Name: Leidi Lymel L.

Luchavez
Course and Year: BEED 2

Online Reflection of Dr. Jose Rizal’s Family Background

Every family had a story on their own. Some started from the bottom, some started from the top,
some were able to stay on top, and some stayed at the bottom. The Rizal family is like any other family
we had right now. The situation they had before is not far to what our any Filipino family had right now.
If you get to know them more, we can somehow understand the real status of Rizal's family and be able to
compare their status to other families and be able to relate it with the present times.
If we're going to look at our history and compare Rizal's family to the families we had right now,
there's nothing special about them. Rizal's family had a simple, happy and contented life. They had a
cemented house, decent clothes, and enough food to eat. Rizal and his siblings had quality education just
like every child the Philippines deserves. In the generation we're living today, we can say that it's a typical
Filipino family. But having the idea of our economic status before and how they identify the "rich" and
the "poor", we can really say that Rizal's family is a wealthy and powerful family. There's a lot of reasons
to prove my point but I will only state some essential reasons as to why I consider Rizal's family as a
wealthy family. I will also implore comparisons on how they're status is visible up until today.
The first thing we're going to look at is Jose Rizal's family background. We can clearly see in the
article that they've become a wealthy and powerful family due to inheritance. I can clearly see his great
grandfather's as a person with motivation and vision (even though I didn't know how they've made it since
it wasn't explained much in the given article). I can clearly see that they've worked hard to be able to
achieve wealth and power and let it run through generation by generation. Rizal's family has also been
protecting and preserving the wealth and power they're ancestors gave them to be able to give a stable life
for the next generation. This is one of the reasons why I can say that Rizal's family is a wealthy family,
for they have inherited it from their ancestors. As you can see in our generation today, this kind of system
wherein inheritance of wealth and power is still visible. A parent giving all of his investments to his child
to give him/her a stable life, a son of a politician trained to be a politician. Now, I can now have a reason
where the famous line came, "It runs in the blood".
The second reason why I can say that Rizal's family is a wealthy family is that Don Francisco and
Dona Teodora were able to provide the needs especially the education for their children. During their
time, education isn’t for all. It is limited and not free. Rizal and his siblings had private tutors. Rizal was
able to study at the top universities of the Philippines and even managed to study abroad. Not all families
can afford those prestigious institutions. All the expenses came from his family who is obviously
bothered to pay the expenses. Some of the student's nowadays managed to be enrolled in private
institutions not because they came from a wealthy family but due to the scholarships offered or they're a
working student. Thanks to the constitution and bylaws, we're able to change our educational system.
Lastly, I can say that they're a wealthy family for they have lived decently. We all know that the
majority of Filipinos during Rizal's time were slaves. If you're born poor, then you'll die as a poor person.
People who are in the lower class have to work endlessly with small pay, are obliged to pay taxes, and
suffer injustices on the economic system. Luckily, Rizal's family didn't experience this. It's still visible
until today wherein the rich are busy getting richer, and the poor are becoming poorer.
 This activity made me reflect on the status of my own family. Would I be able to bring my family
out of poverty? Could I inherit wealth and power to my child and grandchildren? Well, I don't know, but
one thing is for sure. I wanted them to live decently just like how Rizal's family lived.