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.
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