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.

192 INDEPENDENCE CONGRESS PROCEEDINGS

Such a policy which would make education for all children of
school age and all illiterate adults compulsory will naturally
tend to lower our educational standards at the beginning but
we are convinced that in spite of this temporary disadvantage,
we must plan for universal education if we want a stable
foundation of an independent Philippines.
There are at present in our country about 2,000,000 people
over 18 years old who have not received the benefits of public
instruction and who can not even read or write in their native
language. Here we have an important element of our population, an important group of the Filipino people, left untouched
and untaught. They are the citizens of to-day. We neglect
them for the sake of training the citizens of tomorrow, forgetting that our adult population is our greatest resource now,
for it comprises the present Filipino people.
We love our children and will make sacrifices for their
welfare; but can we afford to neglect the present generation
of adults, the people who make of our country a land of
opportunity and happiness or a land of economic slavery and
political tyranny?
For the sake of our young people, we should educate the
adults, as no amount of instruction of the young will make
them good citizens unless in their life outside the school-in
the home and in the neighborhood-they live with and are
influenced by good, intelligent, public-spirited adult citizens.
With a plan for universal education that is national in scope,
we will still have the special problem of educating the Mohammedan and non-Christian Filipinos, our backward peoples,
so they may be raised to the same level and standards of life
as the Christian Filipinos and thus assimilate them into our
body politic. To this end, an independent Philippine government should see to it that at least five hundred well-selected
Mohammedan and non-Christian Filipinos, young men and
young women, are brought to Manila at the expense of the
government for their training as teachers for Mindanao and
Sulu and in order that they may have the opportunity of
association and contact with other Filipinos and thus become