5. For Rizal, why is education very essential especially on the part of the youth?

Answer:
Even at a young age, as a youth himself, Rizal saw that an education was key to creating a class
of Filipinos that could lead the country to freedom and self-determination. Education was thus
key to knowing oneself.
He also asked the government that education shall be free at least in the elementary and
fundamental stages. The higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit
and shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and strengthening of
respect for human rights and fundamental freedom.
Rizal said “The Education of my People is My Supreme Aspiration”. Rizal believed that reforms
were possible through education and liberty.

Reflection:
Dr. Jose Rizal has left Filipinos his academic and educational legacy for today’s society. Once in
his lifetime he became an inventor, teacher, businessman, linguistic and even a civic worker.
Rizal insists that education is the instrument of social progress. He believes that the right to
education is fundamental human rights.

6.Discuss about the impact in Rizal’s education of the various events.

Answer:
At an early age, Jose already proved to be a truly gifted boy. His mother was his first
teacher, and at the age of three, he was already taught how to read the Latin and
Spanish alphabets. Some of those who became very influential to Jose when he was
young. Were the three brothers of his mother. Gregorio, Manuel and Jose Alberto. They
taught Jose things that would benefit him in the future, such as, sketching and drawing
through the use of a pencil or charcoal, the rudiments of fencing and wrestling, and
lastly. Influenced him to have a passion for writing and an appreciation to poetry and
literature.
When Jose reached the age of eight. He wrote an untitled poem about his love for the
native tongue or language. In the poem. He expressed that Tagalog is of equal
importance with Latin, Spanish, or any other language. At the age of nine, Jose would be
sent by his parents to Billan to continue his primary education under the instruction of
Maestro Justiniano Aquino Cruz who was a renowned teacher adept in Latin and
Spanish grammar and was a former teacher of his brother, Paciano.
During the same period, majority of student have grasped nothing more than what the books
say, not even what their professors understand of it. In other words, Filipinos were not allowed
to think. Students were subjected to the daily preaching that lowers human dignity, gradually or
brutally killing their self-respectthat eternal, tenacious, persist effort to humble the native, to
make him accept the yoke and to reduce him to the level of an animal.
In the same piece Rizal talked of the situation in detail. He said, since childhood, they have
learned to act mechanically, without knowing the purpose, thanks to the exercise imposed upon
them very early in life to pray for whole hours in an unknown language, of worshiping without
understanding, of accepting beliefs without questioning, of imposing upon themselves
absurdities, while the protests of reasons are repressed.

This condition, he continued, made the Filipinos accept the ideas that they belong to an inferior
race and this assertion has been repeated to the child and became engraved in his mind and
finally seals and shapes allhis future actions.

To ensure that this orientation retained in the childs mind, Rizal observed that the child who
tries to be anything else is charged of being vain and presumptuous. The curate ridicules him
with cruel sarcasm, his relatives look upon him with fear, and strangers pity him greatly. There
was no chance to go forward, just follow the faceless crowd, was the order of the day.

Reflection:

It is through this scenario that we could better understand why Rizal was clamouring for a
different education, a new idea of teaching the Filipino youth. Rizal believed that even modest
education, no matter how rudimentary it might be, if it is the right education for the people, the
result would be enough to awaken their ideas of perfection and progress and eventually, change
would follow. This is the situation how education was acquired during that period. Rizals idea of
education was therefore the most enlightened. His concept of education was felt as early as
when he was only 16 years old. In one of his poems, Education gives luster to the Motherland,
he dwelt on the excellent conception of education as a means of instilling enchanting virtue and
raising the country to the high level of immortality and dazzling glory.