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Rizal and His Thoughts on Education
The Right to Education for the Masses
The Right to Education seeing the condition of the people made Rizal
conclude that education should be top priority. Unless education was
wrested away from the hands of the friars, the school, instead of
becoming an instrument of liberation, will continue to be used as an
instrument of enslavement. Education was the primordial concern of Jose
Rizal. It had been his lifelong concern of the preparation for the
attainment of independence. John Schumacher aptly puts it: “education
is the key to understanding much of Rizal's career, for his whole career
was bound up with education-his own education and the education of
his own people.”
Rizal believed in the effectivity of education as a solution to the social,
political and economic problems of the country. He was convinced that
reforms were possible through education and liberty.
One of the significant contributions of Rizal to the cause of human rights in
his defense to the right of the Filipinos to quality education. Rizal wrote to
Blumentritt: “We are struggling for our rights, the rights for humanity, and if
there is a God, he will have to help us… Spain cannot justify even in the
name of God himself that six million Filipinos be brutalized, exploited,
oppressed, denying them rights and afterwards heap upon them
contempt and insult”
In defending the right of the Filipinos to education Rizal appealed to the
good sense of the Spanish authorities not to be begrudge the education
of the Filipinos. In another letter of Rizal to Blumentritt, Rizal said: “We
believe that the cause of our backwardness is and ignorance is the lack
of means of education. We are all human and we can improve ourselves
through education and culture.” Rizal expressed his desire to found a
school to carry out his aspirations for the Filipinos: “When we shall have
obtained this (Philippine representation in the Spanish Cortes) concession,
then we shall rest and devote our strength to the education of our people
which is my supreme aspiration.” The right to the education is now
enshrined in the historic Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which
the Philippines is one of the 48 original signatories.
The declaration guarantees that education should be free at least in the
elementary and fundamental stages; elementary education shall be
compulsory; technical and professional education shall be equally
accessible to all in the basis of merit. It also declares that education shall
be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the
strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Education for the Masses Rizal wished the education for the masses. He
shared his educational views with Blumentritt. On one occasion he told
the German scholar about his dream of establishing a school in Calamba,
Laguna to carry out his aspiration of educating his people. At another
time he wrote the same good doctors about the efforts of Filipino leaders
in educating the masses: "All our efforts tend to educate our people—
education, education, education, education of our people—education
and enlightenment.
In advocating the education of the masses, Rizal pleaded for the
education of the adults. In a conversation in El Filibusterismo, between
Isagani, the leader of the students, and Senor Pasta, the lawyer whom the
friars consulted in their difficulties, on the indifference of the Spanish
authorities in granting the student's petition for the opening of an
academy to teach Castilian, Rizal embarked through Isagani:
"We cannot all be doctors, it is necessary that some of us cultivate the soil.
We must follow everyone's own personal inclination." Mass education is
therefore a must in a free society. Rizal emphatically expressed this idea in
the Noli when he said: “The school is the basis of society, the school is the
