The Pearl of Great Price: An Environment Analysis for Values

 

I have a confession to make. I asked to speak at this Congress. I know this is unusual, since speaking engagement are things I generally try to avoid rather than seek out. But I have had for some time a compelling urge to speak out and share my growing uneasiness about the lethargic inertia of Philippine education and to thus force myself to articulate this uneasiness.

This sense began with my first long reflective period away from the chores of my desk, during the UNESCO conference in Paris, and has recurred and intensified since then, every time the future directions of our country were discussed in either national or international gatherings. Where is our country going? And what are we educators doing about it? If our country is, or should be, going in fundamentally different directions, why is the educational system still complacently going in the same fundamental directions?

There is a second reason that compels me to speak today, besides the fundamental importance of the topic - that is, the vital importance of the audience. I have shared my thoughts in bits and pieces with various friends, discussion groups, commencement audiences, and scholars, and, as I recall the parable of the sower who cast his seed on hard ground, among thorns and among weeds, I realize that before me I have fertile ground with a real potential for the proverbial hundredfold, that if my thoughts are to affect however modestly the directions of Philippine education, there can be no better audience than you, superintendents, state college heads, and private school and other association leaders.

There is a second reason that compels me to speak today, besides the fundamental importance of the topic - that is, the vital importance of the audience. I have shared my thoughts in bits and pieces with various friends, discussion groups, commencement audiences, and scholars, and, as I recall the parable of the sower who cast his seed on hard ground, among thorns and among weeds, I realize that before me I have fertile ground with a real potential for the proverbial hundredfold, that if my thoughts are to affect however modestly the directions of Philippine education, there can be nobetter audience than you, superintendents, state college heads, and private school and other association leaders.

I

My topic for today is an environmental analysis for the values education framework, and there can be no more appropriate vehicle for my message than this topic. The importance of this framework has already been eloquently emphasized by our Secretary and I can only echo my support, for I too recognize that, as the DECS order No. 6 itself says,

"The changes brought about by the peaceful revolution of 1986, the new expectations for real freedom and democracy, and the emergence of opportunities for the citizens to participate in social transformation and nation building all demand a corresponding re-assessment in the values, the attitudes and the behaviors of the people."

In fact, if this thrust can be properly translated into programs to transform the educational output of the system in the way it is designed, this could be the landmark achievement of the Quisumbing administration.

I realize of course that the chasm that separates the theoretical design and the desired actual change in society is enormous, and it must be bridged. Two things are necessary to bridge this:

First, though already corrected, perfected and refined by years of consultations, and probably as perfect as possible as far as content is concerned, the framework must still be translated in simpler, shorter packages. I am reminded of a previous French prime minister who, upon being presented with the blueprint for French economic recovery after the war, said, "This is too intelligent, stupefy it, and condense it into five pages. Unless seventy-five percent of my people can understand it, it is useless:" Similarly, the vast Chinese nation has been led during this century through the most radical societal changes, for better or for worse, and the visions for these changes were never in intellectual volumes of political theory, but captured for the masses in short catchy slogans, which even today they keep using: "the will of the masses", "one nation two systems", "open door policy", "five principles of peaceful co-existence", etc. So this value framework document, which even I have a hard time understanding, must be similarly re-packaged into a level and a style that is crystal clear to every grade school teacher, and you know realistically what that level is.

Second, there is a need to particularize and localize the framework, which is a theoretically generic scheme useful to all times and all places. In fact this is prescribed by the document itself, "The values chart provides flexibility for regions, divisions or schools in determining their priorities and in making decisions on whether other values have to be added to meet the needs in their specific localities." The document further states that "It is desirable that regions, localities, and institutions construct their own values map, with clearly defined priorities, suited to their peculiar context and needs." Elsewhere, it states, "intensity of emphasis on each core value... shall vary from situation to situation... The Values Map thus constitutes the content of values education for the whole system, and each sub-national program shall be developed on the basis of local need and sociological background."

I would like to take up the challenge today, and try to draw from the general values map, a values map specific to the Philippines in 1988. The prescription calls for you to take the universal timeless framework and apply it to local times and communities. I hope I can urge and help you along by providing you a current national values framework, as a halfway house in your journey from the universal value framework of DECS order No. 6, which you have, to the local community values framework, which you are supposed to develop. And as suggested, one must start with an environmental analysis of particular needs and the sociological background of the Philippines in 1988.

II

Let us then begin.

It has been two years since the Aquino government assumed the reins of our nation. As our Secretary has so well summarized, much has of course been done, and yet even more remains to be done. The complexity and multiplicity of the problems that continue to beset our nation are enormous, and just as enormous has been our seeming inability to harness the vast resources and individual talent at our disposal to bring quick, concerted, effective solutions to these problems.

By its own admission, the overriding concern and achievement of the Aquino government over the past two years has been the restoration of the structures of democracy. No less than the President herself has repeatedly articulated this, most recently in her press conference and briefings in China. And, measured by this yardstick, it has succeeded: A Constitution was ratified, Congress was elected and convened; local government officials have been chosen by the people. This is no mean achievement in short a time against so many odds; if nothing else, this administration has already made its mark in history.

But ultimately freedom is a means and not an end; the very same freedom so hard earned and so preciously preserved can be abused by both left and right, and by the lawless, as we are all aware. The Aquino premise is that freedom and democracy are pre-conditions for progress. But we now have freedom; where is the progress? To be sure, modest gains have beer reached, but they have been bouyed up by external factors of low oil prices the stoppage of the salting of dollars common in the past, and the President's continuing popularity as the surest symbol of stability. Still sustained escalated progress is not guaranteed by freedom, and there is need to set goals of a preferred future to be achieved within this freedom, to plan and systematically carry out strategies and programs to reach these goals.

Perhaps it is too much to expect this administration, or even this generation, to do all that. Perhaps our role in history is merely to be the transition generation, to rebuild the structures of democracy and, by trial and error, to nurture it as any infant organization, until it finally reaches full efficiency and potential for the next generation to take it over. If the destiny of our generation is to be the transition generation, then it is the destiny of our students to be the transformation generation, and transform it they will, for better or for worse, as they take our beloved nation into the twenty-first century. We can merely prepare the ground of democracy and freedom, but it is they who must plant the seeds of development strategies for a better future, nurture it in an atmosphere of peace and stability, and reap for themselves and future generations the fruits of prosperity and progress for all.

But as teachers we have a stake in that future, for it is ultimately we who have to provide that next generation with the education, the tools, the values that will make them succeed. And we cannot arm them with the tools of the past.

In 1986, it was fashionable to make the comparison between the Chosen People delivered from the oppression of Egypt in the Old Testament, and the Filipino people delivered from the oppression of the dictatorship in the February revolution. But people then often forgot in their exhilaration the second part of that comparison, the part we now painfully know: that just as the Chosen People after winning their freedom still had to endure forty years in the desert before reaching their promised land, so also we Filipinos after winning our freedom must gird for a long period of slow recovery before we reach our promised land of peace and prosperity for all. And as we prepare our students for the desert years ahead, it is important that we help them look into the basket of tools and values laid out in our values framework, and pick out those minimum few which will make up their desert survival kit in the years to come.

And the things they need will be surprisingly few, and I will submit for your consideration a short list of four; but they will be different from the values and tools which were useful in the land of bondage, just as they will be different from those tools eventually needed in the land of plenty.

A different set of tools and values were needed to survive and to succeed in the old regime. For example, the environment rewarded short term thinking rather than long term thinking because of the uncertainties; the system rewarded, not performance, but connections and image, not being good, but looking good, not what you knew but who you knew (and this we are still struggling with today). The old regime rewarded compliance over concensus, following one man over following the majority, self-seeking over nation-building, cultural homogenization over cultural pluralism. Obviously, a new set of tools is needed in this new environment.

And my list, I humbly submit, includes the following four:

First and foremost, a commitment to the common national good; second, the proper use of dissent and democracy; third, the relentless creative pursuit for excellence; and fourth, the ability to continue learning.

III

Let us look at each of these four.

The first tool I recommend for our survival kit I consider the most basic, important, and necessary for our country in these times: commitment to the common national good. It is another way of saying our congress theme, national unity, about the lack of which, so much has already been written and said. But this time I would like to analyze its roots more carefully and focus more specifically on how to attack its causes.

First let us state the problem as it is often articulated in international circles: Why is it that as individuals, Filipinos invariably stand out in talent, education, competence, and character as among the best individuals in Asia, and yet as a nation with its poverty, fragmentation, and social injustice, the Philippines is looked upon as among the worst in Asia? Outside experts cannot understand how a nation can have so much individual talent and yet be unable to make the sum of these talents add up to the progress and development that the younger, less educated neighboring democracies in Asia have achieved. We have around us an abundance of human and natural resources that can make this country truly great, but instead we see around us a deteriorated peace and order, unemployment, insurgency, and a host of other problems.

As that consummate student of Philippine culture, Alejandro Roces, succinctly puts it, "You add one Japanese to one Japanese, and the sum is more than two; but you add one Filipino to one Filipino, and the result is less than one half." Or as Commissioner Chito Gascon pointed out to this same Congress two years ago, "The Filipino is like the talanka trying to get out of a basket; the minute one rises above the rest, the. others pull him down." What are we doing wrong? What is our fatal flaw?

Before I proceed with my analysis, a caveat or a clarification: it is not my intention to belittle the Filipino character, which has many unique positive attributes. In fact, I have just said that the individual Filipino shines when standing alone, and even in foreign cultures, being the best nurses in America, the best construction workers in Saudi Arabia, yes, even the best domestics in Hongkong. Nor do I mean to engage in a sort of cultural hypochondria, so worried about examining what is wrong with the Philippine psyche as to be paralyzed into inaction. Rather, my intent is to approximate what Jose Rizal himself attempted exactly one hundred years ago through the Noli Me Tangere, as he explains in his introduction:

"In the catalogue of human ills there is to be found a cancer so malignant that the least touch inflames it and causes agonizing pain; afflicted with such a cancer, a social cancer, has your dear image appeared to me, when, for my own heart's ease or to compare you with others, I have sought, in the centres of modem civilisation, to call you to mind.

"Now, desirous of your welfare, which is also ours, and seeking the best cure for your ills, I shall do with you what was done in ages past with the sick, who were exposed on the steps of the temple so that the worshippers, having invoked the god, should each propose a remedy.

"To this end, I shall endeavour to show your condition, faithfully and ruthlessly. I shall lift a comer of the veil which shrouds the disease, sacrificing to the truth everything, even self love - for, as your son, your defects and weaknesses are also mine."

History tells us of the success that rewarded his effort; the Noli became one of the twin sparks which, together with its visual counterpart, Luna's Spoliarium, lit the flames of the Philippine Revolution, in the light of which our beloved nation was born.

And so to lift this veil, to expose this fatal flaw: I will be brave and venture to say that it is the lack of a commitment to a common national good. Geographical, historical, and environmental factors have coalesced to nurture a tendency in the Filipino to define his area of commitment and responsibility, his "kami" in the narrow sense of family or clan, but not in the larger sense of region or nation. It is partly because of the island character of our geography. It is partly because of our multi-lingual multi-cultural diversity. It is partly because of our long history of independent barangays even before the Spanish came. It is partly because our Spanish, American and Japanese colonizers deliberately chose to "divide and rule", dividing us by social class or by geography, and thus stifling an emergent sense of nationhood. It is partly because an economy of poverty induces the primacy of individual survival over group survival.

And so for all these reasons, we have an atmosphere and a culture where the Filipino cares and works for himself and his family or clan, but not for his community or his country. This is not to say that the Filipino is uncaring or selfish; on the contrary his heroic willingness to sacrifice and provide for those he cares for, those within his concept of "kami", is legendary. But sacrificing for a larger community, identifying with a national unity, are not natural to him.

Within the Filipino family there is care, concern, cleanliness and orderliness, but once outside his enclave it becomes disorderly, chaotic, dirty, every man for himself to exploit and be expoited. The individual Filipino will keep his home, no matter how humble and small, neat and clean, but that same Filipino will think nothing of littering the streets or dirtying the community outside because it is not "his". The other day, there were two school buses on Roxas Boulevard, obviously temporarily delayed, and around each bus was a veritable pigsty of sandwich wrappers, empty tetra-packs, banana peels, from teachers and their students, who think nothing of dirtying the streets. How are these teachers preparing their students for tomorrow? Last weekend a major thoroughfare in town was unnecessarily clogged because otherwise intelligent educated thinking drivers decided to overtake each other and clog both sides of the road in one direction, in another example of this every-man-for-himself attitude. Many people don't pay taxes because it is for "them", the government, and not for "us". And yet you put these same litterbugs, traffic maniacs, and tax evaders in a different culture, and they are as law-abiding as anyone else. My examples, and yours, could multiply. The point is that as a culture we are prepared to sacrifice for our children but not for our country. The end result is the phenomenon we started to talk about: individual successes but national failure.

Our values framework presents the chain of circles of concern, from self-esteem, to family, to clan/tribe, to region and nation, to global oneness, to cosmic dimensions. To localize our focus, I maintain that the weakest link that most needs attention is the link that expands the Filipinos definition of "we" from clan/tribe to region/nation. Otherwise we have, not Filipinos, but warlords and factions, RAMboys, loyalists and Coristas, Alsa Masa and NPA, Christians and Moslems, executive branch and legislative branch, forgetting that we are, all of us, Filipinos, and that if we don't hang together, we will hang separately.

If we truly desire peace, prosperity and progress for our beloved land, let us remember that no nation in the world has ever achieved this unless it first has a secure grasp of its national identity and pride, and a commitment to the common national good. Look at the mighty Japan, where the definition of "we" is all Japan, and our neighbors such as Thailand, once our equal, now fast outdistancing us in their forward surge of development. Better yet, look at our own country, in the golden age of its history, exactly one hundred years ago, when it transcended its own limitations and forged a commitment to a common national good from originally regional uprisings, to eventually become the first Asian country to wage a national revolution for independence, and the first republic in Asia with a democratic constitution, the first to recommend regional autonomy, even in Aguinaldo's time, for the tribal North and the Moslem South, within the concept of one nation. Let us recapture the lesson our forefathers learned so well. To paraphrase an anonymous source:

"Let us not divide our country's interest and ours: in her welfare is ours: by choosing the broadest paths to effect her happiness we choose the surest and shortest path to our own."

Let me try illustrating this fatal flaw from a different perspective. Several months ago, the Cabinet Assistance Staff, composed of Undersecretaries and representatives of all government departments, attempted an inventory and priority listing of the nation's most pressing problems to derive a priority list of guiding principles that should govern their solutions.

The list reads, in order of frequency and urgency, as follows:

1. insurgency, peace and order
2. poverty, inequality
3. graft and corruption
4. energized bureaucracy, improved delivery of services
5. lack of vision, sense of urgency, program of government
6. civilian military relations, civilian supremacy
7. foreign debt
8. political disunity, factionalism
9. uneven application of laws
10. lack of employment opportunities
11. economic dependence, multinational corporations

It is interesting how our fatal Haw is at the root of all of these problems. Insurgency and separatism from a too narrow sense of nationalism, foreign debt and multinationals from no nationalism at all, and so forth and so on. Unless the specific social, political, economic strategies to solve these problems are anchored on a remedy to this fatal Haw, these solutions will flounder and fail. What good is a reformed tax system if people do not believe in paying taxes? What good is promoting investments if we allow multinationals to take away most of the profits? What good are local government employment solutions if they merely become opportunities for petty corruption?

A second basic tool I recommend for our survival kit in the desert years ahead is the proper use of dissent in a democratic setting. For too long we lived in a setting where compliance rather than disagreement was the key to success. Now that we have an atmosphere where we can disagree and argue and dissent all we want, we are testing the limits of that liberty to the fullest.

I am reminded of the classic allegory of freedom which tells of children living on a small island surrounded by a high wall. They asked their adult guardians to remove this wall so they could play and enjoy their island in greater freedom, but they were told that the high wall was for their protection, since on the other side were steep cliffs from which they might fall to their deaths in the crashing waves below. But the children insisted and, in their version of people power, succeeded in having the wall removed. Sure enough, they then enjoyed the beautiful ocean view, the invigorating breezes, and inhaled deeply the air of freedom. They excitedly played about in their new found freedom, and inevitably, one or two fell off the cliffs to their deaths below. As more and more fell off, the children sensed this danger, and when the guardians returned soon after, they found the children, not playing freely in joy, but huddled together in fear. The children had learned a bitter lesson: by gaining their freedom, they had lost it.

So too after the sudden recovery of our freedom in 1986, we have witnessed among us those who excitedly would like to run themselves and us off the cliff, self-proclaimed messiahs who would abuse this freedom to install themselves by using force and disregarding the will of the majority. We have also witnessed among us those who have never become comfortable with this freedom, who huddle together and long for the fleshpots of Egypt, who stifle legitimate grievances and opposing views, who deal in an intolerant and heavy-handed manner with those who dare disagree with them.

Both extremes have to recognize that dissent is here to stay, the walls will never go back up, but that we must learn to play together and live with diversity in security and freedom on this island without fear of falling off or being pushed off.

As we prepare our children for this future then, this value must be in our survival kit: how to use dissent constructively, how to tolerate it and learn from it humbly. And the child will learn this or not learn this, not from lesson plans on democracy, but more from the way the teacher in the classroom and the principal in the school handle dissent, differences of opinion, and respect for the rights of others.

A third basic tool for our survival kit is a desire for excellence, for performance we can be proud of, doing the best we can do. A Filipino "puwede na" or "make-do" mentality is so pervasive, and there are sociological reasons for this. Our old systems, many of which are still operative, have not fully rewarded performance or punished the lack of it: what mattered more was looking good rather than being good; image, especially to the powers that be, rather than performance. Another reason, as Jose Rizal himself pointed out in La Indolencia del Filipino, is ironically the rich natural resources and favorable climate of the Philippines, within which it was not too difficult to survive on a get-by mentality (unlike harsher climates and regions, where survival required harder work and systematic planning to endure winters and scarcity). There is also a collective devaluation of standards of excellence and performance in a society of economic need, as more and more is expected to be accomplished with less and less.

But none of those reasons should justify or be allowed to cause our country's downward slide to mediocrity. To prepare our students for a better Philippines, we must constantly fight this slide and instill a drive to be the best we can be, a relentless pursuit of finding new ways of doing things better, an energy to constantly improve and discover new paths. No subject directly teaches this; no grade directly measures this. And yet this

more than high grades is the essential ingredient of success of a productive citizen of society. In our desert years of hardship, we must all be on the lookout for newer and better ways in all fields of endeavor. The intellectual laziness and complacency of an educated citizenry can be a country's biggest sin. And if we the educators are plagued with this, and perpetuate this in our students, our country's sins can only be blamed on us.

A fourth and final tool I recommend for our survival kit is a multi-purpose tool to cover for not only present but future needs yet unknown: that tool is the ability to continue learning.

All of us have just gone through the usual round of graduations and diploma distributions. It makes me wonder how much of what those graduates were taught in their subjects will truly be useful, after they graduate. How many of them, after school, will need to diagram a sentence, or to solve a real life problem with simultaneous algebraic equations, or to conjugate in Spanish, or to remember the date of the Cry of Balintawak? I am told that half of what students learn will be obsolete in ten to twenty years, and half of what they need to know to succeed in work and in life is still being developed and will have to be learned as they go along in the future. Examples abound: my tedious work in statistics and math was anchored on my manual computation and slide rule skills, something which the calculator has made obsolete. Today's students will similarly see calculators and typewriters being made obsolete by the smaller cheaper micro-computers of tomorrow.

What we are left with is the conclusion that the value of the educational process lies not in what they learn, but in how they learn, and how good they will be in continuing to leam after they leave school. In real life, there will be no more cramming for closed book tests, but there will be no easy answers either. Success will depend not on a good memory for pat answers, but upon knowing where to look for the answer, what books to refer to, which persons to ask, which persons not to listen to. how to evaluate the information, with reason over emotion. It is this that we must teach, more than the facts and figures.

Somehow I have been conditioned to think of curriculum-makers as a special breed of magician experts who have special skills deciding what should be taught and figuring out techniques and methods to teach these. I admire their daring, for they have to guess at the turbulent future. But because curriculum-making is such a specialized craft, there is a temptation to feed upon itself, and in the name of continuity, keep packaging the same basic things, forgetting to raise the more difficult or more basic questions of whether the contents should be overhauled. As a result, curriculum-making is more often an exercise in minor modification or some addition, but rarely of fundamental removal or replacement. For curriculum-makers, Alvin Toffler's words are a severe warning:

"All education is intended to prepare children for the future. But what if those who teach have a false image of what lies ahead? The result is the mis-preparation of our young people. To help our children cope with rapid change, to understand and to succeed in the new work that is taking form around us, we must design an education oriented to tomorrow...

"We tell children to go to school because it will be useful to them in the future. This presupposes we know what the future will be like... Most educators, like most political leaders, think the future will simply be an extension of the present. Nothing could be more dangerously mistaken."

What we thought our students needed to know on the basis of the stable past is not what they need to know to prepare them for the unstable galloping future.

People always look upon educators and DECS people as conservative, but yet no one should be more progressive than teachers; we are the real futurists by the nature and necessity of our profession.

IV

I started this talk worrying that we may be so concerned with keeping our system going that we have not stopped to evaluate whether it is going in the right direction or not, so concerned with doing the thing right and not concerned about doing the right thing. What good is worrying about which superintendent to appoint, how many school buildings to build, how to distribute textbooks, how much loan money and grant money should go to projects, if we are not preparing our students properly for their future, if we are not giving them the right tools to develop this land, if we are merely perpetuating our fatal flaws and the very attitudes that chain us and prevent us from reaching our potential greatness as a nation? If we allow all our efforts to be sapped by administrative detail, we may as well give up. If all we are is a fossilization of obsolete structures, methods, and values of the past, we are just wasting our lives.

Ironically, if we examine ourselves, we discover that we are not really doing anything wrong; we can justify everything we are doing as right; it is not sins of commission we are guilty of. But the important question is, are there more important things that we are not doing or not doing with enough focus or priority? Do we have sins of omission? What are we doing differently or for the first time that we were not doing before, say 1986? If we are doing the same things, the next generation will be the same, with the same fatal flaws.

Let us learn from the success stories among our fellow Filipinos. They are not success stories because of their mastery of biology, or Filipino, or trigonometry, or European history. They are success stories because of their continuing ability to learn their creative pursuit of excellence, their contributions to democracy, and their commitment to the common national good. The focus of our efforts then, of our curricula, our lesson plans, our structures must be on the latter more than on the former, and this requires basic, difficult, brave, creative, and daring re-thinking.

Let us examine our schools and determine whether they are indeed teaching a sense of a larger common good, or whether on the contrary they teach the opposite by supporting the factionalism of local politics or cheating qualification requirements in extramural athletics. Let us see whether they imbue skills in participatory democracy or whether by example in the classroom they are presented an intolerant, dictatorial, abusive role model in their teachers. Let us see whether they develop a creative curiosity and an urge to excel in everything they do, or whether they are contaminated by the puwede na mediocrity of their school environment. Let us see whether they foster a thirst for knowledge, reasoned thinking over emotion, and sound judgment, or whether lesson plans and tests are designed to foster instead rote memory, unquestioning compliance and passivity. Let us see in general if the school stands as the community's center of futuristics, a cauldron constantly seething with new ideas, new ways of doing things, new possibilities; or whether the school stands as the community's bastion of conservatism, guardian of ideas and approaches and values of an obsolete past, unable to even speak the language, recognize the symbols, or hear the music of the young.

I may have been too harsh or sweeping or simplistic or pessimistic in my remarks today. But my overstating my case may be forgiven if they were necessary to achieve a rude awakening and a spur to action, and hopefully to some new directions and actions. I want us to see values education as not just another addition to our curriculum or bad, like teaching about drug abuse or the green revolution. I want us to see it as the unum necessarium on which to anchor our work, the very core of our mission. I am reminded of the parable of the pearl of great price which when found drove the man in the parable to sell all that he had and give up everything to acquire that one thing that mattered above all. So also I am concerned that educators attend to that pearl of great price, remedying our fatal Haw and imbuing in the next generation a commitment to the common national good, even if it means sacrificing other important things. We spend hundreds of millions on our population program, hire hundreds of people to man our national and regional planning offices, borrow millions of dollars to fund agricultural technology projects, focus national attention, presidential attention even, on PALAROs and NAMCYAs. But these are not the pearl of great price, the thing that more than anything else the country needs. When will we be ready to pay the price for this pearl?

This Educators' Congress may be the wrong time and the wrong place to sit down and patiently map out a curricular and structural strategy that are the costs of acquiring this pearl of great price. But it may be the right time and place to light the spark in the leaders of the Philippine educational system, so that the flame may be lit and the torch passed on, in small groups and to our respective constituencies, until there is enough light across the nation to illumine the way through these troubled critical times to a time of peace and prosperity for all. And in this light we can join hands in this historic effort, against forces that would divide and cheapen us, shame our national heritage and pride; in this light, we can confidently dedicate our lives to developing the citizen for tomorrow, with an ability to continue learning, a relentless pursuit to do better, the skills to interact constructively in a democracy, and above all, a commitment to the common national good. If we unite in this common vision, the day will not be far off when you and I and all our students and every citizen of this country can make our own the words of Emilio Aguinaldo when he spoke to an assembly of town presidentes as head of the revolutionary government in August 1898:

"Let all of us Filipinos reflect that we are all sons of a single mother: Mother Filipinas, for from the time of our birth and coming forth from the womb.. .she has sheltered us under her protection, presenting us with all the fragrance other surroundings; she has enlightened and animated us with the light of her sun, and has nourished us with the fruits of her soil. For this reason, all the natives, all the Spanish mestizos, as well as all the Chinese mestizos of Filipinas are sons of God in this land; and in each one of them I see an image of the Divinity and a brother of mine."

Imbuing every Filipino with this commitment, this expanded definition of "us" - this is the answer to insurgency, separatism, peace and order problems, the cheapening of life, foreign debt, land reform, social injustice - this is the pearl of great price.

By all means, and at all costs, let us acquire it.