rizals early adventures in college while in the philippines. how he was almost refused by ateneo.
Renowl
the College of San Juan de Letran, making some people smirk that he flunked
Letran and went to the Ateneo instead. Father Fidel Villaroel, OP, in his book
"Jose Rizal and the University of Santo Tomas," explains that Rizal was really
destined for the Ateneo and that Letran was just a testing center or venue for
the Ateneo exams. This exam, according to Rizal, consisted of Christian
doctrine, reading and arithmetic. He attained a passing mark and declared, "I
returned to my hometown happy having for the first time experienced what
examinations are."
While we have been force-fed in school about his nearly perfect academic record
at the Ateneo, we are not told that he was initially refused admission. Rizal
thinks this was due to his late registration, or (again) because he was small
and of weak constitution. If we were to use a politically incorrect term that
has made the Inquirer apologize to the President, Rizal would be "pandak"
(short). Maybe there was a line on a wall where Rizal was made to stand and was
found wanting by a few inches.
But then of course, Philippine culture comes in and the persistent Rizal family
was able to find a friend of a friend, Manuel Xeres-Burgos, who vouched for
Rizal and got him admitted. Rizal's Ateneo uniform was a coat and tie. And,
like many of my classmates in grade school, they used a ready-made tie. It was
only in Grade 7 that I became old enough to manage a real necktie. Rizal stayed
in a Binondo boarding house run by a spinster named Titay, who owed the Rizals
300 pesos. Thus, Rizal's stay was offsetting the debt. He was very observant,
and made notes about his classmates, their features and characters. Rizal even
talks about "some young Spanish mestizos, the fruits of friar love affairs."
On his second year, Titay's debt paid, Rizal moved from Binondo to Intramuros.
He stayed in a boarding house on 6 Magallanes Street run by a certain Doña
Pepay. Here he wrote:
"By this time I began to devote myself in my leisure hours to the reading of
novels, though years before I had already read 'El Ultimo Abencerraje' but I
didn't read it with ardor. Imagine a boy of twelve years reading 'The Count of
Montecristo', enjoying the sustained dialogues and delighting in its beauties
and following, step by step, the hero in his revenge. [Thus, we see echoes of
Dumas in 'El Filibusterismo' with Ibarra/Simoun out for revenge.]
"Under the pretext that I had to study universal history, I importuned my
father to buy me Cesare Cantu's work [History of the World] and God alone knows
the benefit I got from its perusal, for despite my average studiousness and my
little practice in the Castillian tongue, in the following year I was able to
win prizes in the quarterly examinations and I would have won the medal were it
not for some mistakes in Spanish, that unfortunately I spoke badly."
Later Rizal moved to the Ateneo boarding house where he was given a little
alcove in the corner of the dorm overlooking the sea. It was rather spartan
with an iron bed, small table with basin, a chair and clothes rack. "I forgot
to say that in the little table I had a drawer with soap, comb, brushes for the
hair and for the teeth, powder, etc. [Obviously, there was no way of locking
this drawer and he didn't trust the others in the dorm.] My little money that
amounted to some eight pesos, I kept under my pillow ..."
For students returning to school this week there is much in Rizal's diary that
they can identify with, but first they have to read it.
Ampinay
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