Proceedings of the first Independence congress : held in the city of Manila, Philippine islands, February 22-26, 1930 / Published under the direction of Dean maximo M. Kalaw, executive secretary, University of the Philippines.

EDUCATIONAL SECTION

171

among the plans for the betterment in which the ThirtyMillion Law fund would be invested there be included the
study of the linguistic problem in the instruction and in that
of the innovations in the school curriculum that would be
more adapted to the necessities of the Filipino children.
One of the most fundamental errors, in which are shown
opposition and indifference to the problem and adoption of
a national native language, comes from the belief that the
native languages would not serve except at home and in certain localities and it would not promote the growth of
knowledge and general culture of our people, neither would
it improve our prosperity and national unity.
With one or two facts only, we may wipe out such an
erroneous belief.
In accordance with the 1918 Census, or rather about twelve
years ago, the number of qualified electors in the whole Philippines was 1,097,937, of which 3.6 per cent were due to
having once been counsellors before 1898; 20.7 per cent were
due to economic conditions; and the 75.7 per cent were due
to cultural qualification. This last qualification consists in
knowing how to read and write intelligently the English
language, the Spanish, or any local dialect. Allow me to say
that the number deals only with male electors, for as there
exists yet no woman suffrage in the country, the directors of
the Census did not think it necesssary to include the women
who might probably vote in official elections.
The Census did not also establish a precise classification of
the number of electors in English, electors in Spanish, and
electors in native dialects although it may be very well presumed that the last constitutes the greatest part besides the
fact that the majority of those who read and write English
as well as the majority of those who read and write Spanish
do just as well in their native dialects.
According to the same Census of the Philippine population
from ten or more years of age there were in 1918, 3,171,113
males and 3,210,148 females. Of the number of males,
1,681,566 knew how to read the local dialects; and of the
females, 1,457,068. We, therefore, have a total of 3,138,634