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GE 2 Readings IN Philippine History - Critical Evaluation AND

Promotion OF Local AND ORAL History
Readings in Philippine History (North Central Mindanao College)

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COURSE SUBJECT: READINGS IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY

I. UNIT TITLE/CHAPTER TITLE

DOING HISTORY: CRITICAL EVALUATION AND PROMOTION OF

LOCAL AND ORAL HISTORY

II. LESSON TITLE

1. Doing Historical Research Online
2. Doing Historical Research in Libraries and Archives
3. Doing Life Histories and Biographical Research
4. Doing Local and Oral History
5. Interacting with History through Historical Shrines and
Museums

III. LESSON OVERVIEW

This lesson provides the students an outline on the
study of doing history, life histories, biographical research,
doing local and oral history. It also provides an avenue for
the learners to unlock concepts relating to doing history, life
histories, biographical research, doing local and oral history.
Opportunities will be given to the students to share their
insights on the importance of doing history.

IV. DESIRED LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of the lesson, the students should be able to:
1. manifest interest in local history and cultural heritage by
writing history;
2. apply historiographical methods in writing the history of
one’s locality or country;
3. incorporate technology in the discipline of history; and
4. conduct simple historical or biographical research.

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V. LESSON CONTENT

History plays a vital role to Filipino lives as it shapes

them starting from the pre-colonial era until the present
time. Events from the past contributed on how people face
the issues currently and incoming challenges by using the
lens of history to understand the issue and how Filipinos
before took it. From that situation, Filipinos today are using
history to understand the present situation. The government
even see history as a tool to instill nationalism among the
Filipinos and especially the youth who are described by Jose
Rizal, the national hero as the hope of the nation (“Pag-asa
ng bayan”).

On March 26, 2010, Republic Act No. 10066 or An Act

Providing For The Protection And Conservation Of The
National Cultural Heritage, Strengthening The National
Commission For Culture And The Arts (NCCA) And Its
Affiliated Cultural Agencies, And For Other Purposes. The Act
is also known as the “National Cultural Heritage Act of
2009”. The Act aims to (a) protect, preserve, conserve and
promote the nation’s cultural heritage, its property and
histories, and the ethnicity of local communities; (b)
establish and strengthen cultural institutions; and (c) protect
cultural workers and ensure their professional development
and well-being.

It was followed by another law that President Gloria

Macapagal Arroyo signed the Republic Act No. 10086 or
Strengthening Peoples' Nationalism Through Philippine
History Act on May 12, 2010. Under section 5 of the law, it

Primary Source: Republic Act No. 10086 or Strengthening Peoples' Nationalism

Through Philippine History Act
Section 5. General Mandate. - The NHCP is the primary government agency
responsible for history and has the authority to determine all factual matters relating
to official Philippine history.
In thisDownloaded
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mandated that the National Historical Commission of the

Philippines (NHCP) as the primary government agency
responsible for history and has the authority to determine all
factual matters relating to official Philippine history.
Therefore, it mandated the agency to do the following tasks.

To promote nationalism one must learn history and

conduct historical researches whether local or national
history which is highly supported by the government.

Historical Research
According to Dr. Maheswari Jaikumar (2018) historical
research is undertaken to answer questions concerning
causes, effects or trends relating to past events that may shed
light on the present practices or behavior that involves a
systematic collection and critical evaluation of data relating to
past occurrences of a particular phenomenon. In addition it

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is qualitative in technique. It studies the meaning of past

events in an attempt to interpret the facts and explain the
cause of events, and their effect in the present events.
Historical research is also known as historiography that
“attempts to systematically recapture the complex nuances,
the people, meanings, events, and even ideas of the past that
have influenced and shaped the present". (Berg & Lure, 2012
as cited by https://ecu.au.libguides.com/). Doing historical
research requires researchers to rely heavily on primary
historical data (direct accounts of events, archival data - official
documents, personal records, and records of eyewitnesses) and
less frequently on secondary historical data (information from
persons who didn’t witness the event; e.g. textbooks,
newspapers, encyclopedias).
Purposes of historical research
1) To solve contemporary problems.
2) Learn from past failures and success.
3) Make prediction.
4) To re-evaluate data in relation to selected hypotheses,
theories and generalizations
5) To understand how and why educational theories and
practices developed.

Steps in Historical research by Berg & Lure, 2012 as

cited by Edith Cowan University
1) Identify an idea, topic or research question
2) Conduct a background literature review
3) Refine the research idea and questions
4) Determine that historical methods will be the method
used
5) Identify and locate primary and secondary data sources

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6) Evaluate the authenticity and accuracy of source

materials
7) Analyze the date and develop a narrative exposition of
the findings

1. Doing Historical Research Online

Conducting historical research is
quite a challenge but if researchers
know how to use different tools like
internet and it would be easy.
Cyberspace is great resource for
research however there are measures
that must be followed, plagiarism is a
mortal sin. In doing so, one must
evaluate and analyze the data on the
internet before using it as historical
research requires critical evaluation
and analysis. Online searching needs
the skill of knowing “where to look”
and “how to look.” Search engine
websites such as yahoo!
(www.yahoo.com) or Google
(www.google .com) could lead you to
a lot of sources with a right search
strings. A search string is a
combination of words that use to
come up with relevant results and lead
you to what you are looking for.
Google provides its own customized
platform for scholarly research called
Google Scholar (www.
Scholar.google.com). it can be used to find electronic journal
article, materials from institutional repositories, and book
chapters from many different sources. Wikipedia is the

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biggest open source encyclopedia in the whole of

cyberspace. Being an open source encyclopedia, anyone
could contribute or edit articles in the site, which makes
some of the information in the site unreliable. Nonetheless,
Wikipedia provides a useful launch pad sources that you may
use for research. when you read from Wikipedia, looked at
the linked citations in the articles, which could lead you to a
source you may use for your own research. As a practice,
use Wikipedia to gain a general overview of what you need
to know so that you may be guided in looking for credible
and reliable sources that you for your research.
There are websites that you may use
to legally download scanned copies of
books and other materials for free,
especially those books with expired
copyrights and are in public domain.
Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org) is
the oldest digital library in the world ,
founded in 1971. It has more than 50,0000
items in its collection, which include many
work concerning the Philippines, such as
Jagor, de Comyn, Virchow, Foreman, and
Worcester; Austin Craig’s biography of
Rizal, and all volumes of Blair and
Robertson’s The Philippine Islands: 1493 –
1898). Another online archive you may
use is Internet Archive (www.archive.org),
an online library that originally sought to
archive web history, but grew later on to
provide digital versions of other works. The
archive contains 279 billion web pages, 11 million books and
texts, four million audio recordings, three million videos, one
million images, and 100,000 software programs.

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Philippine Government websites(www.gov.ph) are

starting to be enrich with sources that may be used for
historical research, especially on laws and other government
issuances that may be useful when doing topics of a more
contemporary period. Websites of newspapers, magazines,
and broadcasting stations, and other media outlets usually
keep an archive of their articles from a particular date. For
older issues, your may have to find copies, ether digitized or
physical copies, in the library.

2. Doing Historical Research in Libraries and Archives

Research in libraries and archives is necessary in the
study of history because these are repositories of primary
and secondary sources. Library can be defined as a building
or room containing collections of books, periodicals, and
sometimes films and recorded music for people to read,
borrow, or refer to. On the other hand, archive is a collection
of historical documents or records providing information
about a place, institution, or group of people. They are both
essential in the conduct of historical research.
Nowadays, libraries went digitalized, thus cataloging
goes easier by accessing it online by means of Online Public
Access Catalog (OPAC). In this system, instead of going
through each entry of catalog, simply search something
related to what you are searching for.

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The National Library of the Philippines in Ermita, Manila

provides a
rich
reference in
Philippine
history,
especially
in the
Filipiniana
section.
Here are
some
libraries
that are
accessible
to the
public: University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City,
that holds American Historical collection during the American
period; University of Santo Tomas, España, Manila has the
collections from 16th century; Chinben See Memorial Library
offers resources on Filipino-Chinese studies. Below are
pictures of libraries and archives that someone can visit to
support historical research.

National Archives of the National Historical

Philippines Commission of the

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Philippines

National Museum of the University of Santo Tomas

Philippines Library

De La Salle University UP Diliman Library

Library

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Ateneo De Manila University Ayala Museum

Rizal Library

3. Doing Life Histories and Biographical Research

Studying history always centered on the nation and
different collectives, thus, life of an individual is often
neglected who contributed a greater part in the making of
nation’s history. Life history is often neglected as sub
discipline of history because it is seen as trivial to larger
narratives of nations societies and civilizations. The writing
of life histories must not be limited to the of the great
individuals like Jose Rizal, Emilio Aguinaldo, Rodrigo Duterte
and others but it must include the life of the ordinary
member of the society.
According to Candelaria and Alporha (2018), doing life
history should be accompanied by locating the life of the
individual in the larger social life. The researcher must
identify the different factors that affected the life of the
person he is trying to study. For example, studying the life of
Jose Rizal does not only require looking at big events in his
life that affected the nation, like the publication of his novels,
his exile to Dapitan of his execution in Bagumbayan. A more
thorough understanding of Rizal’s life necessitates looking at
different aspects of his life that affected his persona.
Examples are his family, his educators, his peers, his travels
and even his affections. In relation to this, one should also
look at the where Rizal existed. It is worthwhile to ask, for
example, about Rizal’s hometown. What were the
characteristics of Calamba, Laguna in the 19th century?
What was the most common livelihood in that town? Was it a
rich progressive municipality? What was the terrain like? Was
it an agricultural locality? These questions will give context
to Rizal’s childhood and family.

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In addition, understanding these seemingly mundane

aspects of an individual’s life as stated above would provide
historians insightful information that will allow him, not just
state facts about the individual but also to make sense of
these facts and establish connections about different aspects
of the individual’s life in order to understand the person that
he has become and contributed in the making of history of
the nation.

4. Doing Local and Oral History

The history as a subject and course usually taught the
students in schools in a broad aspect like the Philippine
history, world history, and history of Asia. The coverage is
always expansive and taught in broad strokes of historical
periods, large spaces, and of prominent personalities, thus
little is known about local history. Local history is the study of
the history of a particular community or a smaller unit of
geography. Local histories cover local communities, local
institutions, local groups and more. As compare to the
national history, it also broad and dynamic field that aims to
have an in-depth understanding of certain locale.

Local history serves as balancer because often times

history of a nation is always seen as uniform without
considering the history of the periphery or the non-central
areas. Studying local history can provide new and alternative
interpretations that there are different aspects of a nation’s
history to make the totality. Local history also facilitates a
historical narrative emanating from the people, hence it was
called “history from below”. Remember that Philippine
History focuses on Manila and its environ, therefore the
history is seen as monolithic without considering the others
residing outside Manila. Ultimately, studying local history
shall provide new provisions and perspective on the already

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established national history. Thus, local history is not just

aimed at opposing the discourse in the national histories but
is also a tool of enriching these national narratives by having
an in-depth study by conducting local history. John Larkin
became the Chief Prophet and God-father of the local history
of the Philippines after his study of the Pampangans.

Below are characteristics and importance of local

history according to Lucien Hanks:
1. Local history is the enactment of nationally
significant events in a particular locality.
2. Local history reflects events of a national magnitude.
3. Every locality has its own unique history independent
of national history.
Doing local history is not an easy task despite the fact
of having a smaller scope of study, however local historians
faces challenges. One is locating for sources on the specific
object of study. National history has available sources than
local history that historians must conduct the so called oral
history to gather information to support their study.

Oral history is a field of study and a method of

gathering, preserving and interpreting the voices and
memories of people, communities, and participants in past
events by means of interviewing an eye witness on the
particular event. Local history as explained by Donald Ritchie
as cited by Baylor University, “collects memories and
personal commentaries of historical significance through
recorded interviews. An oral history interview generally
consists of a well-prepared interviewer questioning an
interviewee and recording their exchange in audio or video
format. Recordings of the interview are transcribed,
summarized, or indexed and then placed in a library or
archives for future reference. These interviews may be used

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for research or excerpted in a publication, radio or video

documentary, museum exhibition, dramatization or other
form of public presentation.” Oral history does not include
random taping, such as President Rodrigo Duterte’s
surreptitious recording of his Malacañan Palace speech, nor it
does refer to recorded speeches, wiretapping, personal
diaries on tape, or other sound recordings that lack the
dialogue between interviewer and interviewee. Oral history
vey much important in the midst of scarcity of written
historical sources.

Local and oral history are essential endeavors in the

enrichment of history that could help to individuals to
understand more the past that is useful in the present and
even in the future.

Mactan Shrine in Cebu and its marker

5. Interacting with History through Historical Shrines

and Museums

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Historical shrines and museums offers venues in

experiencing history as they provide level of authority and
trustworthiness that could impact the way we view the past.
Tangible objects are reconstructions of the past. Fist hand
experiences make historical events more real for us and
learning by experiencing aids with retention of the learning
later in life.
Historical shrines and museums serve as portals to the
past. In doing so, one must do background reading about the
place (shrine). Example a visit to Rizal Shrine in Calamba,
Laguna, will be more enriching if you are able to do reading
about Jose Rizal’s early life. First thing to do is to look for its
marker upon arriving at the shrine. Markers are put up by
the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP,
formerly known as National Historical Institute). Markers
ensure that the site is historical or cultural in nature.
Nowadays, shrines and museums are lot more
interactive. This is also a great chance to analyze the
artifacts since artifacts are also texts that are open for
reading, interpretation, criticism, and evaluation.

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