Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) The Legacy of Ignorantism (Ignorantismo) An address delivered before the Teachers Assembly, Baguio, April 23, 1920 By Dr. T. H. Pardo de Tavera [English and Spanish] Manila Bureau of Printing 1921 THE LEGACY OF IGNORANTISM [1] (IGNORANTISMO) By Dr. T. H. Pardo de Tavera An address [2] delivered before the Teachers, Assembly, Baguio, April 23, 1920 Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge; ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in 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 Lay Education which has been in operation in our public schools since the implantation of the new regime which rules the destiny of 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. Satisfying Movement For some time in our society there has been a growing concern against immorality, against vice, against idleness; in short against those which can rightly be called social ills. Such a tendency is certainly good and satisfying; a sign of a notable social progress altho for the majority it is a cause of alarm and regret because of the seeming increase of such ills. Is there a positive increase of immorality? Is there real cause for alarm because of a moral retrogression of our society?