MODULE LIFE AND WORKS OF RIZAL

CHAPTER 2: SOCIAL AND CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT

Objectives:
a.) Appraise the link between the individual society.
b.) Analyze the social changes that occurred in the nineteenth
century.
c.) Understand Jose Rizal in the context of his time.

THE EDUCATION SYSTEM

A key factor in the emergence of the nationalism in late 19th century was the
cultural development consequent on the rapid spread of education from about 1861.
One of the major influences on the educational development of the 19 th century
was the return of the Jesuits. They returned with ideas and methods new to the Philippine
educational system.

1859 - Asked by the Ayuntamiento to take over the municipal primary school that became
Escuela Municipal, later renamed Ateneo Municipal de Manila in 1865, now Ateneo de
Manila University and opened it to the Filipino students as well as the Spaniards for whom
it has been founded.

1865 - Ateneo Municipal had been transformed into secondary school that offered a level
of instruction beyond the official requirements and more approximated today’s college
than high school. Aside from Latin and Spanish, Greek, French and English were studied.
Rizal studied at Ateneo Municipal when this school was located at Intramuros, Manila.

At the same time, such role was given to the natural sciences that Rizal has the
Filisopo Tasio (Rizal’s father, Francisco) say, “The Philippines owes (the Jesuits) the
beginning of Natural Science, soul of the 19th century”.

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The Escuela Normal Superior de Maestros (Superior Normal School) for female teachers
was founded and supervised by Jesuits to provide Spanish-speaking teachers for the
projected new primary school system. The Escuela Normal represented a hope of
progress in the mind of many Filipinos that just as would be opposed by those for whom
modern education for Filipinos pose a danger to the continuance of Spanish rule.

OTHER SCHOOLS OPENED IN THE 19TH CENTURY

On April 28, 1811, The Universidad de Sto

Tomas was founded in manila initially as the Colegio de
Nuestra Señora del Santisimo Rosario and later
renamed Colegio de Santo Tomas. UST was first
located in Intramuros, Manila where Rizal took his
course in Medicine.
November 20, 1645, Pope Innocent X elevated it to University.
1785 - King Charles III of Spain bestowed the title “Royal Patronage”
1902 - Pope Leo XIII “Pontifical”
1947 - Pope Pius XII designated it as La Real y Pontificia Universidad de Santo
Tomas de
Aquino Universidad Catolica de Filipinas (The Catholic University of the
Philippines)

San Carlos and Santo Tomas maintain a friendly rivalry over the claim to be the
oldest university in Asia. The University of San Carlos makes the claim of tracing its roots
to the Colegio de San Ildefonso founded by the Spanish Jesuits fathers Antonio Sedeno,
Pedro Chirino and Antonio Pereira in 1595. However, this claim is opposed by the
Pontificial and Royal University of Santo Tomas, including notable scholars Dr. Jose
Victor Torres, professor of history at the De La Salle, Fr. Aloysius Cartagenas STD,
professor at the Semenario Mayor de San Carlos of Cebu, and Fr. Fidel Villaroel, OP,
respected historian and former archivist of Santo Tomas, argued that that there is no
visible and clear link between San Carlos and San Ildefonso.

1601- The Jesuits also founded the Colegio de San Jose and took over the management
of a school that became the Escuela Municipal (1859, later renamed Ateneo Municipal
de Manila in 1865, now the Ateneo de Manila University).

1640 - Universidad de San Felipe de Austria was established in Manila. It was the first
public university created by the Spanish government in the Philippines. It closed down in
1643.

1620 - The Dominicans on their part had the Colegio de San Juan de Letran in Manila.
All of them provided courses leading to different prestigious degrees, like the Bachiller in
Arts, that by the 19th century included science subjects such as physics, chemistry,
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natural history and mathematics. The University of Santo Tomas, for example, started by
teaching theology, philosophy and humanities. During 18 th century, the Faculty of
Jurisprudence and Canonical Law was established.

1871- several schools of medicine and pharmacy were opened.

1871 to 1883 - Santo Tomas alone had 829 registrations of medical students, and from
1883 until 1898, 7,965 medical students.

1898- the university had granted the degree of Licenciado en Medicina to 359 graduates
and 108 medical doctors. For the doctorate degree in medicine, its provision was inspired
in the same set of oppositions than those of universities in the metropolis, and at least
and an additional year of study was required at the Universidad Central de Madrid in
Spain.

SECONDARY SCHOOLS

January 1, 1820 - A Nautical School was created which offered a four-year course of
study (for the profession of pilot of merchant marine) that included subjects such as
arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, physics, hydrography, meteorology,
navigation and pilotage.

A School of Commercial Accounting and a School of French and English Languages were
established.

November 4, 1861 - The Don Honorio Ventura College of Arts and Trades (DHVCAT) in
Bacolor, Pampanga is said to be the oldest official vocational school in Asia. Augustinian
Friar Juan Zita and civic leader Don Felino Gil established the vocational school.

Other important vocational schools Escuela de Contaduria, Academia de pintura y Dibujo

and the seminaries of manila, Nueva Segovia, Cebu, Jaro and Nueva Caceres.

1887 - the Manila School of Agriculture was created, but open

its doors on July 1889. Its mission is to provide theoretical and
practical education by agricultural engineers to skilled farmers
to promote agricultural development by means of observation,
experiments and investigation. It included subjects such as
mathematics, physics, chemistry, natural history, agriculture,
topography, linear and topography drawing. Agricultural schools
and monitoring stations, run by professors who were agricultural
engineers, were also established in Isabela, Ilocos, Albay,
Cebu, Iloilo, Leyte and parts of Mindanao.

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1780 - The Real Sociedad Economica de los Amigos del Pais de Filipinas (Royal
Economic Society of Friends of the Philippines) was first introduced in the islands and
offered local and foreign scholarships to Filipinos professorship and financed trips of
scientists from Spain to the Philippines. Throughout the 19th century, the Society
established an Academy of Design, financed the publication of scientific and technical
literature, and granted awards to successful experiments and inventions that improved
agriculture and industry.

1865 - The Observatorio Meteorologico del Ateneo Municipal de Manila (Manila

Observatory) was founded by the Jesuits after an article they published in the newspaper
Diario de Manila, describing typhoon observations in September 1865, attracted the
attention of many readers who publicly requested for the observations to be continued.

1884 - The Spanish government made the observatory the official institution for weather
forecasting in the Philippines in

1885 - it started its time service.

1887 - Its seismology section was set up

1899 - astronomical studies began

The Observatory published typhoon and climatological observations and studies,

including the first typhoon warnings, a service that was highly appreciated by the business
community, especially those involved in merchant shipping.

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM IN THE 19TH CENTURY

Free access to modern public education by all Filipinos was made possible through
the enactment of the Education Decree of December 20, 1863 by Queen Isabela II.
Primary instruction was made free and the teaching of Spanish was compulsory. The
royal decree provided for a complete educational system which would consist of primary,
secondary and tertiary levels, finally making officially available to Filipinos valuable
training for leadership after three centuries of colonization.

The education Decree of 1863 provided the establishment of at least two free
primary schools, one for boys and another for girls, in each town under the responsibility
of the municipal government.

It also commended the creation of a free public normal school to train men as
teachers, supervised by the Jesuits.

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1896 - the Escuela Normal Elemental, which became the Escuela Normal Superior de
Maestros de Manila (Manila Ordinary School for Schoolmistresses).
1879 - the Spanish government established a school for midwives

1892 - Escuela Normal Superior de Maestras (Superior Normal School) for female
teachers

1890’s - free public secondary schools were opening outside of Manila, including 10
normal schools for women. The Philippines was ahead of some European countries in
offering education for women.
In 1866, the total population of the Philippines was only 4,411,261. The total public
school was 841 for boys and 833 for girls. In 1982, the number of schools increased to 2,
137, 1.087 of which was for boys and 1,050 for girls.

THE CHINESE MESTIZOS IN THE PHILIPPINES

The Chinese Mestizos population in the Philippines exceeded 200,000 by the late
19th century.

The Chinese mestizos rose to prominence between 1741

and 1898, primarily as a landholder and a middleman wholesaler
of local produce and foreign imports, although there were also
mestizos in the professions. The rise of the mestizos implies the
existence of social change during Spanish period, a condition
that has been ignored or implicitly denied by many who have
written about the Philippines. It needs to be emphasized that the
mestizo impact was greatest in Central Luzon, Cebu, and Iloilo.

The renewal of Chinese immigration to the Philippines resulted in diversion of

mestizo energies away from commerce, so that the mestizos lost their change to become
a native middle class, a position then taken over by the Chinese.

The Chinese mestizos in the Philippines possessed a unique combination of

cultural characteristics. Lovers of ostentation, ardent devotees of Spanish Yet with those
characteristics they combined a financial acumen that seemed out of place. Rejecters of
their Chinese heritage, they were not completely at home with their indio heritage. The
nearest approximation to them was the urbanized, heavily-hispanized Indio. Only when
hispanization had reached a high level in the 19th century urban areas could the mestizo
find a basis of rapport with the indio. Thus, during the late 19 th century, because of
cultural, economic, and social changes, the mestizos increasingly identified themselves
with the indios in a new kind of “Filipino” cultural and national consensus.

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THE RISE OF THE INQUILLINOS (HACIENDEROS)

The rapidly growing population in the 19th century needed increased amounts of
rice. Thus, those who controlled large rice, sugar, and abaca-growing lands in Central
Luzon, Batangas, parts of Bicol region, Negros, and Panay profited the most. These
included not only the Filipino hacenderos of Pampanga, Batangas, and Western Visayas,
and the friar orders owning the large haciendas of Bulacan, Laguna and Cavite, but also
inquilinos of the friar haciendas. By this time, many of these inquilinos were equivalently
hacenderos in their own right, pass on from one generation to the next lands they rented
from the flier hacienda and farming them by means of their share-tenants or kasama. To
the latter, they stood in a semi feudal relationship little different from that which existed
during Rizal’s time in the 19th century context between owner-hacenderos and their
tenants. The prosperity which the new export economy has brought to some may be
illustrated by the case of Rizal’s Chinese ancestor Domingo Lam-co. When he had come
to the Biñan hacienda in the mid-18th century, the average holding of an inquilino was 2.9
hectare; after Rizal’s father had moved to the hacienda, the Rizal family in the 1890’s
rented the hacienda over 390 hectares. But on the friar haciendas, rising prosperity had
also brought friction between inquilinos and hacienda as lands grew in value and rents
were raised. A combination of traditional methods and modernizing efficiency led to
disputes, ultimately over who should reap the larger part of the fruits of the economic
boom. Eventually, this would lead to a questioning of the friar’s rights to the haciendas.
But it is a gross misnomer to speak of the revolution as an “agrarian revolt” in the modern
sense. For it would not be the kasama who would challenge friar ownership, but the
prosperous inquilinos. And their motive would be as much political as economic – to
weaken the friars’ influence in the Philippines political life.

To know more about this Chapter, please click the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0ZA3RTMYao
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEv8wleg8f0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SjqnGfhhm0

Dr. Mariano M. Ariola The Life and Works of Rizal. Unlimited Books Library Service & Publishing
Inc.: 2018

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