Ambeth Ocampo: Breathing life into the past
by Bernice S. Sibucao on August 21, 2011
Photo from the Ateneo de Manila University website
“Describe the battle between Magellan and Lapu-Lapu from the point of view of a fish.”
You wouldn’t normally find this instruction in a history exam, yet such eccentric stories—passed on from a friend or through posts at the Overheard at the Ateneo de Manila University 2.0 Facebook page—tell how much influence one history professor has had on how students perceive Philippine history.
If you were lucky enough to be in the first batch of student enlistment upon picking your History 165 class, chances are you might have heard this instruction straight from Dr. Ambeth Ocampo himself, the renowned historian whose teaching methods go beyond the textbook.
The correct answer? Legend says it’s “glub glub glub.” (Actually, it’s not as simple as that.)
For the love of stories
A fascination with the art of storytelling inspired Ocampo to pursue history as a field of study. This background manifests itself in his writing and teaching styles. “I’ve always liked stories, whether they were literary or historical,” he says.
Ocampo’s love for stories is also apparent in Looking Back, his bi-weekly column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. In his columns, he relays history in a light, engaging and casual manner. “When you tell stories, you need detail to move the narrative forward, to bring life to the bare bones of history that is often expressed in outline,” he explains.
Bringing history to life
He cancels each student’s highest exam grade, in contrast to some teachers’ practice of cancelling the lowest. Instead of, say, asking for the most significant dates leading to Philippine independence, his diagnostic test once required students to draw the face of Jose Rizal.
He is extraordinarily unconventional—but he is, after all, Ambeth Ocampo, a self-proclaimed accidental teacher. He confides that he never really intended to work as a one, but it was his extensive experience as a writer, a public lecturer and a bureaucrat in the government’s cultural offices that finally paved the way towards his teaching career.
In his classes, he relies on the gift of comedy to send his message across. “Humor is one of my greatest weapons. When I make a class or an audience laugh, I know their defenses and prejudices are down,” says Ocampo.
Honoring Rizal
The legacy of Jose Rizal has always been an integral part of his works. It all started for him through a chance experience—he caught sight of a rosary once owned by the national hero, and now displayed in the Rizal Library. That brief incident made him realize that Rizal was more than just a mere name in a textbook. “We tend to forget that Rizal once walked the earth—that he was human like you and me,” he says.
His bestselling book, Rizal Without the Overcoat, is his attempt to demythologize the national hero and to present a more intimate side of him. In this work, which he adapted from his previously published columns, he tackled the different aspects of Rizal that go beyond his achievements for the Philippines.
Ocampo also contributes to numerous cultural institutions, such as museums and galleries. In fact, he is currently curating an Ateneo Art Gallery exhibit in commemoration of Rizal’s 150th birth anniversary. Entitled Rizal in the Ateneo, the Ateneo in Rizal, this showcase of historical documents and artifacts connected to the school’s most distinguished alumnus aims to remind Filipinos nowadays of Rizal’s continuing legacy.
Varying interpretations
However, just as the interpretation of history differs from person to person, there are those from the academe who are not fond of Ocampo’s teaching methods. “Academic historians were upset with me because of [my teaching style],” he said in an interview with the Manila Bulletin. “Sabi ko, the sources [I use for class] are primary; it’s just that the presentation was not academic.”
Even so, Ocampo still has numerous fans among his colleagues. Aaron Moralina and Dr. Karl Cheng Chua of the Ateneo History Department agree that Ocampo’s contributions should not be discounted. They say that Ocampo’s capability to spark change in people’s perception of history deserve further exploration.
“What his critics fail to appreciate is that the [types of questions Ocampo asks]—however mundane they would seem to the critics—[can] bring about the most interesting historical inquiries,” Moralina says. “Many [people] are getting interested in Philippine history again because of him.”
Cheng Chua acknowledges that history as a subject has a tendency to require a lot of heavy and repetitive memorization. “[Given] the clichéd [view of history]—‘History repeats itself’—[what] Dr. Ocampo has done through his works [is to stimulate] interest—both negative and positive—towards history,” Cheng Chua explains.
Indeed, by provoking people’s curiosities, Ocampo was able to spark dialogue across a larger community. “From this interest, people are then turning towards looking at [other] sources to verify the truth or falsity of what [Ocampo] has written,” Cheng Chua says.
Battle of the AISIS
Perhaps the most concrete evidence of Ocampo’s lasting influence is his high-demand classes. His legacy as a historian and as an educator is naturally the reason behind this, and his students, who are asked to discover that history isn’t limited to textbook accounts, would agree.
“He teaches in a way students will not be bored with,” shares former student Joanna Sison. “[He has] very out-of-this-world questions and papers.” One paper assignment involved identifying a kind of food and writing about what it reminded the student of. Another paper required students to go to the microfilm section of the library, with the instruction to look over the newspapers published during the student’s birthday.
More than just the entertainment, though, it’s the transformative aspect of Ocampo’s classes that his students most remember. His students would learn the most random facts about Filipino historical figures, yet these seemingly insignificant trivia shine a new light of appreciation on these time-obscured figures.
“I used to think that there’s a big distinction between Rizal and Bonifacio,” shares JR Repollo, another former student. “I thought that when Rizal was in high school, he was the nerdy guy who wanted to do the right thing and be the passionate hero. Ambeth Ocampo showed that it was the opposite—things like Rizal had muscles.”
Putting the extra in extraordinary
Ultimately, the task of a historian is to make the stories of the past relevant to those who live in the present. Ocampo does this in the most imaginative way possible: he introduces his students not to a history of grand events, but to a history of seemingly small details that initially conceal a much greater significance.
What he desires to achieve is to shine a different light on the historical figures of our country. To him, teaching history goes beyond the dates, facts and the grand events of the past.
Who else in the field of history would mention that Rizal ate tuyo for breakfast, that Mabini danced jocularly in his rocking chair, and that inside Del Pilar’s pockets were love letters, embroidered handkerchiefs and a lock of hair?
Through stories such as these—the stories Ambeth Ocampo would share to all of us, whether in the classroom or in his column—our history’s larger-than-life characters become human again.
