Disastrous Results

Those who believe in the absurd miracle (milagrería absurda), protector of the fools, accomplice of the lazy, of the gamblers, of thieves, of all who, thru its means, seek to secure what they desire—those are the criminals that fill our jails and who die in the gallows; those are the ones, who, armed with their anting-anting, talisman, rosary, scapulary, bones of saints, or shark's teeth, fight with the police, commit outrages, upset order, confident in their triumph because of the protection of their celestial pintakasi. Such is the product not of the schools without god but of god without schools, impossible and paradoxical, whose power manifests itself in capricious methods and in the exercise of prestidigitation. Those individuals are in truth the natural products of that superstition preached, diffused, and presented to the ignorance of people who have come to the point of fearing neither God nor devil and who know that the infernal punishment only is meted to him who does not wear a rosary around his neck or does not confide in a pintakasi, who guarantees eternal salvation because God does not permit that the worshiper of one of His devotees be condemned.

What kind of citizen can an individual be in society who laughs at punishment using the easy means of a celestial lawyer. How can terrors of hell infuse fear in him when he knows that thru the medium of a powerful lawyer, God finds himself obliged (forzado) to pardon him. And when a man knows the way of evading divine justice, it is clear that, in order for him to escape human justice, he will resort to appealing to the mercy of the judge, to evade compliance with the law, to the non-fulfillment of any duty, and to live only to enjoy his rights; he will resort, in dealing with human authorities, to the use of the same methods of propitiation, adulation, prevarication, humiliation, and deception which dominated the same God and triumphed over the power of the devil!

Never will it be possible for a superstitious man, especially if he is of the type that we have just analyzed, become a useful citizen. Such is the type which unfortunately is the product of an education of three centuries...!

The parochial schools (escuelas religiosas) have given their fruit; the lay schools (laicas) have also borne fruitage. The youths who graduate from the latter are undoubtedly not without defects; but they are not poisoned or forever led astray by that brutalizing superstition sown by native and foreign impostors. None of those youths will assail ruthlessly an ugly old woman mistaking her for a devil; he will not dream of flying in the air launched like a balloon by an army of devils. None shall believe that a piece of meat shall be transformed into arms, legs, and heads as a mass offered to a pintakasi progresses; much less can such youth conceive a Jesus Christ that would weaken at the sight of a chest that his mother Virgin Mary would show to remind him of his weak memory of God would forget; nor will he excuse himself of a wrong committed against a companion of the other sex on the pretext that he does not have with him the girdle of the Angelic Militia; much less will he believe that, in spite of a criminal life, he will be able to secure eternal salvation provided only he has taken the precaution of repeating at every turn the invocation of the so-called Trinity on Earth.

That lay education will not produce individuals who trust in protection or recommendation to progress and triumph on earth. The lay education is wholly democratic and will not be capable of committing the same faults of those who, by not following their education, seek to employ in the affairs of life those means recommended in the Novenas in order to obtain what is desired by means of the help of the powerful, secured by means of requests, protestations of love, and promise of eternal devotion.

That mental conformation created by the diffusion of this superstitious spirit is an obstacle, an insuperable barrier set up against the development of the moral sense. We shall sow principles of morality as the farmer who sows in the fields the seeds properly selected which will not grow unless the soil is adequate. Sane morals is founded upon the basis of reason; when this foundation is lacking, the moral taught will be like a tree that is rootless and lifeless. It is not possible that a school without god (escuela sin Dios) or the one with god can make the seed of morals grow upon a soil prepared by the school of superstition, of magic, and of sorcery. We have to prepare the soil cultivating reason and creating the logical sense.

I will only insist on things which only need to be presented before our common sense to be judged as they merit.

The Public School

Permit me now to express first of all my gratitude to the Assistant Director, Mr. Osias, who had the kindness to honor me with an invitation to speak at this conference. Now, I wish to express to you my thanks for your kind attention. Lastly, I desire to make one declaration: Every time I referred to the new generation, I did not want to mention only the youth educated in the lay schools of the Government, but all the youth educated in modern ideas, all the men and women of whatever age who, throwing aside the weighty burden of the Legacy of Ignorantism (Le gado del Ignorantismo), have accepted modern ideas, have modified their mentality, have been modernized, thanks to the example of, and the contact with, the representatives of American democracy. All the change, all the economic, moral, social, and political transformation effected in the Filipino people, and which none denies nor anyone can deny, reveals progress, and that progress is not the result of the Legacy of Ignorantism but the natural consequence of the régime of liberty, industry, work and logical mentality which governs our public schools and orients our social life.

To the Department of Education, to all the teachers of both sexes—Americans and Filipinos—I express my profound gratitude for the splendid manner in which they are complying with the duty entrusted to them by America and by the Philippines.