Appreciating History per se has almost always been an exclsuive interest in academia. In Davao region, except for some leading Davao institutions, the only other strong historical interest comes from journalists (print, broadcast, and online) who have embraced the significance that the past to the present and, likely, the future.
Recently, an important development has sprung up. Holy Cross of Davao College, the only school to offer AB History today as a degree, has commenced building an institute to specifically focus research on Davao, with strong emphasis on Church history in the region.
Unlike other academic institutions dealing on multi-disciplinary engagements, the Institute of Davao Studies (IDS) has an initial 21-point agenda that hopes to ignite and revive dynamic interest in the value of History in understanding past events. Among the objectives are:
To develop the institute into a center of ecclesial research, mainly focused on Catholicism and Christianity, become repository of indigenous dictionaries, and developed into a library of history books authored by local and non-Davao writers. It also envisions to create a mini-archive cum museum that brings together newly collected historical artifacts.
As a research hub, IDS intends to print in book form original research works contributed to or done by the institute, conduct quarterly lecture series on local History with experts as resource speakers, stock up on a definitive encyclopedia of biographies of persons and institutions of Davao, and publish a comprehensive almanac titled ‘Today in Davao’s History’.
Moreover, it aims to conduct weekly campus displays aimed at generating student interest on History, institutionalizing links with local government units in the preparation of their own town histories, organizing an historical association or society with exclusive student membership, creating scholarship opportunities in accord with LGUs, corporations, and foundations, holding monthly campus lectures for students to boost and inspire awareness in History and promoting a heritage walk with the HCDC as historical vortex.
On the side, it plans to transform the entire HCDC campus into a corridor of historical displays and exhibits, promote History as a subject of masteral and doctoral dissertations, engage the LGUs in using the institute as partner in tourism and history lectures, and create an archive of oral history generated from interviews made with the involvement of important personages.
Moreover, the IDS also plans to establish a professional History chair through corporate sponsors, promote historical academic linkages with various campuses in Davao Region, and launch an institute-led school and annual inter-school historical quiz.
Opening the IDS answers an otherwise neglected fact that local history, which provides the brass tacks that shape the development of national history, has always been an inferior field of study. Instead of depending solely on wiseacres who formulate their own understanding on how settlements are organized, a more systematic approach will afford towns, cities, and provinces clearer appreciation of the events that have shaped its growth.
A least appreciated aspect of the IDS thrust is the effort it will invest in introducing historical awareness in local government units which, hopefully, will result with towns opening their own public libraries that double as archive, museum, reading center, and depository of records donated by well-known and important individuals, families and institutions.
Unlike in other countries, local history research outside the academia has been not zealously pursued under the aegis of public and private institutions. In fact, there is a dearth of documents available to researchers that has made historical study more difficult and at times discouraging.
