Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge; ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were enteringin ye hindered—Luke 11:52.
I have the honor to appear before you accepting with great pleasure an invitation which the Assistant Director, Mr. Osias,kindly extended to me. Having left the choice of the subject to my discretion, I deemed it worth while to speak on the LayEducation which has been in operation in our public schools since the implantation of the new régime which rules the destinyof the Filipino people. I am going to confine myself to facts, and shall speak as frankly and as faithfully as the case requires,altho in so doing I may hurt the feelings of some.
For some time in our society there has been a growing concern against immorality, against vice, against idleness; in shortagainst those which can rightly be called social ills. Such a tendency is certainly good and satisfying; a sign of a notablesocial progress altho for the majority it is a cause of alarm and regret because of the seeming [4]increase of such ills. Is there a positive increase of immorality? Is there real cause for alarm because of a moral retrogressionof our society?
After having asked myself these questions and after having considered the bases for the public clamor and for the excitedopinion before the sight of growing vice and immorality, I can say that this tendency of public opinion is satisfying—a signof betterment, of progress of general morals. In other words, it is not immorality which is growing. Rather, it is the moralconsciousness which is gaining ground in individual consciences, thus forming a public opinion which formerly did not exist, completely awake to existing social evils and which are combatted. Not that social morals has been decadent. On the contrary,a moral consciousness has been rapidly formed in our society, a consciousness which formerly was found only among an inconsiderableminority, and which resulted in the new movement against vice and immorality.
To better understand this phenomenon and to explain it as it really is and not as it apparently exists, it is worth while to compare it with the appearance of a new sentiment which was formed since the implantation ofthe American régime: the hygienic consciousness. Formerly, hardly anybody spoke of the unsanitary conditions of Manila, and only a fe