The Rizal Family Teodora Alonso Realonda, a cultured and religious woman, was to provide their home with

an atmosphere of learning & culture not many families had. A sacrificing, industrious woman and disciplinarian who knows literature and speaks Spanish well. Francisco Rizal Mercado was an honest, hardworking and thrifty man who devoted his life to agriculture in Binan. The fairly comfortable life of the family was a product of the devotion of Rizals parents. Their large rectangular house made of stone & wood, and their orchard where the house stood, the carriages and horses, their agricultural business of rice and sugar indicated their social status. What made them different from other families was their predilection to studies. The library of more than one thousand volumes occupies a sizable portion of the residence. Don Francisco had gone to Colegio de San Jose and read both in Latin & in Spanish. The education that he received from earliest infancy (at home) was perhaps what shaped his habits, like a jar that retains the odor of the liquid that it first held. The story of the moth and the flame was read to him by his mother. To Rizal, the light seemed to him to be even more beautiful, the flame more entrancing than ever. The fact was that he envied the insects that fluttered round its splendor, and was not at all frightened when some fell dead into the oil. He listened breathlessly as his mother read; the fate of the moths fascinated him. He saw how overpowering the light was.

Injustice is the Eye-Opener

The harsh treatment his townmates had to endure at the hands of Spanish officials. Old men were struck by the guardia civil for failure to bow at them properly. Women and children were treated as rudely and as brutally. Dona Teodora had her own share of suffering from atrocities & injustice. She was sent to jail on a false accusation in 1871 for seeming complicity in an attempted murder. Rizals keen observation & sensitive analysis would piece them together and form a vivid picture of his country. That it needed a major change was something he saw early in life. No other incident could have influenced him in setting the goal of his life work than the Cavite Uprising of 1872. It was the death of Fathers Burgos, Gomes and Zamora that make him take a serious look at the condition of the time. The incident was nothing more than an uprising of protest among the laborers at the Cavite Arsenal against the withdrawal of their privilege of exemption from tribute and personal services. The authorities magnified the uprising into an attempt at overthrowing the Spanish administration. It was utilized as an excuse at getting the Filipino seculars who figured well as leaders in their crusade for justice. Injustice is the Eye-opener Rizal referred to the incident & himself made known the tremendous influence it had on him when he wrote: Without 1872 there would not be now either a Plaridel, or Jaena, or Sancianco, or there would exist brave & generous Filipino colonies in Europe; without 1972 Rizal would be a Jesuit now and instead of writing the Noli, would have written the opposite. At the sight of those injustices and cruelties, my imagination was awakened and I swore to devote myself to avenge one day, so many victims

As a young student in Manila Rizal witnessed the existence of racial prejudice not only among his classmates but among his professors as well. By dint of spanking teachers compelled them to learn. In college, many times the professor, forgetting the lessons, would discourse on our race and our country, and we trembling before his omnipotence, cowardly swallowed our tears & kept silent. As a student in Binan, under Maestro Justiniano A. Cruz, he saw how the students were spanked. Even he himself, despite being the class topnotcher experienced beatings and he never forgot these. His bitterness against the barbarous methods of instruction can be seen in his novels, esp. the Noli, where Ibarra said that he would propose to build a school that would not be a torture chamber but a playground of the mind. As a boy, he showed a tendency toward touchiness. He seemed unable to take a joke at his expense. He had quarrelled w/ a schoolmasters son for making fun of him; he never forgot that his classmates in Binan had jeered at him and given him unpleasant nicknames, & took satisfaction in pointing out that some of them later became my classmates in Manila, and there indeed we found ourselves in situations that were entirely different. Religion, Race and Rhetoric 3 secondary schools in Manila: 1. San Jose Seminary 2. San Juan de Letran (Dominican) 3. Ateneo Municipal (Jesuits) Jose took the entrance exams at Letran on June 10, 1872. But he was not able to enrol here. Ateneo had no reason to regret the admission of Jose for he became an outstanding student. The Jesuit curriculum for the six-year course leading to B.A. was tougher than the present equivalent of HS and college.
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Subjects included Christian doctrine, Spanish, Latin, Greek and French, World Geography & History, History of Spain & the Phil., Math and the Sciences, and the classic disciplines of poetry, rhetoric, and philosophy. In all of these subjects, he was consistently to be graded Excellent Rizal was unique: - Won a prize within the first 3 months - Because he became sensitive to the remarks of one prof, he was awarded only an accesit in all his subjects, meaning that he was among the leaders but not top of his class. - At the end of the 1st year, he visited his mother in prison. - He moved to a boarding house run by Dona Pepay in Intramuros itself. During the 2nd year, he did better won prizes in all the semesters. His professors were the same as his first year. At the end of the term, he obtained a medal, and upon returning to his town, visited his mother again. He might have kept up his record or even improved it in his 3rd yr. for he moved once again at a boarding house where the landlord was very strict. After 2 months, a room was vacated at the widows house (Pepay) whose 4 grandsons have been great distractions. Rizal described this house, thus: it is large and spacious; during recreation hours of the boarders, laughter, shouts, and all manner of hustle and bustle fill the house from the entrance courtyard to the main floor. Youngsters play sipa or perform gymnastics. A Chinese peddler is surrounded by a crowd of boys tugging at his pigtail, snatching a pie, haggling over its price, and playing him a thousand tricks