Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by PEDRO T. ORATA,Paris.
The Philippines consists of a group of more than 7,000 islands and islets,
which form the northernmost part of the Malay Archipelago. Of these
about 1,000 are sufficiently large and fertile to be inhabited. The Philip-
pines first came to the attention of Europeans in 1521, when Ferdinand
Magellan landed there and claimed the islands for Spain. When the
Spaniards first came to the Philippines, they found a people with a cultu-
re that was basically Indonesian and Malayan. Under Spanish influence
of nearly four hundred years, Latin civilization and Catholic Christianity
were introduced. The Americans, later, with their different cultural
background, placed special stress upon education and economic and
political development. From the Spaniards the Filipinos inherited their
dominant religion, which serves today as one of the strongest forces
binding them together as a people. From the United States came fifty
years of contact with the pragmatic philosophy of life which accounts for
the tremendous changes in the physical environment of the Filipino people.
The Filipinos now constitute a composite race, including not only
Malayans and Indonesians, who possess much the same racial traits and
innate psychology, but also some Chinese, Americans, Spaniards, and a
few other groups. Great diversity exists in languages and dialects spoken
in various parts of the Philippines. The total population was estimated
by the U.N. as being 20,246,000 in 1951, but latest unofficial figures would
raise it to more than 21 million. Since 1946, the Philippines has been an
independent Republic, with a President as the chief executive, a bicameral
legislature and an independent judiciary, a set-up which is very much like
that of the United States. There is a universal suffrage and absolute
equality between men and women. Freedom of speech, press, assembly
and religion is guaranteed and practised without fear or favour.
During the pre-Spanish period, the Filipinos had no organized system
of education, although there is evidence that they had a system of writ-
ing and that they composed songs and wrote poems. During the Spanish
regime the schools were few and far between and were generally operated
as private institutions, with religious indoctrination as their major ob-
jective. The United States set as its educational goal the preparation of
the masses for self-government and effective citizenship, which goal was
officially declared achieved on July 4, 1946 when the Philippines at-
tained its independence, and which since then has been maintained in an
effective manner.
160 PEDRO T. ORATA