As you can see, there are quite a number of things taught in school that one has to unlearn or at least correct.

Can you imagine the feeling of being an oppressed colonial being addressed respectfully by a colonizer in the mother country?

Sometimes it pays not to be interested in what happened but in what did not happen.

Filipinos are not a reading people, and despite the compulsory course on the life and works of Rizal today, from the elementary to the university levels, it is accepted that the 'Noli me Tangere' and 'El Filibusterismo' are highly regarded but seldom read (if not totally ignored). Therefore one asks, how can unread novels exert any influence?

Rizal" is a compulsory course in school, but few teachers make Rizal's novels interesting. If students are taught to enjoy Rizal's works as literature instead of as a lodemine of 'patriotic' allusions I am sure they would not mind reading and rereading the 'Noli me Tangere'.

I was to discover that like the overcoat that snugly wraps Rizal in all his statues and photographs, Rizal is obscured by countless myths and preconceived ideas... Without his overcoat, Rizal was human, like you and me.