By SALVADOR P. Lorez
President, University of the Philippines
(Speech during the Freshman Orientation Pracram, 10 June 1974, University Theater)
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Oneofthe most common complaints of freshmen during their first few months in the University of the Philip- pines concerns the relative impersonality of the relation- ship between teachers and students. The teacher to whom the high school student ran for advice on school as well as on personal maters has been replaced in the University by the professor who generally limits himself to pres- cribing what courses to take, approving changes of matri- culation, and making himself available for consultation on academic matters. Instead of the teacher who used to call students by their first names, there is now a pro..
fesaor who insists on calling them mister or miss, sug- gesting to the freshman a distance between teacher and learner which did not seem to exist in high school. And where he had been guided at every step and helped in every little detail, the student finds that in the Univer- sity he is pretty much left to himself. Everywhere there seems to be a conspiracy to leave him alone, to let him fend for himself: to master the names and locations of the many buildings on campus, the departments in each building, the names of professors in each department. He is expected to master the intricacies of course offerings, the mysteries of the library, the difficulties of term paper- writing-all of the process by which he is to be educated in the course of his stay in the University.
N at surprisingly, therefore, the freshman is often be- wildered, hurt, lonely, even desperate during th-ese first painful months. Eventually he gets over this period, and he accepts its lessons as an indispensable part of his adjustment to a new environment. If he fails to come to terms with the environment, he runs the risk of becoming a casualty at the end of the semester or of the school- year who must, alas, seek higher education elsewhere- failure being as often caused by the inability to adjust to university life as by poor study habits, inadequate pre- paration, or poor teachers.
You might ask why this impersonality should exist at all, why the University campus should not be asHh~mey"
and cheery as the high school campus. I would reply that University must treat its students as adults, which means treating them as equals and partners in the learn-
ing process, not childrento be hectored or talked down to.
The University assumes that while the high school student was a child to be coddled, scolded or patronized, the university student is a young man or young woman em- barked on the serious business of learning and must be treated as such. What the freshman therefore miscon- strues as impersonal relationships are in reality changed relationships manifesting the University's assumption that its students are adults. The freshman who becames a sophomore, then a junior, and finally a senior discovers in the course of his progress up the academic ladder that even more meaningful relationships can develop between him and his professors. These relationships consist of mutual respect and appreciation growing out of a com- mon dedication to the pursuit of knowledge. I would therefore suggest that you keep this in mind as you go through your first few months in the University. Far from lamenting the situation, you should rejoice in it, for it marks your initiation into the adult world of learn- ing-Iearning in the sense of being engaged in a serious attempt to understand man, society, and the world we live in.
While the University may be many things to many people-a complex of impressive buildings, for example, or a place to look for a suitable wife or husband, or a battleground where one may test one's skills in the mar- tial arts during fraternity rumbles-it is first and fore- most a repository of the knowledge and the skills that many generations of men have acquired while contending with the forces of this earth, natural as well as social.
It is as well a place for the advancement of knowledge, for improving upon it, and for renewing it, so that hu- man -life may be made less difficult and more rewarding.
Throughout its sixty-six-year- history the University of the Philippines has tried to be a university in this sense;
it is this determination which has made it the vital and indispensable institution that it is today. In this Univer- f:ity you will find a vast storehouse of knowledge con- sisting not only of a library whose collection is far larger than any in~Southeast Asia, hut also of the rich and varied skills and capabilities of its faculty. You have,
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therefore, the opportunity to come in contact not only with the best that has been written in the world but also to hold converse with some of the best minds we have in the country today. This is an opportunity accorded to very few, yourselves included, and you must take full advantage of it.
Some of you may say all this is quite beside the point.
Though you have decided to have a college education and have chosen the University of the Philipines for this pur- pose, you have done so because your brightest classmates are doing the same thing, or because your parents have told j"OU to do so, or because you believe a university education, but especially a D.P. degree, is a passport to a well-paying job which will enable you eveutually to go about the business of getting married and raising a fam- ily in more or less comfortable circumstances. The latter are valid concerns, involving some of the deeply felt long- ings of men everywhere. I suggest, however, that they should not be your sale concern and, indeed, that they cannot be your sale concern, given the realities of Philip.
pine society today.
In spite of the relative isolation of this campus, we cannot ignore the larger community of which it is a part.
The world outside the campus is outside it only in a geo- graphic sense; it is a world with which we must come to terms, which intrudes into the University however im- mune it may seem to be from the troubles and anxieties that bedevil that world. Make no mistake about it: the University is not a thing apart from Philippine society.
It mirrors the strengths and weaknesses, the failures and successes of the Filipino nation, and as such is inextricably involved with it. In this University, therefore, the pur- suit of learning does not occur in a vacuum, but in the context of the political, economic and cultural life of the nation.
This is not, however, a one-way process. The Univer- sity is also a force in the intellectual life of the nation.
Some of you may say that you do not intend to be part of the University for always and that you shall be leaving it as soon as you receive the degree or degrees you are aspiring for. That is certainly true, but there is a sense in which you will never leave the University, because the University will never leave you. Your life here will be part of your life forever, and the University will be re- flected in what you think, say and do for all time, after- wards.
What our country least needs in this critical period of its history is the type of individual who is concerned solely with his own affair, with the little world defined by his interests and those of his immediate family. This is the kind of individualism that, having been given the chance to remake the world, has only laid it waste. What we need today is the individual who regards the con- cerns of the nation and its problems as his own. It should not be unreasonable to demand this of every Filipino. It is a matter of recognizing that as part of the nation we cannot be aloof from its concerns, for what the nation is affects individuals, determines the condition of our lives, and shapes our destinies. It is in this sense that we all have a profound personal interest in what is happening in our country and in influencing events.
We hope that the University shall enrich your relation- ship with other human beings and with society at large, that you will use the knowledge you acquire and the skills you develop here in the service of our people rather than for narrow and selfish purposes. Vt,'e hope that you will acquire here an appreciation of the role that knowledge plays in the advancement of those ends that all men of sense agree to be desirable-prosperity, peace and justice, an end to brutality and falsehood, freedom in its most profound and meaningfu1 sense. Surely it is a perversion of knowledge to use it for ends antithetical to these, for knowledge to be used, for example, in support of cruelty, enslavement and murder.
I have chosen to speak of these things today instead of the admonition to study well, to use the library wisely, to choose extra-curricular activities with care, etc., because it seems to me extremely important for freshmen to have a clear idea, from the very start, of the ultimate purpose of education. In the crush for classcards, the flurry of arranging schedules, the pressure to accomplish the many registration forms, it is easy to misplace one's intentions in pursuing a University education. During the years that you will be staying here, in the welter of term papers that have to be written, books to be read, lectures to be heard, and laboratory experiments to be conducted, you can easily lose sight of the primary goals of a university education. I trust that each of you will pursue the course you have chosen with these admonitions and injunctions constantly in mind, and that you will emerge from here, four or eight years hence, more keenly aware of the goals we have envisioned together this morning, and more deeply conscious of your responsibility to the nation and to the world.
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THE RIGHT TO KJ"lOW
B~· REGENT ABRAHAM F. SARMIENTO
(Speech delivered during the Fourth Commencement Exercises at V.P. at Clark Air Base, 19 June 1974) The University of the Philippines at Clark Air Force
Base was established in 1954-this is its twentieth year of existence. Starting out as a modest and tentative arrangement for the teaching of a few subjects, it has, through the years, transformed into a permanent external unit of the University with broader and more complex academic programs, including several degree courses. The graduates here tonight are some of the well-deserving beneficiaries of such expansion.
Graduation ceremonies are always a time for serious thought-tonight my thoughts turn to the significance of the University's presence in what might properly be considered an alien territory.
The continuing growth of the University branch here is a source of special satisfaction to all who value the University and the things that it stands for. This coopera- tive endeavor between a Filipino university and the Ameri- can government is not a mere incident of political alliance,
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30,1974 V.P.
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although common agreement on 'fundamental principles of politics facilitated greatly its 'establishment, Lesser still is it in the nature of a mere service contract entered into to satisfy purely utilitarian considerations, although utility of the training to the different individuals and to the institution to which they belong is an inevitable consequence.
Over and above these considerations, the growth and expansion 'of the University here are an affirmation of a time-honored and venerable, if frequently embattled, dictum "you shall seek the truth for the truth shall make you free" and the implicit acceptance of its rationale and the premises and conditions indispensable for its proper pursuit.
One of these premises is the universality of the pursuit of knowledge. By this is meant that the process of learn- ing the accumulated wisdom of the ages, disseminating knowledge, and pushing further the frontiers of truth are neither the monopoly nor the preserve of anyone people, or anyone race, or anyone religion, or anyone political ideology. It is the legitimate heritage of all thinking humanity. As a former President of the Untver- sity of the Philippines has so eloquently stated:
It is the aim of great universities to attract men and women from all conditions of life. They keep their doors open to citizens and aliens alike. From their very nature, their appeal is cosmopolitan and their mission universal. The only passport they de- mand is the passport of intellectual competence. The only guarantee they require is the guarantee of honesty of purpose 'and dedication to work.
Their faculties are recruited from the best avail- able teachers and investigators whom they could attract. Neither race, nor color, nor nationality, nor creed, nor political belief bars the competent scholar and able scientist from their' classrooms and labora- tories. Neither are these same factors ever con- sidered in the admission of students.
Our century has been witness to the rapid dismantle- ment of time-encrusted prejudices that have worked to disenfranchise a substantial number of human beings from meaningful participation in the adventure of advancing human knowledge. In the United States, for instance, I note with understandable optimism that the Federal Supreme Court has, by means of what some critics call
"judicial legislation," irrevocably opened the doors of educational institutions on the principle of equal 'rights, not only to racial and religious minorities, but also to political dissenters. Exchanges of scholars and fellows, some under the sponsorship of private institutions, some on the basis of bilateral or multi-lateral arrangements between governments, have multiplied in recent years.
But the struggle against sectionalism borne of prejudice and ignorance is not finally won. Because it is largely in the mind and heart that its foundations are embedded, and it is here where it is hardest to dislodge. It continues to wield its retrogressive influence against general coop- erative effort in the field of education and the general pursuit of truth, in many parts of the world. It is my hope, and I feel that you share this hope with me, t~at
inter-racial cooperative efforts such as now obtain be- tween Filipino mentors and predominantly American students in the University of the Philippines at Clark be, like the landmark decisions of the American Supreme
.Court, another irreversible -step toward- universality in education and. the quest for truth.
Another indispensable premise for the proper pursuit of knowledge is academic freedom. By this is meant that the members of the academic community, the teachers as well as the researchers, and even students, shall have maximum freedom to confront ideas and principles, to examine them, question them, to reformulate them as· they are guided by discoveries and new insights. In the phrase of that great Greek philosopher Socrates, they must be allowed to follow the argument wherever it may lead. In the discharge of these responsibilities, which are peculiarly theirs by virtue of their membership in the community of scholars, they must not be subjected to the restraint of prior censorship nor to the fear of subsequent punish- ment ..
The essentiality of freedom to those who are engaged in the pursuit of learning has been early recognized.
The members of voluntary corporations established in Salerno and Bologna for the dissemination of knowledge- these were the precursors of modern day universities- were generally left to their pursuits without interference from the dominant ecclesiastical powers or the emerging civil administrations. Through the history of its existence, however, this wise course has not always been followed by those who have variously held power in different social settings and it is recorded that members of the intellectual community have at different times, been subjected either to persecution, .or the subtle seductions of power in order to. make them adjuncts of either Church or State.. But when these tactics were successful, it has been the societies which had withheld immunity for novel and unorthodox thought that have suffered in the long run.
For, the institutional value of a free community of . scholars can not _be over-emphasized. It is virtually syno- nymous with survival. The American Supreme Court articulated its rationale in the classic case of Sweezy v.
State of New Hampshire:
To impose any strait jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our nation. No field of education is so thoroughly comprehended by man that new dis- coveries can not be made. Particularly is that true in the social sciences, where few, if any, principles are accepted as absolutes. Scholarships can not flourish in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise, our civilization will stag- nate and die.
As previously intimated, the tentativeness of the work- ing principles in the social sciences, especially requires greater leeway in the consideration and formulation of unfamiliar propositions. Here the entire world is the laboratory, and all members of the human community are the subjects of the intellectual exploration. Mr. Justice Frankfurter, in the same case of Sweezy v. State of New Hampshire, calls attention to the fact that "(T)he prob- lems that the respective preoccupations of anthropology, economics, law, psychology, sociology and related areas of scholarship are merely departmentalized dealings, by way of manageable divisions of analysis, with interpenetrating aspects of holistic perplexities."
One cannot but agree with him that "for societies good . . ., inquiries into these problems, speculations
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about" them, "stimulations in others of reflections about them, must be left as unfettered as possible."
Beyond the question of survival and development of any particular institution or civilization, the University is also confronted with the more fundamental considera- tions of the quslity of human existence and the ultimate survival of man.
The species homo sapiens has travelled and evolved through lonely millions of years to arrive at its present form and state. Among all living organisms that inhabit the earth, it is only this species that has acquired the condition of sentiency. Julian Huxley tells us that "It is only through possessing a mind that he has become the dominant portion of this planet and the agent responsible for its future evolution." But, he warns that Hit is only hy the right use of the mind that he will he able to exercise that responsibility rightly."
When ODe surveys the terrain, one is led to wonder whether Man is capable of using this remarkahle gift of mind not only for the enrichment of his existence but also to assure his survival.
Ours is an age of technological and scientific miracles- a testimony of the genius of Man. We have explored the vastness of space and fathomed the ocean beds. We have discovered new and ingenuous methods of transforming and utilizing resources which nature has made available to us.
Yet ours are also days of doubt and confusion. Man, for all his genius, continues, through his actions, to seem- ingly choose extinction. The Malthusian spectre of over- population in the face of increasingly rarer resources is no longer just a theorist's nightmare. The production of weapons of cosmic destruction continues at alarming pace. We contaminate and pollute the atmosphere and render large areas of productive earth into empty and
desolate wastelands in a mad dash for industrialization and more profits. The pessimism that has ensued from them has bred an assortment of nihilistic philosophies whose apostles blare messages of destruction and despair.
What is the university's role relative to these problems?
The university is the center of thought in society. Itis an assemblage of persons whose principal occupation .and responsibility are, not only to advance ever more sophis- ticated hypotheses and theorems in the world of science, but also to recognize fundamental human problems, and to provide adequate solutions for them. Because it is this, it must act as social critic and conscience of the com- munity. It must assume moral leadership to assert ra- tionality and a new philosophy of hope for all mankind.
For as Julian Huxley states his formula for survival:
[Man] shall only succeed if he faces [his responsi- bility] consciously and if he uses all his mental resources-knowledge and reason, imagination and sensitivity, capacities for wonder and for love, for comprehension and compassion, for spiritual aspira- tion and moral effort.
Whether one pursues the intricate labyrinths of philo.
sophy, or explores the wonders of the universe through the study of the natural sciences, or creates beauty through the arts, or captures the intensity of human experience through poetry, it must always be with full awareness of this responsibility.
Let all those who pass through the halls of the Univer- sity take a pledge to assume it-without fear and without reservations. The historic obstacles to free inquiry and therefore to richer civilization and survival will be with us for some time.
With courage, with faith in ourselves and the indu- bitahle liberating force of truth, we will in the end say with Faulkner that we shali prevail.