sider and conscientiously as sume. It should be realized, of course, that funds are in dispensable for qualified pro fessors, materials, and facili ties. They should be made amply available by ’ govern ments or private foundations. For no other object of expen diture andi human effort is as important as that of esta blishing and preserving world peace through law if human life and the maintenance of civilization are worth saving from the threat of total an nihilation. The program of legal edu cation should not be carried out only in schools and col leges. Its benefits may be widely dispersed when taken up in discussion groups or se minars among lawyers, pulic officials, and businessmen. These may be conducted either by special committees or by existing law or civic associations in various coun tries under the auspices of the Center for World Peace Through Law. Papers pre pared and presented at this meeting should be given the widest distribution possible 4 Panorama in each country. Syllabi, textbooks, casebooks and re ports of judicial and arbitral tribuanls, and similar edu cational materials need to be supplied to different civic centers, public libraries, col leges, universities. The services of' individual lawyers and law associations need to be solicited for these activities. Courts and com mittees or commissions in charge of bar examinations should be appealed to for the inclusion of international law among the subjects re quired in the examiniations of applicants for admission to the bar. It should be giv en considerable weight in the preparation of bar tests and in the assessment of the re sults. Because the movement for world peace through law need to be known and felt by public officials, it would not be out of place to sug gest that an acquaintance with international law be made a qualifying require ment for persons chosen for the higher civil servic of every government. The consensus in the dif ferent continental conferences have favored the organiz ation of a World Rule of Law Center.. This obviously is a wise step to take. It is to be a clearing house for the lawyers to exchange inform ation and views on a global scale. The establishment of such Center assures the vi ability and progress of what ever plans and projects need to be undertaken for the suc cess of the enterprise the lawyears of the world are now determined to accomplish. It is a needed mechanism through which the programs now considered for World Peace Through Law may be implemented. The activities necessary to carry out legal education on a global scale as well as the work of inten sifying researches in inter national law or coordinat ing the researches of the different existing in stitutions need a permanent body which could follow up and encourage them. The Center could serve as an agency to obtain available re sources and technical assist ance from different legal, financial, and educational organizations. It could act in mobilizing them for the ful lest possible development of a worldwide consciousness of law as an instrument for inter July 5 national peace. To enhance its effectiveness, it would seem advisable that there be organized active correspond ents and committees in all countries to promote the ideas and objectives of the conference and to recruit participants and supporters of this movement. Without this Center, the conference on World Peace Through Law might turn out to be another beautiful but im practical concoction of dream ers as described by self-styled h a r d-b oiled or so-called down-to-earth leaders and politicians. That there are at present existing international and national institutions actively engaged in promoting world peace through law is too well known by many to be over looked. The United Nations is the most important of them. Practically all the states of the world are its members. But it is primarily and largely a political body. Its record so far shows that it generally avoids solutions for the problems brought be fore it. It shows extreme re luctance to develop interna tional law or to encourage the use of its own legal in stitutions, such as the Wold Court, to determine what are obviously legal questions. Nevertheless, the United Nations, with all its defects, promises to grow as the foun dation for the future struct ure of a true international community. But this will require a long period of in ternational education to which this conference now plans and hopes to give greater attention that has yet been given thus far. Just as important as the promotion of international law education is the develop ment of new research projects and the coordination of re search projects and the coor dination of .research work al ready being undertaken by es tablished institutions. The advancement of legal educat ion depends upon the results of well-planned and carefully accomplished researches of international law societies and institutes, regional cen ters, universities, and other public and private institut ions. It should be recognized that there is actually a dearth of research in international law. Science is way ahead in research activity. There are established centers for inter 6 Panorama national studies which give but slight attention to inter national law in their pro gram of activity. These places should induced to pro mote on some phase of the subject. The development of a com prehensive system of interna tional bill of rights for the protection of every indivi dual regardless of race, na tionality, creed, sex, resid ence, and social station should be adopted. It is as indispensable to a world le gal system as the bill of rights is to a democratic na tional constitution, and made part thereof by mere refer ence, needs a clear definition of its scope. There should be a restatemnt or codifica tion of the specific rules which fall within these gen eral principles. The working papers for this Conference makes men tion of other subjects for stu dy and research in order that a more comprehensive system of law applicable to states and individuals may be uti lized in determining inter national standards of ton duct and in adjusting clashes ofjnterests before authorized international tribunals. The acceptability of a system of this nature and scope obvious ly depends upon the freedom of its provisions from obscur ity, ambiguity, and parLaltiy. The chances of its implemen tation by big powers and small nations under such terms and conditions are like ly to be enhanced. The researches of existing lgeal organizations as well as decisions on questions of in ternational law are largely known only by experts and some officials of certain in ternational organ izations. The products of research are of little practical value to so ciety until after they are widely known and undersood by the educated public. Hence publication should be an inseparable part of re search programs. Translat ion into principal languages should form part of this un dertaking. By so doing the progress of international law studies could be known not only by specialists but by the members of the legal profes sion and by the public. There are, of course, some technical periodicals today publishing articles on inter national law, but these are circulated almost exclusively July 7 among members of the org anizations which take charge of their editing and- public ations. But the importance and necessity of international law as an instrument for the regulation and control of the relations and conduct of the states may only be widely appreciated when the lay public is in some way made aware of its growth and of the constant <nd serious at tention, time, and thought devoted to its development by competent scholars and responsible national leaders. Hence, it is not sufficient that the publication of re searches in international law be confined to technical jour nals for distribution among a small group of specialists. They should appear in news papers and other general publications, and they should be written in language and and style which the average law student, the public of ficial, and the educated lay reader could understand and appreciate. International law articles and decisions of international tribunals have an intrinsic appeal to many people. Such materials could be of direct interest to the average edu cated man because of their relation to problems o£ hu man security and survival. It would not be astonishing if much of the literature on the subject presented in a clear and readable style ra ther than in the obscure or technical jargon of the spe cialist would arouse the in terest of the layman in the objectives of the rule of law as an instrument for global peace. It might be opportune to recall at this juncture what one English scholar, once a Stowell Fellow of Oxford University, Thomas Baty, stated on how the Law of the Nations should be pre sented. He said that it is necessary that it be exhibit ed as “a body of rules based on clear, simple, intelligible, and sensible principles, com manding by its intrinsic me rit the occurrence and alle giance of the world.” But unfortunately, he added that not even the League of Na tions “saw the necessity of bringing the Law of Nations home to the common man.” And so in a volume he wrote on The Canons of Inter national Law, he suggested that international law be 8 Panorama simple, objective, and elastic. And the reasons he gave are: “Simple, because the com mon consent of the thought of so heterogenous a com posite as is afforded by the varied peoples of the world must obviously be limited to clear and plain propos itions. Certain, — (that is, protected by its exponents from rash and officious ques tioning) — because if a rule is made the passive subject of a vigorous and sustained sciolist attack, it is difficult to maintain that it enjoys general acceptance. Object ive, because only clear ob jective tests can be applied, when it is the opinion of the multifarious peoples of the globe which is to be based upon them. Elastic, because conditions change, and opin ions alter: a rigid rule which allows no room for corres ponding modifications is no rule at all. Every year since then, with the progressive replacement of principle by interest, the law has become less simple, less certain, less objective and to a fatal degree increasingly too elastic. We are slipping into the same state of anarchic practice as that which in an earlier cen tury aroused the indignation of Grotius.” Thus it is not only for the layman that clearer and more intelligible materials on inter national law should be made available. It is even also needed by many lawyers themselves. The average lawyer in my country and, I suppose, in some of the other countries, as well, does not often involve himself in questions of public interna tional law. As we all know, the cases which constantly engage his attention in his professional work seldom, if at all, call for the use and application of treaty provi sions or principles of inter national law. As a matter of fact, it is a rare occasion when problems of interna tional law are ever discussed in gatherings of lawyers he attends. It is almost certain that the last time he parti cipated in a discussion affectting international law was when he was a student in the law school. No wonder then that his attitude towards in ternational law and matters affecting international' legal organizations is one of indif ference. He considers them as pertaining to a field quite July 9 foreign to his professional business and to his personal life. He is almost convinced that they are better left to a law professor in a univer sity or to the two or three men working in the legal di vision of the foreign office of his government. This professional indiffer ence to international law and related matters has disturbed the minds of some respons ible leaders of the profession. Thus the late Justice Arthur T. Vanderbilt, one of the outstanding American jurists, in his lectures on Men and Measures in the Law raised these questions: “In these days of complicated interna tional relations, with a lin gering hope for One World and a brooding fear of Two Worlds, is not a deep under standing of public law, in cluding international law more important for lawyers than ever before in the his tory of mankind? Should the profession or the public generally be willing to leave these matters exclusively either to political scientists or to ” public officeholders?’’ The nature of the legal profession, the tasks that the members of the profession are called upon to perform, their significance to the per sonal and business affairs of the individual, their relevance to the social order, all of these and more justify the importance of the position and role of the lawyer in his community. Hence, a compet ent scholar was not without reason in bestowing upon the lawyer the title of officer of civilization. For the concepts of law, liberty, and order have ever been his concern, and without them as basic in gredients modern civilization would not have been pos sible. There can be no eco nomic and other forms of materials enterprises which generate the substance and content of civilized life in an atmosphere of chaos and law lessness.. The lawyer, however, has limited his field of action to -his community or his nation. But the size of the world has contracted; nations have become closely interdepend ent on one another; and their orderly relations are now the concern of all. Whatever the lawyer does within and for his country is no longer adequate to secure peace even in his very country it 10 Panorama self. He need expand the area of his service into the outside world and into its problems in the quest for peace. Hence the lawyer to day has to develop a new conception of his profession al duty. Professor Dennis W. Brogan, who is not a law yer himself, has expressed the opinion that because of the versatility and quick adaptability of the lawyer to the changing social context, his role in educating the public “for tolerable social living in this dangerous age is extremely important.” In the international society his preparation, we must con fess, could be much improv ed. In matters affecting for eign relations, his qualifica tions are in some instances so deficient that he is found unequal to his duties. Not very long ago some news papers published reports about a judge who acted in complete ignorance of a wellknown rule of international law and practice affecting diplomatic immunities. Mr. Philip C. Jessup, now a judge of the International Court, commented on that incident in these words: “Recently a judge of the City Court of New Rochelle, New York, was called upon to rule upon the immunities of the chauf feur of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Pend ing Senate approval of a United Nations treaty 'defin ing such immunities, the sub ject is covered by general lan guage in the Charter, and in an act of Congress. The Charter itself is, of course, a treaty and under the Consti tution (meaning the Ameri can Constitution) is part of thee supreme law of the land. But the Charter is a consti tutional document which lays down broad principles rather than detailed rules. The judge in denying im munity from arrest in this case was obviously unfami liar with two centuries of law and practice relative to the comparable problem of immunities for the diploma tic representatives of foreign states and could see no rea son why the immunities for the United Nations staff should differ from those ac corded m e m b e rs of state and federal legislatures. Without going into more de tail, the case is cited as evi dence of the need in this en lightened country for more July 11 understanding of the nature of international organizations and the responsibilities of the United States as the host country.” This may not be a typical case, but it reveals eithef an inadequacy of legal education in the field of in ternational law or the exist ence of utter indifference to commonly known rules of in ternational law even among legal officers. It certainly seems to strengthen the need for more education in the general rules and principles of international law on the part of lawyers and public officials. I should like to conclude this paper by quoting a state ment of the Honorable Elihu Root which says: “The increase of popular control over national con duct, which marks the poli tical development of our time, makes it constantly more important that the great body of the people in each country should have just conception of their inter national rights and duties. “Government do not make war nowadays unless assured of general and hearty sup port among their people; and it sometimes happens that governments are driven into war against their will by the pressure of strong popular feeling. It is not un common to see two govern ments striving in the most conciliatory and patient way to settle some matter of dif ference peaceably, while a large part of the people in both countries maintain an uncompromising and bellige rent attitude insisting upon the, extreme and uttermost view of their own rights in a way which, if it were to con trol national action, would render peaceful settlement impossible . . . “■Of course it cannot be ex pected that the whole body of any people will study in ternational law. But a suf ficient number can readily become sufficiently familiar with it to lead and form pu blic opinion in every com munity in our country upon all important international questions as they arise.” These thoughts were ex pressed by that great Ameri can statesman in the early part of this century. He gave them as his salute to the founding of the American Journal of International Law. They are still applicable to 12 Panorama. the conditions of the world to day. I am convinced that they could serve as an inspiration and a guide in our present en deavor to promote world peace through the rule of law. Writers and historians have characterized different histo rical periods by the outstand ing events occurring in each. There were, for example, the age of faith, the age of feud alism, the period of geogra phical discoveries, the revi val of learning, the indus trial revolution, the age of global wars, the atomic age, and the age of outer space exploration. May the last quarter of the present cen tury go down in history as the age of international law and may this conference mark the real beginning of that age. For this event, there is no better site than Athens the place of origin of those intellectual ideas and aesthe tic sentiments which have made possible the flowering of modern civilization. (Speech delivered at a panel discussion of the Interna tional Conference for World Peace Through Law in Athens, Greece.) POOR APEI The most famous of debates over a theory of modern science took place in 1860 when Bishop Wil berforce shared a platform with Thomas Henry Hux ley. The Bishop concluded his attack on evolution by asking Huxley whether his descent from the ape was on his father’s or his mother’s side. Huxley’s crushing reply, from his own account in a recently discovered letter, was: “If then, said I, the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessing great means and influence and yet who employs those faculties and that influence for the mere pur pose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion — I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.’ July 13 ■ Mabini played a major and vital role in deter mining the route the revolution was to take. MABINI: ARCHITECT OF THE PHILIPPINE REVOLUTION Cesar A. Majul All revolutions, as move ments affirming the worth of the individual and at tempting to re-define social relations, have had their pro tagonists. These are the men who either participated inti mately in the determination of the direction of the move ment or who, in retrospect, analyzed the revolutionary events in terms of theoretical principles, making the Rev olution a fact of significance and assuring it a proper pos ition within the perspective of the history of a nation. It was Mibini’s distinct character that he played this dual role in the Philippine Revolution, more specifically in its second phase. His first role refers to his activities as adviser to Aguinaldo in June 1898, and then as prime minister in the first Philip pine Republic from January 1899 to May of the same year. Authoring the electoral and other organic laws of the Revolutionary govern ment, he was responsible for formulating^ the postulates by which the authority of a new-born state came into operation. Determining the broad outlines of foreign po licy from June 1898 to May 1899, he saw to it that the recognition of independence should not suffer any amend ment. All of these mean, in effect, that Mabini played a major and vital role in deter mining the route the Revo lution was to take. It was a direction from which the revolutionary leaders could not deviate without aban doning the primal principles which fed the initial vigor ous step of the Revolution. These were the principles of national independence and for the construction of a new social order in consonance 14 Panorama with “justice and reason,” where social disharmonies 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 position as a Filipino political philo sopher par excellence. Ap plying categories properly belonging to the philosophy of history, to the events of the Revolution - when the success of American arms be came patent to all, he re flected on its rationale, gains losses, and the eventual un folding of its implications. Thus, as it were, the events of the Revolution began to be coordinated into an in telligible system, and the Re volution itself could now be viewed as an important phase in the march of the Filipinos towards more free dom. 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 denied par ticipation in the high offices of a government, when their aspirations for better edu cation and an increase of ci vil rights were shamelessly disregarded, and when they begin to believe that the gov ernment was biased in favor of a special segment of so ciety, a deep resentment among the people would re sult. This situation coupled with circumstances like a weakening of the govern ment and a general disobe dience to the laws would in evitably develop into a rev olution. A revolution is thus described as “the violent means utilized by a people ... to destroy a duly cons tituted authority, substituting for it another more in con sonance with reason and just ice.” And to establish a con nection between positive law and the abstract conception of justice, Mabini leaned heavily on natural law as a corrective or model for hu man law. Adhering to the excellence of the mind as a value, Mabini hoped that July 15 the exercise of reason would lead men to discover solu tions 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 Eu ropean rationalism and early nineteenth century liberal ism, ideologies that main tained the almost infinite ca pacity of the mind to better things not only in the scien tific field but also in the ethical and political sphere. These influences on Mabi ni led him to assert that the desire for a revolution in the Philippines was derivative from the natural impulses, found among all men, ten ward progress. Or rather, when these impulses were be ing stifled by bad govern ment revolution becomes a necessity. To quote: The tendency for better ment or progress is a ne cessity or law found in all beings, whether indi vidually or collectively. Thus, a political revolu tion, which is generally intended by a people to better their conditions, becomes an irresistable necessity .... A people that has not yet arrived at the fulness of life must grow and develop, otherwise its life would be paralyzed — which means its death. As it is unnatural that a being should resign itself to its own death, the people employ all its energies in order that a gdvernment that impedes its progressive development be destroyed. Mabini’s intense faith in the desire and ability of the Filipinos to better their lives and contribute to the gen eral progress and culture of the world, as well as his be lief that it was natural for a people to do away with the impediments stifling the im pulses toward progress, led him not only to justify- the Philippine revolution but al so to assert that it was both 16 Panorama irresistible and inevitable. Mabini revolted against the notion that the Filipinos were doomed indefinitely to brutalization and colonial and ecclesiastical oppression. However, to bring about a successful termination to the Revolution, it was further believed that the Filipinos had to be united in a single will aiming at the good of all. And once this will was directed to organizing the collective life along national lines, it would ultimately pre vail over the military forces either of Spain or that of the United States. It was hoped, nay wished* that this will was, at bottom, one that reflected love of neighbor and country and could con sequently thrust 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 so ciety, 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 in terests be benefited, 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 tak en 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 revo lution against the United States unjustified the mo ment the majority of the peo ple desired peace. And he justified this action of the people by appealing to the law of self-preservation which dictated prudence in pursu ing the revolutionary move ment the moment superior forces not only threatened additional misery and deso lation but actually endanger ed the very life of society it self. Thus, Mabini counsel led that the violent and co ercive means to attain inde July 17 pendence should be trans formed into peaceful agita tion. This was still, in any case, a manifestation of the impulse for progress. Yet Mabini feared that the revo lutionary fervor might de cline with piecemeal politi cal concessions granted by the Americans. Consequent ly, he insisted that the revo lution as armed uprising, was simply a technique to bring about the recognition of individual rights and. also independence as the prere quisite to an expansive life and ordered society. And as long as independence was pos sible by peaceful means, all energies ought to be utilized to attain it by such means. Once devoid of political pow er to pursue his ideas, Ma bini contented himself in re minding his compatriots of the ideals of the Revolution and invited them to search into their hearts to discover if it were not really inde pendence that they wanted. Mabini was a supreme ex ample of a man willing to sacrifice personal interest for what he conceived to be the general interest of all. Eman cipating himself from the narrow interests that plague an ordinary man, he was able to exercise, to use Rous seau’s term, the general will, a will not necessarily that of the people, but a will for the good of all the people. Mabini’s legacy is that for patriots and free men. NEGRO EXCEPTED? We preach freedom around the worlds and we cherish our freedom here at home, but are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other that this is a land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no second-class citizens ex cept Negroes; that we have no class or caste system, no ghettoes, no master race except with respect to Negroes? — John F. Kennedy . 18 Panorama ■ Everybody talks of a ‘school crisis,’ But everybody wants to go tp school. FAITH IN PHILIPPINE EDUCATION Jean Pope “School crisis? There is no school crisis,” proclaims Ale jandro R. Roces, leaning back in his chair with the confidence of a man who has quietly averted one. Which indeed he has. One year and six months after assuming office as Sec retary of Education, Roces has packed an-impressive list of a cbievement into his job of achievement into his job, notably resolving what all newspapers an.d. school offi cials lovingly refer to as “pe rennial school crisis.” “Let me tell you what this school crisis is supposed to be about,” Races says, bring ing his swivel chair sharply back to. his upright position. (Visitors to Roces’ Filipiniana-decked office in the De partment of Education in Arroceros will be clearly in trigued by the contrivances of one swivel chair: it is the barometer to its occupant’s moods.) “Evrey year, without fail, you read about the school crisis. So many students will be left out of school, the headlines announce. That’s usually in April or May. Then suddenly, by the mid dle of July you notice from the silence of usually noisy quarters that the critical period has been passed. You wonder why. Well, I’ll tell you. That’s because the crisis is nothing more than an artificial one. “In July the funds ear marked for education have al ready been released by the appropriation committee. The National Budget has averted a crisis which never existed. It’s as simple as that. “And speaking of the bud get, do you know it has been an instrument for silencing critics of my new school plan?” He smiles sweetly, contendedly. July 19 "You know all the argu ments I advanced for chang ing the opening of classes from June to September? Well, everybody still griped about that. I said the child ren would get wet and cont a c t respiratory ailments, plodding on to school in the rainy months. I said think about the rural youth who should be helping their pa rents with planting. They said, but June July and Aug ust are hardly months for vacation. Everyone’s vaca tion will be spoiled. “Well" says the man almost everybody calls Anding. “I told them, I’m sorry. I’m not a secretary of vacation. I’m the secretary of education and I should concern myself primarily with education, not the period of vacation. "And then I told them, you have to consider the budget.” (Although many readers will not remember seeing anything about this in the arguments of the Secretary for the pass age and popularity of his school calendar change, one must speculate that this must have been an ace up his sleeve. Or else a master stroke of good luck. Either way, the indefatigable edu cator stands to lose nothing.) "Suppose, I said, they do not approve the budget on time? How can we open classes in June? They said no, that won’t happen. Well, it did. Now, how could we have opened classes in June if the school calendar had remain ed the same? There would have been a ‘crisis.’ ” The man behind the job Secretary Roces is a fast talking, fast-moving, quick witted individual who does not confine the activities of his job to his desk. He looks as comfortable retracing the Antipolo trail on foot or tramping into the mud of a Palawan cave, as he does signing directives. He has been described by one who works with him as an out spoken, outgoing whirlwind. Certainly he does not mince words when he feels very strongly against something.. Like all New Era men (either you like them or you dislike them, but you can’t help but admire their dyna mism) "Anding” Roces pro jects an image of speeed, spunk and spontaniety. He 20 Panorama gets things done. And prob ably no other secretary of education in the past has cleared the cobwebs from his office as fast as Roces has, and consequently antagoniz ed so many in the process as well. Roces and thorns For Roces has as many cri tics as he has change-imple menting directives. There are the old guard educators who wince at shafts that top ple their swivels, teachers, superintendents and princi pals disgruntled at raps against their inefficiency, and politicians who, long accus tomed to sticking their fin gers intd the education pie, draw thejn out in burning haste at lashes from the wellknown Roces pen and tongue. Roces, the man of action, has crammed many achieve ments into the space of a year and a half. He has done something about the shortage of text books in public schools, or dering the printing and dis tribution of 8,307,972 text books to elementary and se condary grades. He has ordered private (particularly medical schools) to cut down on the size of their classes or else. With schools having grudgingly complied, both teacher, and student are now assured of more study advantages. He has issued directives curbing the bad habits of teachers, officials and stud ents. To teachers: no mah jong, no improper dressing. He has told officials to stop allowing their wives to sell cloth, jewelry and other items to their poor, highpressured teachers. Students, on the other hand, have been sternly warned against the consequences of cheating. Last year he opened 13,000 extension classes to accomo date an expanding school population, directed the hold ing of teachers’ institutes in stead of socials-clogged work shops, cracked down on the requisitioning of school sup plies, and in general, gave the department organization a good face-saving face-lift ing. “Instant schoolhouses” He also outlined a plan (soon to be carried out) on “instant schoolhouses.” July 21 This involves the product ion of a certain kind of hol lowblock materials from a semi-portable machine, which can be carried to barrios and usd to construct a school house, strong and serviceable, within a short time. "I got this idea from President Ma teos of Mexico,” Roces says. “And I’m happy for this, because it will save many students from the embarrasment, years later, of having to point to a mango tree in some dilapidated schoolhouse and saying: ‘That is' my alma mater.’ ” Many left to tackle On the whole, his adminis tration has been a fruitful one. And he is optimistic about it. This despite all the pro blems. A three-year old NEC-AID survey on the state of Phil ippine education came up with a lot of discouraging, and to some extent, alarm ing, facts: School programs are not related to the needs of the community. There is no ade quate support from Congress of the public school system. Classes are overcrowded, text books obsolete, laboratory equipment limited. At nor mal level teachers with dip lomas cannot pass the exams for teachers. Buildings are poor. The situation of agri cultural schools is disheart ening, in view of the fact that the Philippines is an agricultural country. In brief, these were the findings of the team. And Roces admits that many of these conditions are still pre sent today. “I; is true that many times school programs are not re lated to the needs of the com munity. As a corollary of this, you can add that a large number of youth enter adult life without vocational com petence.” To some extent this is a case of politics. Going to a Philippine map tacked onto his wall and encircling the province of Camarines Sur, Roces con tinues excitedly. “Take this province. Where would you say its ma jor income comes from? The government pours two mil lion pesos annually into this place for the elementary edu cation of its students. (The 22 Panorama provincial government pays high school teachers.) “By the same token, you take the case of Marinduque. There is a trade school there. Well and good. Some con gressman proposed a. bill creating not a high school, mind you, but a vocational school (which will draw funds from the national gov ernment). This is still fine, many will be employeci. But do you know what this school teachers? Auto me chanics. This is a town which has about five or six cars. “This is what happens when school^ are opened not for education but for employ ment.” Thirty three centavos out of every peso “As for Congress support, education receives no less than 33% of the national budget every year. The fi gures should speak for them selves.” As for agricultural schools, the Secretary says that the ones we have are outstand ing. Perhaps it is just that we do not have enough. “Inferior teachers? It is not true that we do not-screen them properly. But how thorough can you get when the teacher shortage is always -keen? (For the schoolyear ’61-’63, there were close to'half a million public elementary school-children under the care of not more than 120,788 teachers. The figures for secondary public schools were no better: 10,900 teachers for 232,168 students. “This year alone, we need 15,000 new teachers.” How ever, a comprehensive teacher training program introduced by the Secretary promises to remedy the situation. As for the textbook short age, Roces is working to achieve the.ideal ratio of one textbook to every student. The present figure (one textbook for every three stu dents' is not too bad com pared to the 1:20 ration of several years ago. Is our education sub-stand ard? The conclusion of the NEC-AID survey was drama tically disconcerting: the state of Philippine education is deplorable. Says Anding Roces empha tically in answer to the asserJuly 23 lion, "We are a nation of self flagellants. “We constantly hear of criticisms levelled against our system, mostly from our own leaders. Before the war, many heads of families tell their offspring, our schools were better. We received better education. "This before-the-wac men tality is unfair. Before the war, the most beautiful home to me and to many people was this old structure right across from where I lived in Remedios. But today this would be just an ordinary residence. “We must not gQ into un fair comparisons. We are an underdeveloped country: compare our education then to countries like ours. If there is ?iny competition, we must be allowed to compete equally.” Morals and morons "But these educators — the people who decry the poor quality of our students the loudest — are the most to blame. Many students are morons, they say. To which I agree. I remember a stu dent I had when I was dean of FEU’s Art and Sciences. He came to me asking for an excuse from classes because "I have to have two tooth pulled,” he said. ‘Whatl I said. ‘Oh, excuse me, Sir, I meant two tooths pulled.’ "Of course we have these students. But the point is, why do we have to accept them? "If the Philippines has in fact an inferior quality of education, it is* because we do not have such a thing as selective higher education. We are just about the only country in the world which does not screen its college students before admission. "A high school graduate with an IQ of 12 can enter college, provided he can af ford the tuition. “We even have such uni versities which go to the ex tent of boasting about their enrollment figures — why, a university should be ashamed of a mammoth population, not proud of it. It should be a center of education, not population,. "Yes, many of our educat ors, and many of our private schools are to blame. “Here, an educator is no more than a man or a wo man who has invested money 24 Panorama in education. And it is un fortunate that private shcools (the profit, as differentiated from the non-profit one) have attracted a bad type of businessman, x one interested in money more than in edu cation. -“What is more, the pecu liarly Filipino custom of close family ties has bred an evil: that of the. family-type school. "Many colleges, as you know, are pwned by families. Started out by men with sin cere and meritorious motives, they are'eventually passed on to the children. Some of them, fortunately, are good educators, but this is the ex ception rather than the rule. Faith in education But Roces has a lot of faijji in the future of edu cation in this country. “You know why? Because of our people. I think this is the only country in the world where parents sell everything they have just to send their children to school. Not all people have that much interest in learning. Put up a school in some re mote town in Africa. Do you think many will go? No, but here, even rural schools are crowded. "Education will work. We have good students, and we have good teachers. Do you know that the British educat or James Dunnill who visit ed us in 1954 said the Fili pino teacher is the most de voted class of individual in the world? I am inclined to agree with him. “We underestimate our selves. He are all prophets of doom, as I recall myself and members of my tribe to be when I was still writing a newspaper column.. "But have you heard of that line circulating in Broadway about the future of the stage? ‘The theater,’ they say, ‘is dying, but, tickets are harder to get.. That’s the same thing we have here. .The education system is being lambasted, but everyone wants to go to school. “Filipinos have faith in education. With that as ba sis, there is no reason why we should fail.” — The Sun day Times Magazine. July 25 ■ Non-conformism can be the great catalyst for an Asia caught at the crossroads of tradition and mo dernism. DEFENSE FOR THE NON-CONFORMIST Romesh Thapar We in Asia are forever be ing inflicted 'with long and tiresome lectures about the paramount need to liberate ourselves from the deaden ing grip of traditionalism, to develop the modern out look, the free mind. The stress on this aspect of the problem of change and tran sition in Asia is justified on the plea that without the cultivation of a free mind progress is slow, spasmodic, mercurial, unrelated to eco nomic and social needs. There is much truth in this, but, generally speaking, those who seek to 'free* the minds of Asia are in fact on ly interested in, replacing the tattered dogmas of the past with the more emphatic dog mas of present-day ‘isms.’ It is, therefore, imperative that we in Asia locate the essen tial ingredient of a free mind. Considering that we know so little about the mind it self, free or otherwise, what it conceals, its composition, its behavior patterns, we must proceed with caution. What we are in the habit of casually describing as Asia is that region of our earth which embraces two-thirds of mankind and which is va riously described as develop ed, developing, under-dev eloped, backward; an area which was until recently di vided and ruled, exploited, imposed upon by alien cul tures. In our lands, without exception, several centuries are telescoped into the pre sent. These facts of history, geography and social dev elopment unnecessarily dis tort the present-day thinking process, create psychological blockages to rationality of a kind which have yet to be ta bulated, encourage the fusion of chauvinistic and sectarian notions as a defense against further ‘alien’ penetration 26 Panorama and rupture the sensitive channels along which coha bit and spawn. Such is the reality. Small wonder, then, that our minds with which, and with in which, we seek to build range over past and present, the spirit of uninhibited quest and free enquiry, must absorb the essence of the pro cesses which have created estrangement between men, given superfluous wealth to some and grinding poverty to others, broken the back of one communtity to aid the growth of another, creat ed chauvinism and false-patriotism to disguise the real motivations of men and movements, and let loose a flood of despair, cynicism, nihilism — the closed-in atti tudes before which reason is swept away. Sifting the truth from this jungle of contradictory trends is a long and continuous process but the mind must be trained for this challenging task. All over Asia we have been attempting some such intellectual b r e a k-through, but without much success. This largely is due to our failure to recognize the abso lutely essential ingredient of a free mind which will help it extend the frontiers of knowledge, to weaken the hold of superstition and dogipa, and to neutralize the new falsehoods which seek to take their place. What is this essential ingredient which we ignore? It is non-onformism. I would say this: utilize every opportunity to enshrine in the minds of the young and the old a deep respeect for the non-conformist, the person who is not afraid to express his innermost thoughts, who puts even ac cepted truths to test, whose determined quest for greater understanding lpads him on to truth. Those who have develop ed the habit of seeing things only in shades of black and white, and . who approve of this lazy and convenient ana lysis of world problems, will be horrified at the prospect of popularizing non-conform ist attitudes. They will see in this an attempt to ‘con fuse’ the mind, to destroy its ‘dynamic,’ and thereby to ‘splinter’ the ideological uni ty of political, economic and social trends. Perhaps, to some extent, they are right in their deductions; non July 27 conformism loosens the chains which bind the com mitted and demands a sus tained and more thorough investigation of the ideas fed to us through various media. But is this not the only way in which we can enrich the ’ thinking process in Asia and prevented it from being maimed by those who speak in the name of a. variety of freedoms but who have little respect for the authentic free mind? The more one ponders on this, the more one is convinced that non-conformism can be the great catalyst for an Asia caught at the crossrpads of tradition and modernism. There are other people, less committed, suspicious of new stirrings, who might think that I am preaching the philosophy of the angry young men of our age. Far from it. Men become an gry only when their ideas are scorned. They are the products of conformist and scmi-conformist societies. What I have in view is a healthy, lively respect for non-conformism which, in most countries of the world, is repeatedly decried, insultted and quarantined. I firmthe non-conformist provides a better building site for mature and sensitive thought than the conformist mind which resists new impuses, or accepts them grudgingly, hoping an opportunity will arise to throw them out again and outlaw them. We have seen this happen repeat edly at different levels of na tional life on our continent. When we adpot this ratio nal and scientific view of the conflict of minds in Asia, it soon becomes clear that it is the conformist mind which is the breeding ground of the violence and hatreds locked up in our structures of caste, community and na tion. Indeed, when the con formist mind actively works towards revivalism, as a de fence against the currents of new thought, we witness manifestations of what is commonly referred to as fas cism. Only non-conformism establishes respect for the difreferences we see in others and thereby makes us truly civilized. You will also perceive that one of the major achieve ments of the non-conformist mind, the free mind, could be a clearing of communi28 Panorama ly believe that the mind of cations between one mind and another. This is vital, for communication is the sensitive and fragile thread with which we can weave our attitudes, our desires, into a pattern of peace. Comuni cation becomes real only when it is non-conformist. If you should think I exaggerate to press a point, then recall the names of those remarkable men and women who have made last ing contributions to know ledge, understanding and peace. You will find a non conformist in each of them — from the teachers of an cient times, who raised new gods in place of the old, right down to the dynamic men of our day whose thought and activity profundly alter the course of human endeavor. Only when force is used to impose conformist, or, for that matter, non-confomlist ideas, is wasteful vio lence and hatred generated. Man’s mind has to seek the fresh air, the contest of ideas, the fire of debate. This is why I urge that respect for the differences we see in others must be en shrined in the mind of Asia if we plan to take those ‘leaps’ which will place us at the forefront of advancing Man. It will not be easy. Text books from primary school level will have to be re-written. The prejudices of teachers will have to over come. Chauvinisms, major and minor, will have to be fought. And this would be but the beginning of a cam paign to change our atti tudes to the non-conformist, for the relapse back into the deadening grip of conform ism could occur without warning unless the respect for the differences we see in others is deep-rooted, unas sailable. The cultivation of the free mind, which actively defends non-conformist views and ideas, is essential to Asia be cause on this continent small elites actually control the le vers of power at national or regional level and can there fore be easily persuaded to suppress or inhibit trends which threaten their grips on others. In other words, the leaders of political, eco nomic and social opinion in Asia often resort to the total itarian remedy because there JULY 29 is no sustaind pressure to make them face the harder and more tedious alternat ives. Free minds could build these pressures rapidly and make a deep impact on the summits of power in a continent like Asia where the broad millions are hot chained by vested interests and where the desire is al ways strong to break free from a dreary, misery-ridden past. We have done practically nothing as yet to cultivate the free mind — or even to discuss the essential elements of it. Now is the time, as we push relentlessly forward to claim the fundamental right long denied to us. — The Asia Magazine. MASTER RACE? In no other country was there a higher rate of suicide. The very monotony of accepted faith and custom became to some few a veritable nightmare. Each youth planned his life step by step and, if he failed in an examination, he felt that all was over for him. A new idea once accepted went to the head like wine. It became an obsession which admitted of no contradiction. The idea of the superiority of their race and culture to the relatively irrational, inconsequent, and unorganized ways of foreigners — especially the English — was so much emphasized as to blind them to their limitations. — Harold Gaod in Language in History. 30 Panorama ■ A grave problem the Philippines shares with the rest of the have-nots in the world. EDUCATION FOR SCIENTIFIC PROFESSIONS IN THE POOR COUNTRIES W. Arthur Lewis The poor countries need three types of persons train ed scientifically beyond the high-school level: technicians, basic scientists, and profes sionals. By professionals we mean those trained in agricul ture, medicine, dentistry, ve terinary science, engineering, architecture and similar arts. Such courses of education have this in common, that they borrow materials from a number of basic sciences, which they use as a founda tion for specialized work. This raises a number of pro blems, to which this paper is devoted. The capacity of a country to absorb university gradu ates is an index of its dev elopment. If we take gradu ates in all subjects, includ ing the humanities, the ab sorptive capacity measured in terms of the annual in take of> graduates seems to range from as low as 20 to as high as 3,000 per million inhabitants. Frederick H. Harbison has recently assess ed the absorptive capacity of Nigeria at 50 million; in re cent guesses for the West Indies, I have been using a figure of 300 per million. The concept of absorptive capacity is not a precise one however. As the number of graduates increases, the pos session of a degree becomes a condition for jobs for which it was not previously required, for example, in agricultural extension, den tistry, or teaching in high schools. Also, the gap be tween the salaries of gradu ates and non-graduates dimi nishes as graduates become available for more types of July 31 jobs. In other words, the absorptive capacity increases pari passu with the supply of graduates and cannot be de termined independently. It may still be possible to pro duce from historical or con temporary data a curve relat ing the absorption of gradu ates per million inhabitants to the per-capita national in come, but this has not yet been done. All one can say at present is that, in the sense there are vacant jobs, in nearly every poor country, there is a short age of persons trained in the scientific professions. This is all one needs to. say. Most poor countries could substan tially increase their output of professionals without any danger of the supply exceed ing the absorptive capacity during the next two decades. In the United States a number of universities consider that professional courses should be undertak en only after a student has already acquired a first de gree. This can be defended on two grounds: the student needs to have 'a good general education before embarking on a scientific profession. The first ground is empha sized, rather than the second, though the second may be in cluded in the first. In Great Britain the pro fessions we are dealing with can all be studied for a first degree. Before entering the university, however, the stu dent will usually be requir ed to have specialized in science in the high school, as -evidenced by his having passed certain science sub jects (specified separately for each profession) at the Ad vanced Level (formerly the Higher School Artificate), equivalent to or slightly be yond what a junior college in California requires. In short, whether professional courses should be postgra duate or not depends on the university requirements for enrolling—in basic science, which in turn depend on the standard^ reached in the high schools. The high schools in Great Britain teach two years more of science than a public high school in New York City does, and as this is the level of university entrance, professional courses may be taught as training for first degrees. The poor countries vary widely in the standards to 32 Panorama which their high schools as pire. In Africa the British and the French have sought to establish standards at their metropolitan levels, and, in so far as they have succeeded, most of Africa should be able to follow the British or French patterns. In some other countries (for example, Egypt or India), in which the numbers of high school students have swollen more rapidly than funds or trained teachers have, high school standards are lower, and both entrance and exit levels into and out of uni versities are substantially lower than in Western Eu rope. Faced with low stand ards of entry, the universities in such countries must either lower the professional stand ard or else lengthen the course (of which the extreme form is to make the profes sional course postgraduate). The question as to whether there should be less basic scince is a difficult problem. A number of arguments point toward reducing the amount of basic science in professional courses in the poor countries. The students have less practical work in their backgrounds than do July the students of rich countries, and therefore they need more time for this aspect. They have less practical experience because in their societies it is • offensive for a middle-class person to do manual work instead of employing a ser vant to do it for him. (This is a form of share-the-wealth which custom has decreed in areas that do not have social insurance.) Students also have less experience with me chanical devices, since they do not live in a mechanical civilization and therefore do not become familiar with mechanical devices from an early age, as do children in the rich countries. Conse quently, more time is needed in their professional training to accustom them to using their hands. Because technicians are not as well trained and not as reliable as in the rich countries, professionals have to spend more time supervis ing them; the professionals must be able to show their technicians just what to do. This also means relatively more time for practical work. Since professionals are scarce and therefore work in greater isolation from one 33 another, each must have more of all-round compet ence. For example, an engi neer sent to look after public works in an isolated rural area should be able to turn his hand to civil, mechanical, and electrical tasks, hence he must be given relatively more “know-how” of the va rious sides of his profession, and he has relatively less time for basic science. The same argument tells in gen eral against providing oppor tunities for specialization in the undergraduate profes sional course. Most univer sities require the student to familiarize himself with every aspect of his profession (if we count civil, mechanic al, and electrical engineering as three separate professions) and to postpone specializa tion until postgraduate courses. A medical student is not allowed to choose be tween pediatrics and surgery. In the rich countries, how ever, there are some except ions: an agriciultural student may choose between, say, chemistry and entomology, and an electrical engineer may choose between power generation and electronics. Specialization usually in volves more basic science. It is arguable, therefore, that universities in the poor coun tries should be less willing to permit specialization at the undergraduate level. In some professions the need of using local materials for teaching. purposes in creases the factual burden of the course and thus reduces the time available for theore tical principles. This situa tion occurs wherever the lo cal material has to be an auxiliary to, not merely a substitute for, the material used in teaching in tempe rate countries. For example, the medical student in the tropics has to know about all the diseases that occur in tem perate zones, since these also occur in the tropics, and in addition he has to know about tropical diseases. In adapting any syllabus for use in a poor country, one has to decide how much of the factual framework taught elsewhere can be scrapped in favor of local conditions and how much must be re tained. In some cases the re sult must be a net increase in the facts to be studied. The professional must learn more social science in 34 Panorama the poor countries, since so cial change is occurring more rapidly there than in the rich countries, and therefore the professional is more deep ly involved. His own work is one of the important forces causing social change. More over, his status in society is continuously being affected by the changes taking place. Some room, therefore, should be found in his course for instruction in the sociology of change. One cannot class this problem with other as pects of general education and dismiss it by saying, “This should be done in the high schools before the stu dent reaches the universities.” Students of high-school age are not ripe for sociology. So much for the arguments for reducing courses in basic science. A strong case can also be made for maintain ing the amount of basic > science taught. This argu ment would begin with the premise that the professional is isolated , and consequently needs to be able to turn his hand to many things. To do this, he must have a sound training in basic principles rather than a superficial training in techniques. In his isolation he will meet many new problems which can be solved only by taking thought and by returning to basic principles. He needs both more science and more technique, and if one has to be sacrificed, it is not ob vious that it is the science that should be curtailed. The correct answer to our question is probably this: if the professional standard is to be as high in the poor as in the rich countries, pro fessional courses should be a year or so longer in the poor ones, to allow for an inferior background in high schools, the need for more practical work, an increase in the syl labus because of the incorpo ration of local materials, and the need for a greater em phasis on social studies. But should the professioal stand ard be as high in the poor as in the rich countries? There are several arguments for a lower standard. Even in the rich countries most profes sionals are overtrained for the work they actually have to do. University syllabuses tend to be framed with an eye on the student who .will become a university teacher or research worker, whereas July 35 the great majority go into jobs they could do just as well with a year less of aca demic training. The poor countries need proportion ately even fewer research workers, and separate provi sions can be made for their training. To maintain equal standards requires a longer and correspondingly more expensive training in the poor countries, which they can afford. Many such na tions have abandoned the at tempt to maintain equal pro fessional standards, even if they once tried to do so. Given the great shortage of professionals, especially in rural areas, such a nation is better off with four threequarters trained professionals than with the three fully trained. Although many countries have abandoned the attempt, many others still strive to maintain their professional standards at European levels, not only out of national pride but also for other rea sons. The routine portion of professionals’ work is us ually passed over to tech nicians, whose numbers can be multiplied more easily. This practice makes it all the more important that the re latively small number of pro fessionals who supervise tech nicians should be thoroughly trained. The psychological effects of inferior standards are bad. A poor country is likely to employ a number of welltrained foreign professionals, and it is embarrasing if its own professionals are admit tedly of inferior quality. This is especially true when the better paid or more res ponsible jobs are held only by people with foreign qua lifications. The local univerversities are downgraded in the public eye, and students try to go abroad for educat ion rather than to their home institutions. The lat ter are discouraged and find it hard to recruit or keep good staffs. This further re duces their quality by ad versely affecting their capa city to do useful research. For such reasons, a number of countires have abandoned the inferior professional qua lifications they previously of fered (for example, Nigeria has dropped medicine, and Trinidad, agriculture) and have substituted qualifica tions intended to equal simi 36 Panorama lar qualifications, in Europe. Although the great major ity of the graduates of pro fessional schools are required for jobs that demand com petence but not brilliance, a significant number are need ed to undertake fundamental research. The biological sciences and the professions based on them demand much more fundamental research than do the physical sciences. Whereas the phy sical structure of the earth is much the same in tempe rate as in tropical zones, the living organisms differ consi derably. An engineer can transfer from a temperate to a tropical environment with only small adaptations; but an agriculturist has to spend a year or more relearning his job. How fundamental is "fun damental”? Some research requires scientific training imagination of the highest order; in the process, new scientific truths of universal application will be discover ed. In the biological sciences it is hardly profitable to dis tinguish between pure science and research of the kind the poor countries need — for example, research in animal and plant genetics, leading to the breeding of new useful types; human and animal physiology in hot climates; pests and diseases, animal, plant, and human; or plant and animal nutri tion. Basic principles al ready worked out in tempe rate countries will be appli ed, but since the animals, the plants, the insects, and the microbes are different, the research has to start al most from scratch; it de-. mands the highest qualities, and is likely to yield new universal principles. The situation in the phy sical sciences is rather differ ent. Here the main research task is to devote known prin ciples to making inventories of economic resources: disco vering minerals or under ground water supplies; assess ing soils; recording river flows and meteorological data. Such work demands professional competence ra ther than scientific imagin ation. The principal scope for fundamental research is in such fields as these: clima tology; methods of combat ing the effects of torrential rain, earthquakes, or months of contiuous sunshine on July 37 such structures as roads, dams, and buildings; the uti lization of local resources, such as crops, forests, build ing materials, sources of ener gy; the conversion of sea wa ter; the invention of new en gineering processes that use less capital. Some of this re search (especially on the ex ploitation of materials) can be done in the laboratory in temperate countries, but vir tually all the biological re search, and nearly all that part of the physical research that is concerned with the effects of the local environ ment, have to be done on the spot. There ought, therefore, to be a large number of funda mental research stations strung round the globe be tween the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Actually there are very few such stations. The tropics are not yet ade quately equipped even to make routine inventories of their resources; and they are far from coming to grips with, fundamental research. It is not necessary that each country establish a battery of high-quality research sta tions. For example, there are now twenty countries in West and Equatorial Africa between the ex-Belgian Con go and the Sahara Desert^ but most of them have less than 2,000,000 inhabitants and could not support ex pensive research institutes. Asia fares better, having few er and larger countries, of which several could main tain their own scientific es tablishments, as. indeed India already does to a very consi derable extent. It is true even of Southesat Asia, how ever, as of Africa and Latin America, that the necessary stations for fundamental re search wilT not be establish ed on a substantial scale un til groups of countries learn to combine for this purpose, with or without the United Nations or other interna tional assistance. There have been some good beginnings, for example, sugar-cane breeding in the West Indies, cocoa research in West Afri ca, or rubber research in Ma laya, as well as outstanding work on tropical diseases (done mainly in the laborato-. ries of temperate countries). Nevertheless, a n immense scope for expansion remains. Since the professionals de pend on basic science, their 38 Panorama research work depends on a supply of persons with a firstclass training in science, whether educated in the pro fessional or in the science schools, like the professional ones, mainly produce per sons who need to be compet ent father than brilliant. Most of their graduates go in to high-school teaching or in to routine jobs in commerce or administration. There is little manufacturing in dustry, and such as there is generally does, not engage in research or else it conducts its research in parent - esta blishments in the rich coun tries. The universities them selves are the largest market for highly trained scientists capable of good research. Nevertheless, every university srience school is under pres sure to do some research and keep up its standards, partly to make its own teaching lively, partly to contribute to knowledge, and partly be cause good scientists cannot be retained unless they are given opportunities for re search. Many universities are therefore able to produce some men who, given further training, would do well in research. In the professional schools, professors interested in re search tend .to feel badly handicapped by not having learned enough basic science in their own undergraduate days, and this prejudices them in favor of putting more and more basic science into the undergraduate sylla bus, even at the cost of lengthening the course. This is hardly necessary, since the small number of professional men who go on to research can learn the extra basic science need during their postgraduate training. What seems important is that, whereas the undergra duate course can be taught adequately in a professional school that has very little basic science, postgraduate training and research in pro fessional ’ subjects can be done adequately only in close association with strong science schools. Thus, while undergraduate teaching can be dispersed over a number of schools, postgraduate teaching must be concentrat ed in a small number of in stitution in which both basic science and professional study are highly developed. It is all the better if these July 39 postgraduate teaching insti tutions can be linked with the fundamental institutes. Study in foreign countries has many attractions that study at home lacks. Stand ards are usually higher, the qualification carries more prestige, and its monetary value may exceed that con ferred by the local school. Also, travel provides valu able experience. If the studehts go to foreign universi ties whose costs are met prin cipally out of public funds and not out of students fees, it becomes much cheaper to send them abroad than to educate them at home. For example, for what it costs to run the University College of the West Indies, we could send one and a half times as many students to universities in Great Britain. This argu ment applies to small coun tries like the West Indies or Ghana, but not to large coun tries like India. Professional schools are especially costly to small nations, because they need a minimum com pliment of staff to teach each aspect of the course. For example, Nigeria has been advised that to run a veteri nary school economically re quires an output of about seventy students a year, and she is finding this a stum bling block. The remedy would be for countries in this situation to group together to run professional schools; but this is not always poli tically possible. On the other hand, the provision of professional schools at home has several advantages which may out weigh the higher cost. In so far as the syllabus is based on local materials and on re search into local problems, what the student learns in the home university is more relevant to the job he will have to do. This is particu larly important in the biolo gical professions. The teach ers do not merely teach: if doctors, they look after pa tients, inside and outside the hospital; if engineers, they do consulting work. The teachers play a part in the life of the community, they sit on boards and participate in private and public deci sion-making. If they are of adequate scientific caliber, they also carry on useful re search of a kind worth pay ing for, even if there were no students. A large proportion 40 Panorama of students who do go abroad do not return home, and the cost of educating them, there fore, is lost to their country, except in so far as they make remittances. A good compromise is to give students their first de gree at home and then to send the better ones away for postgraduate training in large, well-staffed and wellequipped institutes. As we have seen, however, the poor countries need a few of their own such institutes to do fundamental research into the problems of their regions. Where such institutes exist, a student can do effective postgraduate work there be fore he goes abroad.—Ameri can Journal. UNCHASTE The NP is the old, divorced wife of the electorate — divorced for her infidelities. The LP is the brandnew current, and legal wife whom the electorate married, thinking it was pure and beautiful. The husband-electorate won’t be any angrier to discover new evidence of infidelity of his old, divorced wife. But what flaming rage he will go into to discover that his pure and beautiful new wife has had some unchaste experiences before — and after the wedding. — Napoleon G. Rama in the Free Press. July 41 ■ A group of British writers report on a new re. volution, in Russia — in education. INSIDE SOVIET RUSSIA TODAY The society and economy of the Soviet Union are in state of momentous flux. The visiting observer, al though forcefully reminded that this is a country where free thinking is still a very timorous beastie, cannot es cape a sense of mounting excitement as he speculates what sort of new Russia may be erratically emerging. • ♦ * The biggest single fact about the Soviet Union to day — at once old commu nism’s one real success and the most exciting seed of change within it — is the edu cational revolution. This has been dramatic, and may now be convulsive. The Soviet Union has always held out considerable oppor tunities for mass education to its people, but for those who had become set in their careers before Stalin’s death the incentive to push their education outside very nar row bounds cannot have been exactly lively .In the topmost positions eleven years ago it was better to be quiescent than dead ; among the mas ses, up to 1953 it was illegal to change one’s job without permission (to do so, or even to be more than twenty mi nutes late for work, was actually a criminal offence), while to rise in one’s career or to acquire knowledge be yond a certain point could often be pretty dangerous. By contrast, for those who have completed their edu cation or grown to intellec tual maturity since the Sta lin ice age melted (broadly speaking the one half of all Russians below the age of 30) self-improvement has been, and is, all the rage. In remoter villages com pulsory education up to the age even of 14 is hot yet fully established, but in the big towns education up to the examination equivalent of age 17 or 18 (most often by part-time study) is quite 42 Panorama quickly becoming the general rule. There is good reason to believe the official claims that 57 million Soviet citi zens, over one in four of the population, are doing some .form of part-time study to day; and that 12 per cent of all young people can now ex pect to go on to university or its equivalent. Compared with Britain (where nearly 60 per cent leave school and often all forms of learning at 15, and only 7 per cent go on to university or its equivalent) this is a pretty educated — and, within li mits, an increasingly thought ful — young Russian society that is now being created. Compared with the Russia of yesteryear, it is a metamor phosis. « « • Between 15 and 20 per cent of Russian homes now have television sets, compar ed with 80 per cent in Bri tain and nearly 50 per cent in Japan. In some recent estimates for the Rand Corp oration — which would seem to be broadly right — Janet G. Chapman has estimated that the average real indus trial wage in the United States is more than four times as large as in the Sonion, but average con sumer income per head only about three times as large. The American people buy 83 times as many motor cars per head as the Soviet peo ple, about 11 times as, many refrigerators, have about 4 times as much housing space buy three times as many eggs, twice as much meat, shoes and radio sets. But in pur chases of clothing (leaving aside questions of fashion) the volume purchases in the two countries is more nearly equal, while the Russians sur pass the Americans in cinema attendances per head; in se cond h,est durables like motor bicycles and sewing machines, in starchier foods like bread and potatoes and ^lso in some social services (al though certainly not in all: the collective farmers, who make up such a large propor tion of the population and are not counted as state em ployees, get no old age pen sions at all). # • • Even in the limited num ber of “unofficial” encount ers that our programme per mitted, it emerged that dan gerous thoughts are not con JULY 43 fined (as the official mono poly likes to insist) to a few pampered adolescents. Not all the questioning minds en countered had been through a higher education. A few were students, but more were, although young, already em barked on active working lives. It is, however, the fer ment of ideas in the universi ties that seems to worry the authorities most. Most of Moscow University has now been quite well insulated in the gigantic new buildings well out of town, with entry tightly controlled by passes. Leningrad university, with its 14,000 students, is still perilously embedded in the the centre of the city, and, despite its historical interest, it is not a. place to which the visitor’s attention is directed. We were not taken to either. There can be few countries where people read so many books — not only in the in numerable libraries, but on the underground, in buses and parks: both fiction and textbooks on medicine or nuclear physics, on economics or philosophy. Talk to youngsters who have already left school and they will usually tell you about their evening classes or correspond ence courses or, at least their plans for further education. The government has put its money on education and the young men have seized their opportnities with both hands. You may be surprised how small the purchasing power of the salary of your hotel chambermaid or driver still is. You should not be sur prised to learn that their children have gone to col-, lege. It is thus no wonder that in Russia, the old tend to talk in generalities and the young to quote facts and figures. Soviet leaders em phatically deny any antago nism between “fathers and sons.” They are right to the extent that there are except ions on each side. It is also true that — unlike, say, their Polish counterparts — the young Soviet people most eager for change take for granted the system in which they were born and want to reform it only from within. And even the most sophistied of them suffer from nuPanorama cated and impressively learnmerous blind spots about both home and foreign af fairs. Yet the difference in spirit and mental make-up between generations, and the young people’s eagerness to learn about the outside world as well as their own, are strking. They already know more than is to be found in Pravda or even the Daily Worker. Their critical spirit seems bound gradually to invade all fields. Already they are not quite content with official versions and, though still timidly, are try ing to learn what “the other side” has to say in an argu ment. — From The Econo mist June 1, 1963. HONESTLY? There has been a flood of denials from officials whose names appear in Stonehill’s “Blue Book" of any unethical relations with the ex-GI. They had nothing to do with Stonehill or whatever they did for him was entirely proper; at any rate, there was no corruption of public officials, according to the statements. Was the Stonehill economic empire founded, then, on the rock of honesty? — Teodoro M. Locsin. ¥ * * SCIENCE AND EVIL Science has powers for evil, not only physically but mentally; the hydrogen bomb can kill the mind .... it is necessary that those who control govern ment should have enlightened and intelligent ideals, since otherwise they can lead mankind to disaster. — Bertrand Russell. July 45 ■ Mums and dads learn how to rear children for citizenship in a Soviet state. UNIVERSITIES FOR PARENTS! And now its Parent’s Uni versities in the Soviet Union! These institutions of learn ing or mums and dads have sprung up in Moscow and Leningrad, in the Ukraine, and elsewhere. They offer one-and-two-year courses, de signed to make sure that the USSR’S expanding network of boarding schools and pre school establishments is back ed up by understanding and cooperation at home. Soviet mums and -dads take kiddy culture seriously. Studies include: school, child psychology by age groups, pedagogy in the home, read ing guidance, this last with much information about li terature. Additionally, elect ive courses cover domestic science, the cutting and sew ing of clothes, and so on. Courses in child hygiene equip parents with essential knowledge to “grow healthy and happy children.” The psychology courses acquaints them with psychic develop ment and its characteristics in different age groups. This information is held to be “necessary to parents for re solving their educational problems.” Heightened interest i n parents education at this time is due to the decisions of the 22nd Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, calling for completion by the year 1980 of transition from the socialist to the com munist society. A broad ex pansion has been projected in the system of pre-school facilities and boarding school, which gives the state an even greater control over the dev elopment and indoctrination of children. Making sure that the home does not un do the work of the school, parents are thoroughly in structed in the aims and techniques of Soviet educat ion in schools of their own — Parent’s Universities. In this connection, Pre mier Khrushchev’s demand at the 22nd Congress is quot 46 Panorama ed: "The generation of Com munism must be formed from childhood on, it must be nurtured and made hardy in youth; we must watch at tentively, Jest we have mo ral cripples, victims of im proper upbringing, and bad example.” It is made clear that no matter how much of the child’s rearing is taken over by the state, the parents are not relieved of their share of responsibility. In fact, any undesirable non-school in fluence is apt to be blamed on parental degree than ever before. Parents who attend their university for a special one year course take up child hygiene, psychology, ,and pe dagogy in the family. The two-year students grapple with reading guidance at home, and with advanced courses in psychology, peda gogy, and history of peda gogyAttending lectures and participating in seminars, they receive factual histories of child rearing at home, cases close to their own daily experience. The examples are analyzed in the light of the dominant educational theory. This initiates pa rents into applying the pedaggogical approach explain ing the cause-and-effect link between parental influence and child behavi'or, the atti tude of children to school work, to their contempora ries and elders. The Parent’s University at the Moscow State Univer sity has found especially use ful the written reports of parent students who tell of concrete changes on the fa mily scene, thanks to their study of psychology and pe dagogy. Soviet authors strongly advise provision within the Parent’s University frame work for individual and group consultations. It is recognized that parents feel the need to consult with the expert instructors. Ideally talks which are held bn days free of lectures and seminars have become extremely po pular. Parent education includes excursions to the Houses of Pioneers, sitting, in on les sons in their children’s schools, familiarization with the long-day schools (these do not return children to their homes until the adults July 47 of the family are back from work) and with children’s numerous clubs. Admission to Parent’s Uni versities. now is much easier than it was in some cases at the beginning. At the Mos cow State University any parent wishing to attend is allowed to do so even with out a written application. In fact, Parent’s Universi ties are a channel for effi cient and extensive propa gation of the principles of child rearing for citizenship in the communist state. Simplicity is the keynote in organizing Parent’s Uni versities. They may be at tached to such diverse or ganizations as Palaces of Culture, clubs, libraries, re sidential-complex administra tions, schools, teacher-train ing institutes, Homes of Pio neers, and others. Often one eager person sets up a small committee, which finds a qualified leader. Together they examine the likely pro grams of study, recruit lec turers, assist in research and preparation of materials, and attend to other organization matters. At Parent’s Universities, students are shown how their sons’ and daughters’ reading will evolve from year to year and they are introduced not only to extensive, carefully compiled book lists but also to independent orientation in the midst of a steady stream of new juvenile liter a t u r e. Reading-guidance lectures and seminars are often foljowed by "literary concerts” where school boys and girls read, recite, and dramatize works under re view. — London Express Service. CIRCUMSTANCE Earth wages open war against her children, and under her softest touch hides treacherous claws. The cool waters invite us in to drown; the domestic hearth bums up in the hour of sleep, and makes an end of all. Everything is good or bad, helpful or deadly, not in itself, but by its circumstances. — Robert Louis Stevenson. Panorama ■ The average Filipino today believes in Faith, in Fate, in Fortune. All three can be rolled into one. FAITH, FATE AND FORTUNE E. P. Patanne The lowland population of the Philippines which in cludes the larger language groups in the islands usually finds distinction, in belong ing to “the only Christian nation in Asia.” Christianity in the Philip pines today has moved up in to the highland groups and deeper into the interior. Ca tholic and Protestant mis sionary effort in this country continues. The Christianity in the Philippines is largely defined by adherence to the Roman Catholic Church. And some 83 percent of Filipinos pro fess this faith. In high schools, Filipino students are constantly re minded that one of the eter nal contributions of Spain to Philippine history is the Catholic religion. A perusal of Philippine history does sustain this statement. It was this religion which the early Spanish-Mexican mis sionaries nurtured in this ar chipelago that was to pro vide a common faith for con glomerations of etho-linguistic groups. Some Filipino scholars have even asked the question: “What if Spain did not come to the Philippines?” Of course the answer, at best, would still remain a speculation. The fact is — Spain ruled the Philippines for over 300 years. Another fact is that the' first Filipino converts to Ca tholicism were those already settled in the coastal areas. Until the close of the nine teenth century, Catholic mis sionary work in the hinter lands was a painful effort. In the south, in the area of Mindanao, Palawan and Sulu, where Islam had ear lier established strongholds, July 49 Catholicism was to content itself with small outposts. And these had to be backed by' force. Checked in the-south, mis- • sionary work in the interior of the large islands and the mountainous region of north ern Luzon, was till the begin ning of the American occu pation, stymied by strong in digenous religions. Since the turn of the cen tury, however, Catholicism has made deeper penetra tions inland. Catholicism today, with roots extending back 300 years, has suffered change in practice and in belief. This was inevitable. For when Spain moved into the Phil ippines, the islands although politically disunited, more or less, enjoyed a common cuture bolstered by a system of ritual and beliefs differing only in the pantheon of gods. Upon this cultural matrix, Spain imposed a new reli gion. The result today as can be gleaned is a merger or blend of Christian doctrine and rites with pre-conquest beliefs and practices. The Christianity that has found meaning to the larger mass of Catholics is describ ed by scholars as a “rich folk Catholicism." For the new religion was only accepted along lines where the early Filipino with his own native metaphysics, could welcome change with out profound psychological discomforts. The process was dramatic. Although a Por tuguese navigator by the name of Fernao de Magalhaes stumbled upon these islands in 1521, and in the name of Spain saw fit to con sider these lands a Spanish discovery, it was not until about the middle of the se venteenth century that the Hispanization process began. This so-called period of colonization saw an echelon of zealous and sanguine Ca tholic missionaries from Me xico, the' New Spain, move into the Philippines. The redoubtable religious orders — Franciscans, Domi nicans, Recollects and Jesuits — tricking in from their spi ritual hearths in the New World, had accepted a new challenge. Conversion of the inhabi tants of these islands to Christianity was, however, only a stepping stone to con quest and exploitation. 50 Panorama But here were a people whose lives were already locked in their own concept of the universe. The task of the early missionaries was to win a people over to the side of a new faith, some thing which they knew the populace would have to un derstand and accept as some thing better. The initial task of conver sion was not as easy as is nicely told in Philippine his tory books. The early Spanish mission aries knew that they first faced with a terrific language problem. Next, they also knew that it would demand an understanding of the cul ture of the people. Only after having learned the lan guage and having lived with the people, could ideas of change be induced. Hence, it is to the early Spanish priest-historians that Filipino scholars today can be indebt ed for their narratives of the life-ways of the Filipinos at that time. If the Philippines today is a highly Christianized coun try it is because of the fact that the idea of a new reli gion was finally accepted by the larger groupings of Fili pinos. A new set of ideas was pushed across an entire ly strange cultural setting. Although we feel that some form of coercion was used, still we believe that religion could only be sold on its own merits. The early Spanish mission aries already knew the con cept of ‘motivational re search.’ We are rather in clined to disbelieve the view that Catholicism was ram med down the Filipino’s throat. We tend to believe thai Catholicism was pushed in a slow and painful effort in a kind of ‘soft sell’ approach. Cultural mechanisms had to be discovered and tapped and this the Spanish mission aries did. The social structure of the early Filipinos was analyzed. Only, to our thinking, a full understanding of lines of descent, inheritance, resident ial patterns, authority figures, generational respect, familial roles and kinship terminolo gy could have guided the early missionaries into win ning over a largely matriar chy-oriented population to accepting the symbol and July 51 the implications of the Holy Mother. The kind of Catholicism introduced into the Philip pines was not based on the reconquista tradition, which by its nature was a welldefined crusading faith that Spain had mounted a mili tary (and bloody) jehad against the “infidels.” The Christianity brought to or imposed upon the Phil ippines in the seventeenth century was already a human ized affair touched with the ideals of the Rennaisance. Then, the hierarchy of the church and the state was of the view that the "evan gelical enterpise should pro vide their compatriots with no licence to trample over the legitimate rights of the natives.” (Andrew Phelan in ‘Hispariization of the Philip pines.’) It was the great wish of the Spanish king at the.out set that the Filipinos be spar ed the Mexican and Peru vian holocust. Spanish impe rialism was to be gentle and forceful but not bloody. After all, the larger object ives of the Spanish advent ure into this part of the world were: (1) to push Por tugal out of the spice trade, (2) establish a base for fur ther missionary -work in Chi na and Japan, and (3) to Christianize the archipelago. The actual Hispanization process began in 1565 when Legaspi’s Mexico-based expe dition finally made a foot hold on the islands. Church and state in the Spanish view being one, the concept of conversion was to be directed toward getting the inhabitants ’under the bell.’ For the Spanish mission aries discovered that while some population clustered in small villages, there were others in the outlying areas. Conversion could be a very difficult thing. Ta get the population concentrated in accessible points was both a religious and political job. To accomplish this, the Mexican-Spanish missionaries not only borrowed from their experiences in Mexico and Peru but also had to intro duce some innovations. The big towns of the Phil ippines today have their hearts in the plaza dominat ed by the church on one side and the town hall on the other. But before making 52 Panorama new changes on the land scape, it was necessary to con vince the Filipino that the new religion was much bet ter. Since the old religions still thrived, it was again deemed necessary that all symbols of native belief be destroyed. Wooden idols and so-called sacred groves were declared idolatrous and destroyed. Al most anything that seemed to bear an indigenous thought was consigned to the flames. The early Filipinos watched these desecrations of the religion of their ancestors with, we believe,, no small amount of protest. But in the cultural setting then obtaining, it was the powerful god that must rule. And the power of the Christ ian God was made eloquent in the booming of the Casti lian cannon, the gleaming armour and weaponry of its new Far Eastern conquistadores. The Christian God was championed against all and any gods. The Spanish soldiery that backed up the conversion movement was, to our think ing, the one big factor that finally broke through native resistance, both in mind and in spirit. This was on the military plane. But the early Spanish missionaries, really accom plished much on the psycho logical plane. Soldiery was only brought in when the convincing had met a hostile resistance. Working their way into the very mind of the people, the Spanish missionaries used some gimmicks, knowledge of persuasion and ‘miracles.’ Every town almost in the Philippines has some kind of ‘miracle’ connected with the person of the patron saint. But is was in th? fiesta, an annual festivity in a town or barrio, celebrated in honor of a patron saint, that the new religion finally came to terms with the values of an old culture. Phelan in his book summa rizes the Hispanization of the Philippines thus: ‘‘From the viewpoint of the Church, the Catholicim of the Filipinos left much to be desired. The quality of indoctrination was not al ways adequate, nor did con verts always participate fully in the sacramental life of the July 53 Church. Outward religious formalism, rather than sound doctrinal knowledge, the tri ple dangers of idolatry, su perstition and magic, added to the infrequency in the ad ministration of the sacra ments, were all defects which could have been partially re medied by a well-trained Fili pino clergy.” Catholicism in the Philipines today, to its larger ad herents, seems to be defined by a compromise arrived at centuries back between the new and the old religions. The early Filipinos accept ed many features of the new religion, but they also retain ed certain features of their own. Hence, the view that Christianity in the Philip pines today, to a large extent, is a kind of ‘folk Catholic ism.’ It’s a new and foreign re ligion accepted and adapted by a people whose basic out look toward life had already been sunk in their ancient subconscious. The average Filipino today believes in Faith, in Fate, in Fortune. All three can be rolled into one. The Catholic Filipino wor ships God, believes in the Bible, goes to church on Sun days — but he also conceives of the Lord as a “giver of gifts,” performs certain ri tuals and reads omens in so many things. The sweepstake is an al most weekly affair in the Philippines. To win a major prize and a big purse, the typical Filipino today would invoke not only his Christian God but also a be lief-idea that could guaran tee a high probability score “to make it.” The ritual demanded to accomplish this end, again, is worked through the rituals of the Catholic religion, but ever strengthened by other formulas based on numero logy, astrology and supersti tion. But over the years, all these acts of propitiation and an intelligent reasoning on Faith have been so blended that form and substance in spiritual affairs have achiev ed a certain consistency. And the average Filipino does not feel ill at ease in moving through this channel of be havior and action. But he has begun to feel ill at ease because the reli gion he has finally imposed 54 Panorama upon himself suffers from inner inconsistencies. These inconsistencies form, as a Filipino historian has pointed out, one stumbling block to the Philippines mov ing forward. For the Filipino believes in technical progress. He can appreciate this. But he is not quite so willing to alter a tradition fortified by his pre sent system of worship and ritual. It is again a strange thing but the Catholic Church in the Philippines can see this ‘change’ clearly and, against an almost fixed matrix of tradition, Filipinos are mov ing forward. — The Asia Ma gazine. ECONOMIC CZARINA? The way thirigs are going now, says Ernesto del Rosario of the Manila Chronicle, Senator MariaKalaw Katigbak may soon be the ‘economic czarina of the Republic.” Dr. Jose Katigbak, notes del Ro sario, is already head of the ACCFA. Senator Ka tigbak ‘s son in law Armand Fabella is Program Im plementation Agency director and her nephew Sixto Roxas is chairman of the National Economic Council and the Rice and Corn Agency. ‘‘Some people say [Senator Katigbak] is also related to Executive Secretary Rufino Hechanova [Senator Katigbak], the first crowned beauty queen of the country, was Visayan like Fenny.” Some set up, indeed! July ■ Famed writer says West Beiflin has no monopoly of laughter and self-mockery. LETTER TO A WEST GERMAN FRIEND Graham Greene What a relief it is some times to find oneself on a material frontier, a frontier visible to the .eyes,, tangible —even when in Berlin it is a wall. For most of us have all our lives in this unhappy century carried an invisibile frontier around with us, po litical, religious, moral . . . Nearly 40 years ago I step ped across such frontier when I became a Catholic, but the frontier did not cease to exist for me because I had crossed it. Often I have re turned and looked over it with nostalgia, like thq little groups on either side of the Brandenburg Gate who on holidays stare across at each other trying to recognize a friend. I was reminded of my in visible frontier when I stayed with you in West Berlin. Up at night in the roof garden of the Hilton Hotel — a garden where vari-coloureij bottles take the place of flowers — you pointed out to me the great arc' of lights around the west, and the deep space of darkness be yond, broken only .by occa sional short chains of yellow beads. ‘You can see,’ you said, ‘where the east lies’; yet it is the mark of frontiers — the evil of frontiers perhaps — that things look quite dif ferent when you pass them. Four days later, driving into East Berlin from Dresden and Potsdam, I was not par ticularly aware of darkness — not at any rate a greater darkness than you will find iri the industrial quarter of any large city at 10 o’clock at night. It was true there was no Kurfestendam, though that name conveys now none of the gay haggard associat ions of the Twenties. The big new restaurant in the Unter Den Linden was still bright with lights; the shop 56 Panorama windows too were lit and there was an elegance in the window-dressing which you do not find in Moscow. Alone of communist cities Moscow seems to frown on the allure of consumer-goods — she makes the worst of what she has, while in East Berlin and Bucharest and Warsaw they make the most. We left the Hilton bar, you remember, and drove to Bernauerstrasse, where the wall shows itself, especially at night, in its most uncompro mising fofm: shoddily built, the colour of mud and rust, protected on the eastern side by a depth of wire-entangle ment, it is all the uglier for its pettiness; it stands little higher-than man’s head be tween the blind houses on one side of the street. The eastern windows have been bricked up, and at night the houses near the wall bear obvious dark sign of evacua tion. Here and there a light shines from 50 yards behind. A church has lost its only entrance, the wall running slap across the doorway. Upon the western side the dark crosses, and perpetual wreaths are like the memo rials on alpine roads 'where a man has plunged to death. This wall, and the check points where foreigners and West Germans can visit East Berlin for the day, represent the great difficulty of com munism. For a possible con vert they stand there more impassably than any dogma of proletarian democracy, and what happened in Buda pest, after all, happened less than half a century ago in Dublin. Official atheism I am able, perhaps mistakenly, to regard as passing phase (I prefer in any case atheism to agnosticism under the guise of official Chistianity), and the comparision of living standards is an unreliable and unpleasing argument. What of the standards of living in rich Venezuela? Do we have a better car than the man next door? I remem ber a young West German friend saying, ‘How glad I shall be when butter and meat cost the same on both sides of the wall. Then we can argue about things that matter.’ You would think from the photographs of daily visitors that it rained only in East Berlin, and that the rain fell on nothing but July 57 ruins in the East — missing the new apartment-buildings and the new stores. There is a wall neurosis: the visitor is more aware of it in the west than in the east because there the wall is geographically inescapable. Take a drive in the evening as we did in the little patch of country still belonging to West Berlin: the road is packed with cars, driven by people seeking the illusion of space and air, until suddenly there the wall again, not of brick or cement this time, but of wire and water divi ded by buoys and patrolled by eastern police boats. Belief, like it or not, is a magnet. Even what seem the extravagant claims of a be lief are magnetic. Jn a com mercial world of profit and loss man is hungry often for the irrational. I do not be lieve that the little knots of people who gather near Gheck-point Charlie are there to demonstrate repug nance, as do the bus loads at the Brandenburg Gate. Part of Berlin has become a foreign land and they are staring into the strangeness, some with enmity, others with apprehension, but all with a certain fascination. Behind them lies the new city, the smart hotels, the laden stores; but capitalism is not a belief, and so it is not a magnet. It is only a way of life to which one has grown accustomed. To take the few steps be yond Check-point Charlie can be compared with the acceptance of the last diffi cult dogma — say the infal libility of the Pope. There are moments when the pos sible convert is in a state of rebellion; he can see the wall and nothing but the wall. There are moments when he will gladly stretch his faith to the furthest limits. Per haps there is always Okie mo ment when he shuts his eyes and walks into the wide ruin ed spaces beyond the check point. He looks back over his shoulder and the dogma has suddenly changed. What had been a threat can even appear like a protection. You were unable to accom pany me for obvious reasons beyond the check-point, but you haye asked me to tell you what I noticed there. You reminded me how my character Fowler in The Quiet American claimed 58 Panorama proudly to be a reporter and not a leader-writer and you recommended me to be the same. But for a reportage one requires more than the two-and-a-half days I had in the East, and one requires to speak the language how ever roughly. The reporter i deal in this case only with himself; he can report only this own evanescent im pressions. Of course, I could write you about the magni ficent Leda of Rubens at Dresden, at Pilnitz th mag nificent Gauguin and the Toulouse-Lautrec brothel scene, curiously described in the catalogue as a scene in the artist’s atelier (puritanism or innocence?); I could describe the ruins left by the great blitz, war crime worse than that of Hiroshima; I could note the big changes since three years ago in East Berlin, the new apartments on either side of the Karl Marx Allee where I remem bered desolation, a shop of new designs in furniture 4nd ceramics which would do cre dit to our English Heal’s, in the poorer older streets which have survived bom bardment not too bad a se lection of consumer-goods — at least they are purchasable in a variety of small shops: one is not subjected to the crowds and ennui of the gi gantic GUM. The more expensive clothe’s-shops have style — they were also full of clients with enough money to spend. Wine is chiefly Bulgarian. Food is simpler and less vari ed than in West Berlin, but it is not expensive. I judge not from the big restaurants, but the small country inn where I lunched, well off the autobahn, on the way to Dresden and the people’s restaurant where I dined in Potsdam. The hotel in Dres den was a luxury hotel with show-cases of champagne, perfume, and women’s clothes (well-designed). I have a feeling that these are not the details you want. I have spoken of the wall as a protection. Naturally this was the way it was pre sented to me by the young officer at the Brandenburg Gate in a speech too long, too prepared and too inno cently propagandist: a pro tection from spies, saboteurs and black marketeers. His stories of deaths along the wall almost too carefully July 59 duplicated the circumstan ces of deaths on the western side. Crosses and wreaths are a popular expression, and though they may be as misleading as photographs, they are a great deal more convincing. It was not from this officer that one gained the sense of the wall as pro tection, nor from the booklet purporting to give the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the CIA staff in West Berlin beginning with a Mr. Harry Grant of 15 Tayorstrase and ending with a Miss Jane Rowlay of 17 Stuartstrase (telephone 76-49-87). There were pri vate tragedies of divided fa milies before the wall was built as well as after — fa milies divided by the temp tations of the West. The West is too inclined to attach heroic motives to all those who escape across or through the wall. Courage they certainly have, but how many are ‘choosing freedom’ for romantic motives, love way of life, and how many of a girl, of a family, of a are merely tempted by a standard which includes tr sistor radio-Sets, American blue jeans and leather jackets? As long as living standards differ, there’ll al ways be motives less than noble. You may think I was con ditioned by the friends I made on the other side of the wall, for true it is, when I passed Check-point Charlie returning west, I felt as if I were leaving something sim ple behind me and coming out again into the complex world of Bonn. In a few more minutes I would be talking again with my west ern friends about the case of Der Spiegel, about the wiles of the old Chancellor, about Doenitz’s school speech in defence of the Nazis and the headmaster’s suicide; I would be askjng about the record of General Spiedel and the latest Nazi scandal in the government of Bonn. There have been scandals, of course, on the other side, but they have been ruthlessly cured: the sore does not con tinue to run there indefinite ly. ' In West Germany one he sitates to probe the past of any man in his fifties or six ties. I felt no such hesitation in the east. Of four friends I made there two were old communists who had spent 60 Panorama the war in a refugee camp in Shanghai; one had served in the British Army, landing with a Scottish regiment in Normandy; one, having fought with the International Brigade in Spain, saw the war out in South America. Perhaps the old Catholic con vert has something in com mon with the old communist convert which makes it easy for the two to get on terms — he has lived through the period of enthusiasm and now recognizes the differing regions of acceptance and doubt. One communist, who had been an orthodox Jew, said to me, ‘I gave up my faith when I was 18 and joined the party. Now at 50 one realizes that everything is not known.’ There’s a funny story — told in the East. Khrushchev has been asked by the Central Com mittee to visit the Pope and try to reduce the tension of the Cold War. He reports to the Committee when he re turns: 'I have reached a com promise with the Pope.’ (The members express uneasiness at the very idea of compromise.) ‘I have agreed that the world was made in seven days.’ (A tumult follows.) 'Yes, but listen to what the Pope has agreed — that it was made under the leadership of the Communist Party.’ On this side of the wall we are apt to believe that we have a monopoly of laughter and self-mockery. Brigitte Bardot is playing in the east. — New Statesman, May 31, 1963. RELIGION Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development. This evolution of religion is in the main a disengage ment of its own ideas in terms of the imaginative picture of the world entertained in previous ages. — Alfred North Whitehead. July 61 ■ There is something wrong with British society, and a good deal of it may be attributed to deficiencies in education. EDUCATION AND SACRIFICE C. P. Snow We are in a mess about our education. Or rather we have let ourselves settle into a pattern so crystallised that it is going to be preposterous ly Hard to break. Unless we break it soon — and I mean in years, not decades — we shall slide into genteel de cline. To break it is going to' mean sacrifice. It is going to mean the sacrifice of mo ney, which will have to go quite deep in our society, of privilege, of intellectual com fort, of self-esteem. To be gin with, we have got to see our education clearly, not through our fog of familiar ity, but as foreign observers do. First, a simple statement about it. There is too little of it. It is too narrow both in spread and concept. It divides us more than any education should. By and large, in fact, we are doing rather badly, and we don’t like ourselves because we are. Let us be crude. I am not imagining the extreme slow ness of our growth in nation al production. The figures are these: for 1938 let us take the national product as 100 in each case. In the United States it has since gone up to 225; in West Germany to 228; in the OEEC countries on average ‘ to 164, and here to under 150. If you take the base of 100 for the year 1950, West Germany is now 225, France 170, Italy 202, Netherlands 158, the OEEC countries on average 164, and this country 129. There is something wrong with us. A good deal of what is wrong, though of course not all, should be put down to our educational deficiencies. This part at least — if we have the spirit — we can put right. But we are a deeply con servative society. I do not 62 Panorama mean conservative primarily in a political sense. Some of the most dangerous conserva tive elements in our feeling come from people who would think of themselves as liberalminded. On the other hand there are many who are call ing themselves conservatives, who have a sense of the fu ture and who would make much sacrifice — not only of money, which is the easiest to make — to see us on the way to health. I have to warn you however, that a so ciety which is psychological ly conservative has three suc cessive techniques for dealing with a disconcerting truth. The first is the technique of the absurd denial. That is, when General de Gaulle announces that Great Britain is an island, the first response is to say: ‘No it isn’t.’ Or if one says that the number of persons getting PhD de grees is many times higher per h^ad of population in the US or the Soviet Union than it is in our country, the first response is blandly to deny the plain facts. Defensive Techniques This process, however, can not be maintained indefi nitely and it is suceeded by the second stage, which is the technique of the intricate de fensive. One wants to dis cuss something fairly straightforward, like the be nefits or otherwise of hang ing. Any really practised practitioner in the intricate defensive will start off by asking interesting questions about the kind of rope. One produces -Concrete evidence about American and Rus sian higher education. 'Ah yes,’ siiys one’s interlocutor. ‘But before we go any further, are you really certain about the second-year standard at the University of Irkutsk?’ Fi nally, there is the third stage. This is the technique of hopeless acceptance, when the game is given up and the need for previous action ac cepted — but alas, now it is too laxel This will happen /unless we are careful, in some of the bitter controver sies of our time 20 years hence. We must not let it happen in this. I think we should all agree that many of our academic friends have a peculiar mas tery of these techniques. I remember seeing them in full operation early in the July 63 war. It was obvious that, if we were going to use the ra dar systems first invented by Watson Watt, we should need a very large number of scientist educated to some thing like degree standard in electronics. It was obvious that, unless we trained these men, our chances of survival would be perceptibly reduc ed. On the other hand, there were some who saw the pro blem differently. I had an old friend, a good and ho nourable man, who played a considerable part in univer sity administration. I will call him Robinson. The first defence was, of course, to deny the need and to say that we could get on perfect ly well with about 500 scien tists. The second was to say that even if the need existed, the universities could not possibly do anything about it in three, four, or five years, or any time which was rele vant to the war. Fortunately, the third tech nique of hopeless acceptance — that is, that we ought to have done something earlier, but now it was too late — never really came into play. For we went into action our selves. The conditions of war had a way of clarifying men’s minds, so the arts we could bring to bear managed to prevail over the intricate defensive. In fact, we edu cated in four years consider ably more scientists and tech nicians than the men who fought on both sides at the Battle of Waterloo. But I have 'never forgotten\Robin son. He had only three words to describe any effort to alter universities. The mildest was ‘scandalous’. He would then go on to ‘disas trous’. When he became really moved, he said that our proposals were catastro phic’. We became a little moved ourselves. Well then, let us begin, with what we do well. I once asked one of my wisest Am erican friends what he thought was the chief posi tive merit of our education. He is himself an academic, he knows us intimately, and has lived among us for years. His reply was this: if one had a really startling specific ta lent, the sort of talent which sticks out unmistakably from early childhood, such as a geniune gift for mathematics, he would rather be born in England than in any country 64 Panorama '•he knew, certainly his own. That was our saving grace. If he were any other kind of child, even' one whose talents were great though not so specific, he would much ra ther be born in the United States. I would like to suggest three other proficiencies of ours — though these are pro ficiencies which are inter woven with our shortcom ings. The first is that our honours degree at all univer sities — the standard varies very little, despite what snob bish persons think — is taken at a younger age and is in a specilized way more exacting than the first degree in other countries. That is, anyone who gets a first or a good second in any English uni versity at the age of 21 has been through a severe profes sional training. More severe, perhaps, than is reached else where until the age of 23 or so. I use the word ‘profes sional’ with care. In many respects he is less thoroughly and sensibly educated than his foreign contemporaries. But I do not want now to talk much about English specialization. There is no doubt that the English first degree, in its higher reaches, is a remarkable example of what can be done in the way of intensive instruction. The Cost of Private Schools This leads back, of course, to our second skill. At Our secondary schools, both pri vate and state, we also achieve extraordinary feats in the way of intensive in struction. There is no real equivalent to our scholarship forms in America and Rus sia, the countries whose edu cation I have studied with some care. At 18, the kind of student who is going to get a higher honours degiee is, in his own specialized field, normally much ahead of his contemporaries else where. Thirdly, we perhaps have something to teach others in certain aspects of primary education. W e start educating children at five, which is maybe too ear ly: but heroic feats are per formed, i n circumstances which do not bear examin ation, in a good many state primary schools. And we are astonishingly good at teach ing the clever children of those who can afford to pay hondsomely for the privilege, between the ages of six and July 65 13. There is no equivalent anywhere that I know of to our private schools for child ren between those ages. That is, of course, where our social division begins. We do all this, and it is not to be laughed off. But we do it at a heavy and, in the not too long run, at a crippling cost. At all levels from 15 upwards we educate so few of our people. Look at a few figures. I have said before that the only two countries about whose edu cation I can claim to know even a little at first hand are the US and the Soviet Union. I will start at the top of formal educational train ing. In his speech on 29, Jan uary on the state of the na tion, President Kennedy de voted much attention to Am erican shortcomings in edu cation, both in quality and in quantity. The President was specially worried because the number of PhDs graduating each year was too small: on ly a half of 1 per cent of each age group. This means something over 12,000 a year. I did not realize it was so large. The administration now appears to think that 20,000, or even 25,000, is the kind of figure which shoul/ be achieved very soon. And 'very soon’ in American terms does not mean 10 years ahead. The figure for Soviet PhDs — they call them Candidates, but they are exactly equivalent — is about 10,000 a. year andi is rapidly rising. Before I go any further, don’t fall into the English trap of thinking these doc torates inferior to ours. If you are tempted to do so, go and try to get one. In gen eral, I should guess that the average standard of quality of PhD theses in the US and the Soviet Union is some what higher than our own. They are taken a good deal more seriously, and usually require considerably more of a graduate student’s time. Five years is by no means an abnormal period to spend over one’s PhD in the US. In Cambridge, at any rate, it used to be fairly difficult to be turned down for one’s PhD once one had got start ed on one’s research. With all that said, what is the number of our PhDs each year? The curious thing is, no one seems to know. But our number of 66 Panorama PhDs is certainly less than 1,500 per year, and probably appreciably less. Multiply that by three or four, and you get a reasonable compa rison per head of population. This, remember, is right at the top of educational train ing, where our assumption is that we are at our best. Of our final number, a sub stantial proportion, as the Royal Society’s report has told us, are moving to the US. There is nothing sinis ter about this. All counrties are short of trained and able men, and are going to re main short for the foresee able future. Trained and able men tend to go where they can do the best work. Incidentally, nearly all these men are interested in edu cation. They are academics or other sorts of professional. One of our best hopes of get ting them back is to let them see that we are reshaping our education, and that we need them to help us do it. There are some other figures which are perhaps not well enough known. The revenue expenditure on universities is at present between £60 and £70 million a year. We ought to make allowance for the fact that in this country a good deal of higher education is car ried out outside the univer sities. For instance, we spend about £16 million a year on teacher’s training colleges, and £3 million a year on advanced technolo gical institutions. Let us err on the generous side and add in another £13 million for expenditure on further edu cation, which in some coun tries might be done in col leges. This makes a total of £100 million a year. The American expenditure on college education alone is £2,000 million a year. As in this country, the greater' part of this sum comes from public funds. But it is a bit of a shock to find that annual private gifts to uni versities and colleges in the US amount to about £400 million a year, that is, four times our total expenditure on higher education. Soviet expenditure on higher edu cation is roughly equivalent to American. The number of students receiving higher education in the US, the Soviet Union and Great Britain is roughly what these figures suggest. July 67 In the US approximately one third of each age group enters college at 18. The number of students receiv ing higher education is about 3 million. The comparable number in the Soviet Union is about 2 million. With us, the number at universities is 110,000; and probably we should add something like 50,000 to this, to include students at technical colleges, teacher’s training colleges, and others working for pro fessional qualifications. It is true that the wastage at Am erican universities and collegs is very high. The num ber of students who gradu ate is about half the number who enter. But I have a good deal of sympathy with the American atttiude, which is t;hat it is better to open your doors to a number of students who are going to profit much, in order not to close those doors against stu dents who are going to pro fit a great deal. The Soviet wastage is about the same as ours. It is slightly baffling to visit the fifth-year class at a Mos cow or Leningrad institute and find its numbers have actually grown, not shrunk, from the first year. This is, however, simply because there is a good deal of move ment between universities, as in Germany, and good students in, for example, physics from all over the Union have a knack of arriv ing in Moscow for their fi nal year or two. What is our defence against these facts? First, I think, refusal to realize how uneducated we are. The on ly stratum where we are rich, in ability is in jobs which are being done by boys leaving school at 15 on wards, who either did not want to go to a university or could not get in. Much of our middle-grade clerical or minor administrative work is done much better than in America and Russia, and probably as well as anywhere in the world. But that is a wretched consolation. We may not realize the half of our danger for -another 10 or 20 years, when the results of American and Russian eucation have had time to show. Educating a whole people, as they are trying to, is a long business. Often the results seem disappointing. The Americans have already 68 PANORAMA Deen at it for two or three generations. It is important to remem ber that university education in any recognizable modern sense, with provision for or ganized research, is much older in the United States than with us. Similarly, So viet education did not start in 1945, although it was then, by a heroic decision, given the highest priority. I believe that visitors to either country can now get the first intimation of what this investment in education is going to bring. Ours is a comfortable country, one of the most comfortable of all countries to live in. It comes as a little of a shock, if one gets out of New York and centres of recent immigrat ion and settles down some where else in America for a few months, to Tealize that through great stretches of their population they are ap preciably better educated than we are. Our final line of argu ment is that we don’t believe in mass education; we believe in educating an elite. Yes, but a tiny one; much small er than we think. We often speak, and have managed to persuade ourselves, as if our minute army of 110,000 stu dents at universities were all starred first, the perfect pro duct of the English compe titive and specialized edu cation. If that were true, though it would be socially dangerous in the extreme, we should be getting on in prac tical terms a good deal bet ter than we are. In fact, the number o f students whom our singular system of education suits and who really succeed in it, is quite small. If one guessed about one fifth of the whole, that would probably be a consi derable exaggeration. Together with our illusion about elite education, we say something else much more mischievous. It is that we have collected all the talent that exists in the country. There is no one else who could possibly benefit by our university education. I can not conceive how this ever came to be said. It means, first of all, that the English are much stupider than everybody else, since, as we have seen, other countries carry the highest level of education to a far larger proportion of their people July 69 than we do. It means some thing else, which is very wicked. It is roughly that the children of the working class, together with female children of all classes, are beyond hope, predestined to ignorance, not capable of any serious higher education at all. Once again, the facts speak for themselves. Man ual workers are still the bulk of our male population and hold about 70 per cent of all jobs, yet only a small frac tion of the university popu lation of this island is drawn from their children, prob ably less than 25 per cent. At Oxford -and Cambridge, as is now well known, the number of students from working class homes is bizar rely small — something over 10 per cent for Oxford, and less for Cambridge: This cannot be right, unless you believe that the separation of our pople into castes has been so genetically complete that most of the working class are predestined to be stupid. Women get almost exact ly the same treatment as the proletariat. Out of each four students at our univer sities, only one is a woman. This is grotesque. We, of all countries, can’t afford to waste half our talent. Even if we could, it would be wicked to discriminate on sexual grounds. In fact, there is only one reply to the grosser troubles about our higher education. Put the wrong right. And that means, without the kind of finesse which plays with lit tle truths in order to conceal big ones, immediately in creasing its extent. There must be more of it. Starting not 10 years ahead, but now. Our Distorted Priorities The trouble is, we talk a lot and do so little. We are all setting much hope upon the efforts of the Robbins Committee. We have set up ‘some new, small and promis ing universities. But the years are passing by, and other countries are acting while we sit and watch. Un less we act too, and far more decisively than has been con templated, we shall, in 10 years’ time, be giving higher education to a lesser propor tion of our 18-year-olds than we do now. That would be a remarkable achievement. But let us take heart: it is 70 Panorama likely to happen. I believe that public opinion is now getting to some extent in formed; parents and children are beginning to realize what they ought to demand; per haps they will have the fight ing-power to get it. But whatever we manage to do, the one certain thing is that it will still be too little. Once a country has got its priorities distorted, over a very long period, it is maddeninigly difficult t o make them sensible again — unless one is living in a rev olutionary situation, which we are not. In our kind of society, the power of politi cal action or of government decision is usually more li mited than we think. Since 1945, there have been a num ber of years when we in this country spent appreciably more on egg subsidy than we did on universities. No one in cold blood sat down and decided that this was a rational order of priorities. It just happened. Our pat tern of higher education has also just happened. It will take immense political judg ment and will — probably more than our situation can permit — to alter it enough. But, even if we can’t, that is no excuse for doing nothing. It will be realistic and sober to say that we can double our university popu lation in 10 years. The cost will not be excessive. No one now doubts that the abi lity is there, even if we con tinue to allow our university education to be dominated, as at present, by the special ized honors degree. That is an argument which will con tinue as we get into action, just as others- will. How much stress do we lay on this faculty or that? How can we get students of high talent into the technologies (we are very bad at this) and how de we develop the tech nologies into a first-rate hu mane education? We should answer some of these ques tions if, in the process of ex panding our universities, we diversified them more. The most economical method of expansion not only in mo ney, but in staff and build ings, is by magnifying exist ing institutions; and no doubt, for harsh practical reasons, that will have to be our major way. But my own impulse would be to experi July 71 ment with as much variety as we can contrive. Until quite recently — un til Keele and Sussex and the newest foundations — the English and Welsh univer sities have modelled them selves on 'Oxford and Cam bridge, as if there were no other concepts of uni versity education at all: al though they had only to look northTof the border to see a radically different system, sprung from roots as deep but in the best sense more democratic, more flexible and more capable of adapt ing itself to a world which we must foresee. Perhaps the strongest single impression of Ameri can universities and colleges today is their variety. Most English people tend to think of them as being of enor mous size. Some are. The University of California has getting on for. 50,000 under graduates, just about as ma ny as the total student popu lation of this island in any pre-war year. Most of the California unde rgraduates are taught in two gigantic campuses, at Berkely and Los Angeles. Like all other known methods of university education, this has its dis advantages; but it has also spectacular advantages. By all the criteria by which we justify our own, the Univer sity of Calfornia is one of the greatest in the world. That is, its record of original re search stands comparison with any university — and that may be an understate ment. Its top rank of stu dents equally stands compa rison with any. If any uni versity ever educated an elite, then California does; and this as a result of a supreme effort of mass education. These great state univer sities — California, Wiscon sin, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois and several more — are going to become more important, not less. Through their sheer size and through their public support, they have resources which no other universities can com pete with. There are al ready many fields of re search which they alone can touch. I suspect that for many of the ablest and most adventurous o f undergra duates their size is not in the least frightening, but a source of energy. It’s an English mistake, 72 Panorama however, to think that all American institutions are large. As usual, they go to all extremes. Some of their most famous colleges are tiny. Haverford and Kenyon run to 500 students or so; Am herst to 900. These are all liberal arts colleges — which doesn’t mean that science and engineering are not taught. They are, and very well. The title simply means that normally the colleges will not arrange organized research courses for the PhD. The undergradate courses are usually as various is in a large university, and as fully staffed. That is, of course, an expensive method of teaching; the amount of in dividual tuition would star tle those who boast of the Oxford and Cambridge tu torial system. It produces some most impressive results. For a great many students — and for some of the most valuable — it seems the most effective undergraduate edu cation now available. Some of my friends who agree with me on most of these topics, disagree on this; I won’t budge I suppose we can’t manage to afford a couple of liberal arts colleges, just to try them out? No govern ment would feel that it was enough, in the way of num bers, for its money; but they would be an admirable ob ject for a benefaction. As we increase our univer sities, we have the _ chance of variety. And we have got to break some of our stereo types now. Some could be broken b y administrative action without a penny spent. The Colleges of Ad vanced Technology, which are universities in every thing but name, should be called universities. They will equip themselves with their own education in the arts, just as MIT and. Cal. Tech, do; for these techno logical educators, of whom B. V. Bowden is the most eloquent spokesman, believe passionately in what can be done by the interweaving of technological and humane learning. Give them their head: they are one of our sources of strength and hope. But why are the Colleges of Advanced Technology denied the name of universities? Who had the stupefying idea of labelling their gra duating award with the gro July 73 tesque appellation of Dip. Tech.? Labels ought not to matter overmuch. In the US almost the whole of higher educat ion is conducted at universi ties and colleges, and the la bel one gets, when one passes the course, is that of a bache lor’s degree. This label is attached to some courses which are not, by English standards, academic, as well as to many which are. The convention is nationwide, and is understood. The con vention in the Soviet Union is more like our own. There are only 40 universities, most of which are of middling size. The great bulk of So viet higher education is not done at institutions bearing the name of a university, but at a medley of others, some very large, like the Polytech nics; some small and concen trated, like the Gorky Lite rary Institute. From many of these one graduates, with various kinds of complex for mulae. There is no single la bel like the bachelor’s degree, but no on appears to mind. All that matters is that any one who graduates anywhere —whatever his label — can go on to post-graduate educat ion and is in the field for responsible jobs. If you study the careers of, say, the present generation of high ranking Russian diplomats, you will find they were train ed at engineering colleges, pedagogical institutes, all kinds of institutions. Their selection and use of person nel, at this level, must be far more flexible than ours. This loose and adaptable system, with much higher education outside universi ties (in the parrow sense) would suit this country very well, from every point of view but one. The label of a bachelor's degree ought to matter: it matters only when it becomes something of a class label; and that is precisely what with us it has become. The invention of the label Dip. Tech, was the English vice carried in excelsis, the fine flower of our instinct to create a helot class if humanly possible, even in learning.. Salvation for the Few On primary and secondary education I want only to say some of the simplest things. This is not because I think they are less important than higher education. On the 74 Panorama contrary, for a good society, they are probably more so. It is simply that recently I haven’t seen much of them at first hand. But there are some facts which stick out painfully into all of us. First, money. We spend about £800 million on education as a whole. The US spends approximately 10 times as much; and so, as far as one can estimate, does the Soviet Union. Comparing head with head, we are under spending. Secondly, as in higher education, the child ren of manual workers, and girls everywhere, get less in struction after the age of 15 than anyone else; not quite so grossly as in higher edu cation, but grossly enough to be human non-sense. Third ly, the national drift to a narrow concepcion of acade mic excellence, which reaches its operative point in the degree, spreads right down through our schools. Our 15-18 years-ol(J education is geared to be a preparation for the honours degree and no thing else. Ana this concen tration begins far earlier. It is shown, in a genesis which is both dramatic and absurd, in the 11-plus. The 1944 Act had a lot to commend it; but only a mandarin so ciety would have carried it into action in the way we did. We rather like the 11plus because it tells us what we are only too ready to believe, that there are a few destined for salvation and a multitude who can be court eously forgotten. This is not a process which we can view with any pride. It is wasteful in the opposite sense to. the American waste fulness. They waste through being too indiscriminate; we waste through being too mean. It is not a 'humane process. If you have done any selecting at any age, you would hate to select at 11 — even if you believed in the purpose for which the choice was being made. Of course, at 11 you could pick out a startum of academic flyers — that is fairly easy. You could pick out another stratum of children not equipped' for any kind of academic train ing, though they are also God’s creatures. In between comes a gigantic belt; and, if you are going to choose with in this belt at 11, you might as well toss up for it. (Concluded next issue) July 75 ■ Traffic in Manila can be exasperating, and often is, but in Turkey it is simply maddening. ON THE ROAD TO BYZANTIUM Simon Raven ‘Tomorrow,’ said the se cond-class steward of the SS Mustapha Kemal, ‘we come Iskenderu. Iskenderu is first port call in Turkey. There will be the formalities.’ He pronounced the word with a heavy, whining accent on the penultimate syllable. ‘Tur key* formaleeties,’ he said, and giggled rather wildly. ‘Turkey formaleeties take all day, gentlemans, take all night. So long as customs mans on ship, they eat ship’s food; see? So they stay long time — eat breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner, supper. They so stupid with eating, gentle mans, they find nothing.’ He went into cubby hole and came out with an arm ful of skirts, blouses and as sorted lingerie. He spread it all carefully and evenly over the five tables; he then covered it with a layer of newspaper, the newspaper again with tablecloths, and proceeded to lay the break fast things for the next morning. ‘You see, gentlemans? These things I buy in Cyprus for my wife. Customs mans want much money — is no good. So I hide here. Cus toms mans, policemans, al ways eating. So no one look under tablecloth.’ At first we are sceptical about this strategem, but the morning we saw how sound it was. There were about ten customs officers of vary-, ing grades, some fifteen uni formed security men and a fair-sized platoon of hangerson. From the moment they came aboard, they started eating in relays in the SecondClass Dining Room. At any given moment of the day, half the officials on board would be consuming one meal while the other half was champing for the next. There could be no question of lifting the tablecloths. Our steward, winking and 76 Panorama giggling, hurtled in and out of his cubby hole with unending replacements of crocks and provender, while the officials gorged and bel ched like happy schoolboys at a picnic, as ignorant as Medea’s husband of the enor mity which underlay their feast. * * # At Mersin, the second port of consequence as one sails up the west coast of Turkey, we disembarked ourselves and our car for the drive to Istanbul. ‘Formaleeties,’ said a man on the quayside. ‘But,’ we said, ‘we went through all the formalities at Iskenderu.’ ‘Here,’ he said, ‘only ver’ leetle formaleeties. Now, the secret of Turkish formalities is this. A document, which is regarded as a symbol of en lightenment and progressive administration, is a thing to be reverenced rather than understood. No one really' knows whether it is in order or even what it applies to; but reverence for a certain time it must and will receive, and therefore the fewer docu ments you produce, the soon er you get away. On the other hand, if you produce too few you are suspect, not so much as a potential law breaker, but rather as though you were religious apostate of some kind, lacking in the proper respect for sacred matters. So a nice balance must be struck — enough jdocuments to reassure peo ple, not enough, to occasion serious delay. For the ‘ver’ leetle formaleeties’ at Mersin we decided to submit pass ports, an out-of-date insur ance policy for the car (this to test the acumen of our persecutor), and one inter national driving certificate. The out-of-date insurance policy, being on thin and expensive paper, was a great success. The official hopeullv asked for more like it, was denied, took his revenge by charging five Turkish lire (three shillings) to stamp the driving certificate, and waved us (not without court esy) on our way. * * * It would seem from their history that the three basic elements in the Turkish na tional character are cruelty, courage and inefficiency. This impression is confirmed by the dress and the physical JUI.Y 77 features of the ubiquitous soldiers. In Konya, a famous inland resort where we spent our first night, the Sunday streets were full of them — little men with trailing khaki great coats, filthy boots, hatchet faces and bea dy eyes, wandering aimlessly round town without a kuru in their, pockets, some of them hand in hand. They appear as tough as they do unamiable; and I am told that although they are badly led by corrupt officers, in close combat at least they are very effective. This was explained to me by a schoolmaster in Dimar (a nasty little town apparent ly built in a marsh), where we spent the following night. The Turkish landscape, he said, is alternately savage and boring. It does not compro mise or apologize; mountains are all sheer, lakes treacher ous (and often salt}, deserts merciless and plains vast. It follows that the men who come from most of this coun try must be brave and re sourceful; to have survived at all. they must have dev eloped a remarkable talent for survival, which stands them well under arms. By being a harsh and ungene rous parent, the country has endowed her sons with the virtues necessary to defend her. Or so my schoolmaster informant would have had me believe. ♦ • # But however brave or cun ning they may be, I cannot believe in the Turks’ capa city to carry through any enterprise, even that of self defense, until something is one about the mixture of fat a 1 i s m and laissez-fiare which we should call their inefficiency. Yet what can be done about it? Ataturk tried hard enough, Heaven knows; as a result of his efforts, it now takes only an hour and a half to cash a traveller’s cheque in a large provincial town, there are only a hundrejd or so potholes to every hundred yards of road, and even the smallest village seems to have at least one shop devoted solely to the sale of busts and photographs of Ataturk. But for all these blessings, he has really chang ed nothing fundamental. For the point is, of course, that the Turks are Moslems — unenthusiastic Moslems, for the most part, but Mos 78 Panorama lems nevertheless — and they are therefore prepared, in deed grateful, to leave the entire direction of affairs to Allah. Consider the following inident. A small bridge had collapsed on the main — i.e., the only — road between Seteuk an Ismir (Smyrna). On either side of the bridge there were vast queues of traffic. There was not a single policeman in sight, but a gang of lorry-drivers was attempting, in an aimless and amateur manner, to construct a temporary road of stones, shrub and earth down the bank the other side. Plainly only Allah knew what would come of this, so we drove away to camp the night in the near by ruins of Efes. In the middle of these ruins was a small restaurant bar, which although the ruins were seldom visited so early in the year, was luckily open. At the bar were two imposing gentle men, who greeted us because we were foreigners, allowed us to buy them drinks for the same reason, and an nounced that they were, respectively the Mayor and the Chief of Police of Selcuk. They had taken refuge in the ruins, they explained, because otherwise people would come and pester them about the bridge and the traffic. (The disaster h'ad oc curred just inside their area.) This kind of thing was al ways happening after the spring floods; it was doubt less very annoying for a lot of people; but what could they do about it? The traffic police would be angry , if called out for extra night duty; the official in charge of repairs had gone to see his brother in Antalya that morning; his men were use less without his direction and almost useless with it. Then when, we asked, did he think we would get to Smyrna? He shrugged his shoulders as if we were talk ing about Peking. The on ly thing to do, he said, was to let matters take their or dained course: one day was as good as another for see ing Smyrna, which was a noisy city full of dirty and expensive whores. Yes, an other raki would be accept able .... Without much hope, we returned next morning to July 79 the bridge. By some miracle, it seemed, the temporary road was nearing completion, and the yoghurt vendors, who had done a brisk night’s business, were already leav ing. And indeed, after an hour more, the traffic began to move — only one way at a time, but palpably to move. Then, at the high moment of victory, ten traffic police men, magnific-ent in blue uniforms and white caps, appeared' to take charge of the situation they had ignor ed all night; a moment or two later, the Mayor and the Chief of Police took their stand 'by the temporary road, bowing and raising their hats to each newly re leased vehicle as it passed. ‘Good morning, gentle men,’ said the Mayor with smiling effrontery when it was our turn. ‘It is all as I said, you see. All our ar rangements have gone smoothl/, and. you will be in our beautiful city of Smyr na in good time for your lunch.’ — The Spectator, May 31, 1963. SCIENTISM Scientism is a disservice to science. The rise of science is the most important fact of modern life. No student should be permitted to complete his education without understanding it. Universities should and must support and encourage scientific research. From a. scientific education we may expect an understanding of science. From scientific inves tigation we may expect scientific knowledge. We are confusing the issue and demanding what we have no right to ask if we seek to learn from science the goals of human life and of organized society. — Ro bert M. Hutchins. 80 Panorama Attentions 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: (1) 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. CONTINOS, The Honor of a Nome ............................................................ Legal Education and Research Vicente G. Sinco . ............................................ Mabini: Architect of the Philippine Revolution Cesar A. Maju^................................... :.....'. Faith in Philippine Education Jean Pope .....................><^^3 Defense fo/ the Non-Conformist Romesh Thapar . Education for Scientific Professions in the Poor Countries W. Arthur Lewis ...................................•........ Inside Soviet Russia Today ......................................................... Universities for Parents ................................................................. fortune E. P. Patanne ..................................................., Letter to a West German Graham Gre&ne ............................. '................. Education and Sacrifice . C. P. Snow ............................................ ........... On the road to Byzantium Simon. Raven .......................................... '..........