Readings 5.
1: Guide to doing local history
In the old Philippine Educational curriculum, the teaching of the country’s history focused
on Philippine history in general and little attention was provided to local history. This resulted then
to the impression of most of the students that when historical events happened on a national
scale, nothing happened in the provinces which is not true.
The focus on Philippine history in a “national” perspective left the local history almost
unexplored until recently when members of the academe switched their interest in exploring one’s
region, province, municipality and even barangay.
McDougal (1983) enumerated three reasons why students should study history the way
historians do. And these are as follows:
1. Without knowing how the history we receive has been arrived at, we can only take it
as a series of mysterious assertions, which can be learned only in the sense of learning
off by heart. Rote-learned history can serve only the interests of quiz contestants, it
cannot be used, and is therefore useless.
2. Good learning is always active learning, in which the students, rather than the teacher,
do the work.
3. Using source-material and tackling the problems of evidence gives a feeling of reality
which second-hand history can rarely give.
The reasons enumerated by McDougal are so Outcomes Based. The responsibilities of
learning are shared between the teacher and the students. And the students are made
accountable for their own learning. McDougal further posits that the experiences, skills, and
knowledge of any person can lead to either answering questions or asking more questions which
in turn could prompt the examination of primary and secondary sources of history. The evidences
gathered and examined can result into raising further questions or new findings which may either
affirm existing historical truths or may lead to “new” history.
There are many tools that students in Readings in Philippine History could possibly use.
One of them is using the internet. The generation of the students catered nowadays is adept to
making use of the information generated from the internet. However, students need to be
reminded that not all information from the internet could be accepted and believed in at once.
There are internet sources which can guide us such as government websites, the Google Books,
Google Scholar and yahoo. There are even websites which provide free access of scanned books
and materials like Blair and Robertson’s The Philippine Islands. In fact as mentioned in Chapter
2, the identified primary sources for content and contextual analysis can be accessed for free.
The concepts learned on primary and secondary sources discussed in lesson 1 will come
handy in exploring local history. It is a must for you students of Readings in Philippine History to
define what you would like to explore about your local history. Hence, you can use the following
steps as guide:
1. Identify what specifically would you want to focus on in local history. Here is the list of
possible topics which you can explore: religious festivals, local festivals, customs and
beliefs or the suanoy na pagtubod, local cuisines and delicacies, games or suanoy na
kawat, local dances, local songs, etc.
2. Define the problem. Is it a religious festival that defines the people in the region,
province, municipality or barangay? In our case as Bikolanos the Penafrancia Festival
(celebrated annually in the month of September) is a reflection of our Catholic faith.
3. List down sources which you think can possibly answer the questions listed as part of
defining the problem. Based on the list of sources you can categorize. Like which of
the sources listed are documents, numerical records, oral statements, artifact, etc.
4. Based on the categorization of sources list down possible sources where these
primary and secondary sources can be located. Possible sources are museums,
tourism offices of the Local Government Units, libraries, private individuals(which can
be accessed virtually considering the situation in the new normal) whose interests
include culture, history and heritage, members of the academe and people in
barangays. Tap and link with the possible sources of information.
5. As soon as sources are gathered evaluate them based on authenticity, reliability and
credibility. Apply historical criticism.
