Rizal Early Education (and Jose Rizal Educational Background)

Some search for the key phrases: Jose Rizal education, Jose Rizal education background, Jose Rizal education timeline, and Rizal education basically to learn about the hero’s early education. The early part of the so-called Rizal educational background actually refers to Rizal early education in Calamba and Binan.

Rizal early education

The common knowledge that Doña Teodora was Rizal’s first teacher is not just a sort of ‘venerating’ his mother who sacrificed a lot for our hero. Truth is, it was actually a technical truth.

Read: Jose Rizal: The First Filipino Phenom 

In Rizal’s memoirs, he wrote about the significant role of his mother in ‘Rizal early education”: “My mother taught me how to read and to say haltingly the humble prayers which I raised fervently to God.”

Jose Rizal also learned values from His mother, Teodora Alonzo as explained specifically in The Story of the Moth, Jose Rizal, and his Mother

‘Jose Rizal Education Background’

Seldom would one see a highly educated woman of fine culture like Doña Teodora In Jose Rizal’s time. She had the capacity to teach Spanish, reading, poetry, and values through rare story books.

Indeed, Doña Teodora (fondly called Lolay in the Rizal family) was the first teacher of Jose Rizal—teaching him Spanish, correcting his composed poems, and coaching him in rhetoric. On her lap, Rizal learned the alphabet and Catholic prayers at the age of three, and had learned to read and write at age 5.

But Jose Rizal’s sister Saturnina and three maternal uncles also mentored him, aside from his mother. His uncle Jose Alberto taught him painting, sketching, and sculpture. Uncle Gregorio influenced him to further love reading. Rizal’s uncle Manuel, for his part, developed Rizal’s physical skills in martial arts like wrestling.

‘Rizal early education in Calamba and Binan’

Later, private tutors were also hired to give Rizal lessons at home in Calamba, to further enhance what He had learned.

A certain Maestro Celestino tutored him and Maestro Lucas Padua later succeeded Celestino. Afterward, a former classmate of Don Francisco, Leon Monroy, lived at the Rizal home in Calamba to become the boy’s tutor in Spanish and Latin.

Unfotunately, Monroy died five months later. (Of course, there is no truth to some naughty students’ comical insinuation that Rizal had something to do with his death.)

Rizal Education in Biñan

Subsequently, Jose Rizal was sent to a private school in Binan. In June 1869, his brother Paciano brought him to the school of Maestro Justiniano Aquino Cruz. The school was in the teacher’s house, a small nipa house near the home of Jose’s aunt where he stayed.

In Jose Rizal’s own words, his teacher “knew by the heart the grammars by Nebrija and Gainza.”

During Rizal’s first day in Biñan school, the teacher asked him:


“Do you know Spanish?”
”A little, sir,” replied Rizal.
”Do you know Latin?”
”A little, sir.”

Because of this, his classmates, especially the teacher’s son Pedro, laughed at the newcomer. So later in that day, Jose challenged the bully Pedro to a fight.

Having learned wrestling from his Uncle Manuel, the younger and smaller Jose had defeated his tormenter.

Related: Jose Rizal’s Collaborations with Other Heroes 

Rizal had an arm-wrestling match with his classmate Andres Salandanan after the class. In that match however, Jose lost and even almost cracked his head on the sidewalk.

Jose Rizal was said to have had other fights with Biñan boys in the following days. For his scuffles, he nonetheless received many whippings and blows on the open palm from his disciplinarian teacher.

Jose Rizal may have not won all his brawls but he nevertheless beat all Biñan boys academically in Spanish, Latin, and other subjects. After sometime, Jose told his father that he had already learned all there was to be taught at Biñan.

Don Francisco Mercado Rizal, Jose Rizal’s father firmly scolded him and hustled him back to the school. Maestro Cruz, Jose’s teacher in Biñan, later confirmed, however, that Jose had indeed finished already all the needed curricular works.

Read: The Interesting Tales of the Jose Rizal Family 

Hence, despite his wife’s reluctance, Don Francisco then decided to send Jose to a school in Manila.

Copyright © by Jensen DG. Mañebog & MyInfoBasket.com

Note: College professors may share this as a reading assignment of their students.
For other free lectures like this (especially for students), visit Homepage: The Life and Works of Jose Rizal

Related: The Colorful Love Affairs of Dr. Jose Rizal 

Free Lectures for The Life and Works of Jose Rizal Subject

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Jose Rizal’s Love for Francisco Mercado Rizal, His Father

Jose Rizal’s Love for Teodora Alonzo, His Mother

Jose Rizal’s Siblings: How His Brother and Sisters Affected the Life of the Filipino Hero

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