Educating mind and heart

When in Dapitan, I always drop by the Rizal Shrine to look out on a vista that had not changed very much since the hero’s exile there from 1892-1896. It is not well known that Rizal was a licensed land surveyor, who made the most of money he won at a lottery to purchase hectares of sea-front property that is worth a fortune today. Inside the shrine are relics most people would overlook, a simple side table of Philippine hardwood he used in his classroom, and a rectangular slab of molave that he used as his blackboard.

Rizal’s teaching tools are primitive compared to mine (laptop, PowerPoint, learning management system, wireless microphone, and Google), yet that desk and board always inspire. They are reminders that technology may be useful, but all a truly good teacher needs is mastery of content, a voice, a board, a piece of chalk, and a lot of heart.

My first day of classes this term did not start out well. My P2P bus from Ayala to Ateneo departed an hour late. Fortunately, P2Ps are now allowed to use the Edsa bus lane so I got to school with enough time to set up my laptop and microphone, check the loudspeakers, and wish I had a few minutes to grab a cup of coffee to tide me over the next three hours with 145 college freshmen. Compared to batches that were stuck with fully online classes, this batch was engaged and lively, we had such a good time that, for the first time in my teaching career, students asked for selfie on the first rather than the last day of class! A day that started out badly was well worth it, as I again caught a glimmer of the future in the eyes of my students.

It is not known that the most relevant time of Rizal’s life was not the instant he was shot in the back on Dec. 30, 1896. The most productive time of his life was his Dapitan exile. Imagine Rizal, a cosmopolitan man who knew London, Paris, and Madrid like the back of his hand, thrown into a hick town in Zamboanga del Norte in 1892. A lesser man would have been broken by boredom, but when served lemons, Rizal made lemonade. It was here where he practiced everything that he knew, studied, and read.

Rizal designed and decorated the town park. He encouraged the building of a water system, collected shells, butterflies, insects, reptiles, and fish to be forwarded to Dresden resulting in a winged lizard, a tree frog, and a flying beetle that had scientific classification that bore his name: Draco rizali, Rhacophorous rizali, and Apogonia rizali. He practiced his specialization, ophthalmology, in Dapitan and when confronted with patients complaining of teeth and gum problems, he sent for a book on the subject in Manila and established an illegal practice of dentistry. While he practiced Western medicine, he learned about medicinal properties of local plants from herbolarios, and even wrote the first psychological monograph by a Filipino, an essay on the mangkukulam entitled “La curacion de los hechizados” (The Cure of the Bewitched).

During his studies in Madrid in the 1880s, part of his allowance went to the weekly purchase of lotto tickets. His persistence paid off because during his Dapitan exile, he won the second prize in lotto, shared with two others that included the governor of Dapitan. With this money, he bought beachfront property that one can still visit today. Here, he had his medical clinic and most importantly a school for boys where he taught not just academic subjects but athletics, swimming, horseback riding, fencing, and even ballroom dancing. He had learned enough Cebuano to communicate and teach his students English, instead of Spanish. Some people attribute this choice to Rizal’s clairvoyance, rather than his keen reading of the geopolitics of his time.

Rizal’s philosophy of education can be seen from two anecdotes. First, his sister sent her two sons to be educated in his school. She wrote him a letter of complaint when she found out that Rizal gave one nephew a book, and the other a bolo. Rizal explained, “we cannot all become doctors or lawyers, I who have studied much now plants coconuts!” Rizal knew his nephews well enough to gift the studious one with a book. While the other, who enjoyed working in the farm, was gifted with a bolo. By example, Rizal illustrated that one must first ascertain the student’s aptitude and passion in order to build on it.

Second anecdote is about the entrance exam to Rizal’s school. Parents dropped off the candidate at Rizal’s estate in the late afternoon, and Rizal would invite the boy to take a walk with him in the woods at the back of the estate. During the walk, Rizal would interview the boy and gauge his aptitude, they would sit in the middle of the forest and return to Rizal’s home. It would be dark by the time they arrive back and Rizal would tell the boy to return to the spot where they sat to fetch an object he had deliberately “forgotten” there. If the boy refused, he was not admitted. Brave ones who went into the dark and retrieved the object would be met by Rizal and the other students, the teacher would then explain that it was not enough to have a good head, one also needed a strong and brave heart. This was how he welcomed successful applicants.

Rizal reminds us that education is not only about the mind, it also educates the heart.

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