Jose Rizal's Education and Family Quiz

It has been said by several biographers that Rizal was discriminated and was treated poorly by the Dominicans which has led to a not so excellent performance and grades during the period of his study of Medicine in the said university. According to Zaide (1999), Rizal found the atmosphere at the University of Santo Tomas suffocating to his sensitive spirit. And that he was unhappy at this Dominican institution of higher learning because (1) the Dominican professors were hostile to him; (2) the Filipino students were racially discriminated against by the Spaniards; and (3) the method of instruction was obsolete and repressive which he has related in his novel, El Filibusterismo, where he described how the Filipino students were humiliated and insulted by their Dominican professors and how backward the method of instruction was, especially in the teaching of the natural sciences. Some historians questioned, “How could Rizal, after a perfect record of “Excellent” in high school (Ateneo) now receive such “low” grades at UST?” These critics had to look for an explanation, and since they did not find fault in Rizal, then they had to blame the Dominicans and the UST. Quite a long line of Filipino biographers (with some exceptions) only portray the same repeated lamentation that every schoolchild must now learn in the textbooks: that Rizal was “below his usual standards”, and for the extremely serious charge that the “Dominican professors were hostile to him” and “the Filipino students were racially discriminated” (Zaide), and that there was “excessive harping on the alleged intellectual superiority of the Spanish to the Filipino, a brown man, and Indio (JM Hernandez), and so on.” Upon further study of academicians, more particularly, Fr. Fidel Villaroel, it wasn’t all true that he was discriminated and that these discrimination issues affected his grades while he was in the university, as how it was falsely put into writing by several historians. According to the study of Fr. Villaroel, a year after Rizal entered UST in 1877, he took simultaneously the Pre-Medical Course and the First Year of Medicine; this was supposed to be against the rules, but Rizal was favored with a dispensation. Had Rizal been discriminated or treated shabbily by the Dominicans he would not have been granted the rare privilege of studying simultaneously the Preparatory Course while taking up the First Year of Medicine. In his courses of medicine, Rizal was a good student, above-average, though not excellent; but none of his classmates were excellent either. Summing up, in the 21 subjects taken in UST, Rizal obtained one aprobado (passing grade), eight bueno (good), six notable (very good), and six sobresaliente (excellent). The majority of students in Rizal’s time, or at any time, would have been satisfied with the above grades. It is possible that Rizal was not, but it is a fact that he never complained about his grades, there is not a single word in his works showing displeasure at the unfairness of UST.