The Ramon Magsaysay Award, which it has been my honor to receive, is testimony to the common man's potential to find himself in our democratic society. In the Philippines and in Asia generally, the common man is legion. If he stands a little taller today, it is because of the magic of man's love for his fellow. This is exemplified by the labor of the man whose name graces this Foundation and by the humanitarianism that makes the perpetuation of his labor possible. For the recognition of my humble contribution to the task, I feel deeply grateful.

Our educational search for the common man's mainsprings of action has led us to believe that he harbors great hopes. He has hopes for the improvement of himself and his family. He realizes, perhaps obscurely, that the well-being of his family is entwined with the fortunes of the larger society. These hopes make him strategically able to work toward greater achievement, if society provides the incentives.

Fortunately, incentives in the form of legislation, financial credit, patterns of social organization, and the like tend not only to lift him but also to benefit upper income groups. Our evidence would indicate that in education this is so. Both motivation and purpose operate to lay the foundations of education in the context of the people's culture. We might even say that this context is to be discovered in the culture of the community. That is the starting point. From that point on, it is an educational adventure in which change in the individual and in the community marks progress from guidepost to guidepost. Subsequently, society will be the beneficiary of well-circumstanced or gifted individuals for their contributions in various fields of human endeavor.

It is my belief that this thought, conceived in terms of education, has its counterpart in political action to which, sooner or later, currents of thought converge. The ground swells emerging from the sufferings of war had to be interpreted, and education developed the community-school idea to meet the new situation. Other social factors, on the basis of their own purposes, also played their part. Together, they resulted in the demand that some leader translates these crosscurrents into political action, or social explosion would inevitably follow.

The evolutionary process inherent in our democratic institutions is a guarantee of security in which the individual and his family may hope to labor for prosperity. If we hold as a tenet that the individual has worth and dignity, the evolutionary process cannot be eschewed, nor the democratic framework in which it operates.

Perhaps it may be said that man possesses internal compulsions that lead him to raise his sights in our social scheme. These compulsions continuously need to be discovered. It is my thought that the Ramon Magsaysay Award, of which I am a recipient this year for government service, underscores this basic assumption in education. For this Award, I wish to express my grateful appreciation.