Manuel Gallego was a congressman and served as the Secretary of Education

MANUEL GALLEGO

Gallego started his law practice in 1919. His political career began in 1931, when he was elected congressman and reelected in 1941. As a congressman, he initiated some of the first land reform measures. He also worked for the use of dialects in Philippine schools as a medium of instruction, and of Tagalog as the national language. He was the author of the House bills granting women suffrage.

Gallego was the last Secretary of Instruction of the Commonwealth of the Philippines under the Osmena administration, and the first Secretary of Education of the Republic of the Philippines under the Roxas administration. As education secretary, he promoted cultural development through the introduction of new textbooks, authored by Filipinos, on Philippine government, history, social science, and other relevant subjects.

Gallego was the founder of the Central Luzon School of Nursing in Nueva Ecija, as well as of the Central Luzon Educational Center, which later were fused into the Manuel V Gallego Foundation Colleges, in the same province.

18 January 1893

to 13 August 1976