Jose Rizal’s education in Biñan

The first teacher of Rizal was his mother. He learned the latin alphabet and the
Catholic prayers from her. He was given instruction by private tutors such as Maestro
Celestino and later Maestro Lucas Padua. Later on, his father hired Leon Monroy to
teach Rizal lessons in Latin. Five months later, Leon Monroy died.
Francisco Mercado then decided to send Jose Rizal to a Latin school in Biñan, a
much larger town about one and half hours by pony trap from Calamba. Rizal was sent
there some time in the second half of 1870, when he was about nine. He was
accompanied by his elder brother Paciano. They proceeded to their aunt’s house, where
Jose was to lodge.
The next morning, Paciano brought his younger brother to the school. The school
was in the house of the teacher, which was a small nipa hut about 30 meters from the
house of Jose’s aunt. After Paciano introduced Rizal to his teacher, he returned to
Calamba.
Jose described his teacher as follows: “He was a tall, thin, long necked man, with
a sharp nose and a body bent slightly forward. He usually wore a sinamay shirt woven
by the skillful hands of the Batangueñas. He knew by heart the grammars of Nebrija and
Gainza. Add to this a severity which, to my mind, was excessive, and you have the
picture I have of him.”
In the afternoon of his first day in school, when the teacher was having his siesta,
Jose met the bully Pedro. He was angry at this bully for making fun of him during his
conversation with the teacher in the morning. Jose and Pedro wrestled in the classroom.
Jose, having learned the arts of wrestling from his athletic uncle Manuel, defeated the
bigger boy. In succeeding days, he had other fights with the boys of Biñan. He was not
quarrelsome by nature, but he never run away from a fight. In other school fights, he
sometimes won and sometimes lost.
Near the school was the house of an old painter, called Juancho, who was the
father in law of the school teacher. Jose spent many hours at the painter’s studio.
Juancho gave him free lessons in drawing and painting. Jose lived a methodical life.
Such a life contributed much to his future development. It strengthened his body and
soul. Some of his older classmates got jealous of his intellectual superiority. They
wickedly squealed to the teacher whenever Rizal had a fight outside the school, and
even told lies to discredit him before the teacher.
 According to coates in his book (The First Filipino), the schoolmaster, in the
name of Justiniano Aquino Cruz, turned to be a brutal, arid man whose extremely
conservative way of teaching grammar was combined with whippings and rappings over
the knuckles. As for the relatives with whom he stayed, compared with his own friendly,
orderly and interesting home at Calamba, what he found at Biñan was more like a
barracks, unimaginative and disinterested. Rizal had to survive on a diet of rice and the
cheapest of cheap fish, which was almost all they bought.
When he returned to Calamba for Christmas 1870, after only a few months in
Biñan, it was decided that he need not return for the next term, but should study at home
as best as he could till he was old enough to be sent to college in manila.
According to Zaide in his book Rizal, he left Biñan on the afternoon of December
17, 1870, after one year and a half of schooling in that town.
Before June of 1872, tragedy struck the Rizal Family. Doña Teodora was
suddenly arrested on a maliciously charge that she was an accomplice of her brother,
Jose Alberto, on poisoning the latter’s wife. Jose Alberto hadjust returned from a
business trip in Europe. During his absence, his wife abandoned their home and
children. When he returned home, he found her living with another man. He planned to
divorce her but Teodora, to avert family scandal, persuaded Jose to forgive his wife.
However, the wife made a connivance with the Spanish lieutenant of the Guardia Civil,
filed a case in court accusing her husband and Teodora of attempting to poison her.
The lieutenant happened to have an ax to grind against the Rizal Family so he
had taken the opportunity to avenge himself so he arrested Doña Teodora, with the help
of Calamba’s gobernadorcillo, Antonio Vivencio del Rosario, a friend of the Friars. The
two officials had been frequent guests at the Rizal home.
After arresting Doña Teodora, she was forced to walk from Calamba to Santa
Cruz. Upon reaching Santa Cruz, she was incarcerated at the provincial prison, where
she languished for two years and a half until she was acquitted by the Manila Royal
Audiencia of the alleged crime. Doña Teodora was defended by the famous lawyers of
Manila at that time- Messrs. Francisci de Marcaida and Manuel Marzan.