1. How did Prof. Ambeth Ocampo describe Rizal in the context as a historian?

- Professor Ambeth Ocampo describes Rizal as more than just a hero, that he, after all, is
a human like us. Many people are familiar with Jose Rizal but there are only some who
are able to recognize him as he was before he become a national hero of the Philippines.
The Monuments and the textbooks that were written in history have fossilized results so
much that we tend to forget that he is a human too.

Rizal was once a human too, that he was once a young man, like us, who played and had
fun. Rizal was more than what we know, and there are still a lot of things that we don’t
know about him. We only see him as our national hero but he is more than that, there
are still so much more that we don’t know about Rizal, so many things that we can’t read
or see in any textbook.

I came to the realization that we don't really know who Jose Rizal is, and that reading
him is the best way to learn about him because it makes us see him as lame, flawed, and
human. Rizal inspires us not because he was killed for writing two books that no one
ever read, but because when we see him playing, we see his humanity and that Filipino
potential for greatness.