Looking Back
Been there, done that
By Ambeth Ocampo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 21:39:00 04/26/2011
ONE OF the memorable academic conferences I participated in was on Southeast Asian Historiography since World War II, sponsored by the University Sains Malaysia, in the heritage town of Penang over a decade ago. Meeting historians from other Asean countries helped me realize that we faced the same problems: the content of school history, the accuracy and interpretation of history in textbooks, teacher training and the delivery of history in the classroom, how to deal with the colonial past, etc. During the city tour, all hell broke loose when the guide asked the group: “If you look at the map of Malaysia, what do you see?” One historian saw an elephant tusk, another the face of an old man, and still another a couple in an unmentionable sexual position. To divert the discussion and keep it from spiraling down to sex, the guide nervously began his spiel on the history of Penang eliciting other versions, other stories from the group. A Malaysian historian then grabbed the microphone and proceeded to give us the “correct” version of Malaysian history. The guide protested, “You cannot do that sir, you are not a licensed tour guide.” Poor guide didn’t know who he was talking to.
During the conference, a historian asked: “Isn’t the history of the Philippines nothing but a local history of Manila?” It is a remark that has haunted me since. In the years that I was chair of the Historical Commission, I took every opportunity to visit the Visayas and Mindanao to learn more about their heroes, their food, their culture and their history that isn’t represented in our textbooks. As a result of this Manila-centric guilt, we installed many historical markers outside Luzon if only to remind people of their past while making significant events in local history part of a larger national history. This task reminded me of the story of a child throwing starfish into the sea. A jaded adult saw her and said, “you cannot throw all of the beached starfish back into the sea. Don’t waste your time, your efforts don’t matter.” She replied, “They at least matter to the ones who get thrown back.”
One of the changes I hope will be implemented when we revise our curriculum and textbooks for K+12 is that students must be grounded in the histories of their communities, their region, before they learn “national” history. This means that in the primary grades they learn about the history of their barangay first, and progress to the history of towns, cities, provinces and region to see their place in the nation. They should learn about local heroes before they learn about national heroes. They should be taught in their language, their mother tongue, before they are taught Filipino and English (and Spanish too, if available).
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