Bring it on!
1. What are the benefits of using primary sources?
- With the use of primary sources there is eligibility of the facts that are presented,
there is no doubt that it really happened or it is really what happened. Through
primary sources questions are directly answered or address a certain topic that
cannot be seen anywhere even in old books and testimonies. Aside from that
primary sources gives us deeper understanding on important events, it put us in
that situation and give as a wider view of the events. In history, the use of primary
sources is very important because there are a lot of sites in the internet or even in
books that are biased or sometimes the information is already cut and exaggerated.
However, this primary source in the history is just a piece of what is happened, it
might not give us the whole story and this will lead to a deeper search for what is
the reality. Before we could imagine, we are already hooked to understand a lot of
that certain event in the history and this makes it very interesting.
2. Why do you think most history textbooks are secondary sources?
- History is the attempt to tell and study the past, base on my understanding, the
historians attempts to study the past and so they gather information that are
primary sources and they made their own interpretation and it become as a
secondary source. Textbooks are secondary source because this is written by
someone who gather and interpret primary source to give us a shallow
interpretation about a certain topic. An interpretation that can be understand by
many, so that the words and terms on the primary source will be more
understandable. Textbooks are also compilation of different sources that are
gathered and made to be more-friendly to students, teachers and other readers.
Aside from that textbooks are often indicate theories of what happened in the
history and not what is exactly happened. They give us insights, information,
hypothesis, and what the author observed in his/her study.
3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of accessing online primary sources?
- The advantage of accessing primary source is that it introduced us directly to what
we wanted to know. It doesn’t give us a roller coaster journey just to know what
really happened during that time. Accessing primary source also help us to
develop our own skills in understanding, observing, collaborative activity,
communication skills and behaviour in dealing with other people. It engages us to
create critical questions and understand it critically, it also enhances our
reasoning, interpreting, and the way we explain the topic.
- The disadvantages of accessing online primary source is that it is time consuming.
It needs a well preparation that sometimes takes a month to process specially
when it is a documentary film or a case study. It needs a lot of analysing and
dealing with schedules and such just to gather primary sources. Aside from that, it
is too close to the subject that sometimes the real interest is being set aside. There
are also circumstances that what you gather are not as acceptable as from those
who are already known in the field.
4. What are the challenges of understanding our country’s past mindful of the problems
that characterize the writing of our national history?
- For me is that giving the story of our history directly. What I observe is that it
always brought us what the colonizers have given to us not what they did to us. It
lacks from evidences, it is pure talk and writing not telling what does the Filipinos
suffered that time. Aside from that is we do not know if all the information that is
written in our national history are purely facts, we do not know where it comes
from, if it biased or not, if is the fact or the facts are already deleted and replaced
by the information that they want us to know.
