Delos Reyes, Nhivrazzir M.

Reading in the Philippine History

1/ I – 20 Prof. Valencia
The Prehistorians Task in the
Philippines

Jose Rizal just saved the present generation from being blind about our history
way back then. Though he did not fought physically, he still fought for his country by
writing what is their situation back then under that Spanish government. He exposed what
is the country’s problem in his book for the present generation to know and be aware of
their hardships. Though history books may have been written in the perspective of the
historian, it should be objective even if it is too hard for them to set aside their own
speculations, reasoning and ideas about a certain subject. And that is why the historians
are having a hard time when they are studying or interpreting a certain document from
the past. Because some of the documents have a political or a religious meaning in
between of their works. Nationalist historians only focuses on how the country’s
oppressors interfere with the peace and order of the country itself. But they do try their
best not to involve themselves from freeing the Filipinos from the colonial mentality that
they are fighting for in their articles. However, nationalist history only allows a one
dimensional consideration about the Spanish and American imperialism because if it is
too many the present readers can get too confused on where they are really focusing on
and it will lead to different realizations on the article. Just to be sure, historians provides
a preliminary hypothesis on which issue will they investigate from the past because the
hypothesis must be sufficient or has enough range to manage revealing all the facts that
is needed to support the issue in a certain document article. This histography which
studies our own countrymen is expecting that the religion’s values does not taught us
easily and made us submit ourselves easily, but also the resistance to injustice and to the
struggle for a better society. A true nationalist history will try to understand all aspects of
their experience of all the Filipino people as they understand it fully to their self and it will
also mention what is the valuable in our very own past and also the things that completely
gave the people from the past a harmful event in their lives. Not everything written in the
history books or the things written in articles won’t provide a lot of inspiration to everyone
to restore our country’s unjust decisions but it will give us ideas and thoughts not to do
the same problematic things in the present and same as the future.