Jose Rizal is one of the national heroes of the Philippines. He was a scholar and reformist during the Spanish colonial era and was executed after he was falsely accused of leading a revolution which I don’t remember the name of. But point is, he was very intelligent and cultured and is part of the reason why Filipinos (as far as I know) truly value education. My parents would remind me of him whenever I wasn’t doing well in school and their parents did too, but I don’t know how common this is either.

Jose Rizal has been made from a war hero to a folk hero by the Filipino people, someone to be looked up to as a symbol of education and heavily romanticized as what might be called a “Renaissance man.” Upon further investigation, he’s been called a mathematician, as well as a poet, an artist, a novelist, a sculptor, a politician and a hero. I was wary to include this initially, but the man has been stretched far beyond the extent of who he really was for the sake of inspiring future generations.