Primary Sources in History Breaking Through the Myths

7/30/2019 Primary Sources in History Breaking Through the Myths

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KEITH C. BARTON is a professor in the Division of Teacher Edu- cation at the University of Cincinnati. He is the co-author with LindaLevstik of Teaching History for the Common Good (Erlbaum, 2004).He wishes to thank Jere Brophy, Alison Kitson, Linda Levstik, Wal t e r Parker, and Stephen Thornton for their valuable insights and feed- back on this article.

Primary Sources in History:Breaking Through the Myths

Using primary sources in history classes is all the rage. But if

teachers are not reflective about the best use of such materials,

they may engage students in exercises that are neither historically

nor instructionally sound. Mr. Barton points out commonmisconceptions about primary sources and suggests ways to

maximize their educational potential.

BY KEITH C. BARTON

VISUALIZE the following class-room scene. Students walk into

history class and pull out pack-ets of primary sources — or, ina more technologically adva ncedschool, they log on to a collec-tion of digitally archived docu-ments. History books are used

only for reference, and lectures are virtually absent. In-stead, the students work in small groups to analyze eachsource and evaluate its relia bility — determining its ar-gument, establishing who created it and when, and iden-tifying the bias of the author. Later, they compare sources

and reach conclusions about the events or time periodsportra yed, and they discuss reasons for their differing in-terpreta tions.

Sounds like good history instruction, doesn’t it? Well,not necessarily.

Te a c h i n g H i s t o ry • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •


http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/primary-sources-in-history-breaking-through-the-myths 2/10746 PHI DELTA KAPPAN

For over a decade, I have suggested, along withmany other historians and educators, that teachersmake use of primary sources as an alternative to lec-tures, textbooks, and worksheets. Although such rec-ommendations are nothing new, they have recently begun to attract a larger following. Primary sources

can be found on tests, in commercially available pack-ets, in archives on the Internet, and even in textbooks.Many teachers use these resources in inspiring and in-tellectually rigorous ways. Researchers in social stud-ies and educational psychology, meanwhile, have in-vestigated how students (and teachers) make sense of such sources. Thus, even if their use is not as wide-spread as many reformers would like, primary sourcesclearly are the order of the day.

Unfortunately, the use of primary sources in eachof these settings often reveals fundamental misconcep-

tions about history. In some cases, scholars who havelittle experience with historical methods appear to bepassing along mistaken ideas about what historians do.In other cases, the use of primary sources seems to bedriven less by a concern with historical authenticity thanby demands for standards and accountability. The mis-understandings that arise from these practices, if not ad-dressed, will result in classroom procedures that are notonly inauthentic but irrelevant and ineffective. The fol-lowing are seven common beliefs about primary sourc-es. Some have been stated directly, either in academic

manuscripts or in books and articles for teachers; othersmay not have been articulated so explicitly, but they none-theless represent underlying assumptions of those whodefine the curriculum or of other educators. But eachone is a myth.

Myth 1. Pr i ma ry sources are more reliable than second-a ry sourc e s . Perhaps this is not the most common belief about primary sources, but it is surely the most ridicu-lous. Because primary sources were created during theperiod under study or by witnesses to historical events,some people believe that they provide direct insight in-

to the past and have greater authenticity than later ac-counts. Seconda ry sources, in this view, are corruptionsof the originals and are prone to successive layers of er-ror and bias. Some children hold exactly this view. They think we know about the past through oral stories thatha ve been handed down over the generations, and eachtransmission introduces a new round of mistakes, justas in the game of “telephone.”1

Few educators would entertain this misconception,yet they may believe that primary sources retain a puri-ty that makes them more reliable than secondary ac-

counts. However, primary sources are created for a va-riety of reasons, and some of those reasons have noth-ing to do with objectivity. Sometimes primary sourcesrepresent narrow or partisan perspectives; sometimesthey were created intentionally to deceive. The speechesof white politicians in the American South during Re-

construction are primary sources, for example, but a sec-onda ry work by a modern historian — although pub-lished over a hundred years later — is a far more relia-ble account of the era’s political system, because it doesnot attempt to justify white political dominance.

Secondary sources can also exhibit narrow perspec-tives, but they have the capability of providing morecomplete accounts than primary ones. Despite histori-a ns’ potential biases, as well as their human propensityfor error, they normally consult numerous primary sourc-

es when investigating a historical episode. Thus their ac-counts — the secondary sources they crea te — will tendto be more reliable than those found in any single pri-ma ry source. Newspapers, another common secondarysource, also require corroboration and supporting evi-dence — at least those printed in the modern era do.This does not make them infallible sources of objectiveinformation, but it does mean that a newspaper storyhas a higher probability of providing reliable informa-tion than would a primary source in isolation.

Ultimately, we cannot depend on any single source

— prima ry or secondary — for reliable knowledge; weha ve to consult multiple sources in our quest to devel-op historical understanding. Whether a source is pri-ma ry or secondary has no bearing on its relia bility, muchless on its usefulness for a given inquiry. The mistakenauthority assigned to primary sources sometimes resultsfrom a more basic confusion about the range of his-torical evidence, and this leads to the second myth.

Myth 2. Pr i ma ry sources can be read as arguments about the past. Some scholars suggest that primary sources canbe read just as any nonfiction texts are and that this

Ultimately, we cannot depend

on any single source — primary

or secondary — for reliable

knowledge; we have to consultmultiple sources in our quest to

develop historical understanding.



involves analyzing the structure and logic of their ar-guments. In this view, historical inquiry is one type of reading behavior. This myth is based on a misunder-standing of the variety of evidence used in historical in-vestigations. It equates all primary sources with one par-ticular type of document, known as “testimony.” Testi-

mony does involve texts written by those who witnessed(or claim to have witnessed) some occurrence. The col-lection of accounts by participants in the Battle at Lex-ington Green is a well-known example of this kind of source: officers, militiamen, and bystanders all gave ac-counts of what they remembered of the battle.2

Such testimony, however, represents only a small por-tion of the sources used by historians. Historians usecensus records, tax rolls, court proceedings, wills, deeds,photographs, advertisements, physical artifacts, and many other sources, none of which can be read as testimony,

because none was created to present an argument about what happened — or at least, not to present an argu-ment about what historians are investigating. Histori-ans ask questions of sources that the people who crea t-ed them had no interest in, and in many cases the cre-ators could not even have conceived of the questionshistorians ask.3 Census records in 19th-century Amer-ica, for example, were created to provide demographicinformation to the government, primarily for the pur-pose of determining congressional representation. His-torians, however, use them to examine issues such as

changing family structures and economic rela tions —questions that the records themselves were never meantto address.

In some of my own historical work, I have investi-gated how the hiring of slaves in antebellum Kentuck y

was motivated by changing norms for domestic labor(as women were no longer expected to perform house-hold drudgery) and how such hiring was made possi-ble by the expansion of market relations in the coun-try side.4 I relied, in part, on newspaper advertisementsthat offered slaves for hire, on guardia ns’ records that de-

tailed who hired the slaves of deceased owners, and oncorrespondence requesting to hire slaves from BrutusCla y, one of the state’s largest slaveholders. These rec-ords were not created to provide testimony about theinterrelationships of slave hiring, the market, and do-mestic labor in antebellum Kentucky. They were cre-ated to get the business of hiring done, by people whomay not even have recog nized that market relations anddomestic norms were changing. Moreover, the crea t-ors of these records certainly weren’t interested in doc-umenting such changes either for one another or for a

historian of the late 20th century. (Nor did they rea lizethey were living in the “antebellum” period.) The be-lief that primary sources function as textual argumentslays the foundation for the third, and most common,myth concerning primary sources.

Myth 3. Historians use a “s ourcing heuristic” to eva l ua t e

bias and re l i a bi l i t y. This is the most perva sive myth aboutprimary sources — at least in educational settings —and it demonstrates a fundamentally misguided under-standing of how historical knowledge is constructed.In this view, historians examine primary sources andspeculate on the extent to which they can be trusted topresent accurate accounts of past events. This involvestwo sets of considerations: first, the ability of the crea t-ors of the sources to accurately know those events (Werethey present? Were they deceived in some way? How soondid they produce their account?) and second, their in-

terest in conveying events accurately (Were they try ingto cover up something? Were they trying to curry favor? Were they blinded by prejudice of one kind or anoth-er?). This perspective on historical methodology leadsto classroom exercises in which students are given setsof sources and taught to evaluate the bias that may re-sult from authorship, purpose, time of creation, and soon — a process often referred to as “sourcing.”5

This view of primary sources is flawed for a numberof reasons. First, as noted above, it can apply only tothe class of sources known as testimony, which consti-

tutes only a small portion of the sources used by his-torians. When a source does not attempt to provide tes-timony, its reliability is rarely questioned because thereis no reason to do so. It is the very fact of the existenceof the source that constitutes historical evidence. Forexample, Brutus Clay’s account books contain numer-ous contracts with neighbors who hired slaves from him.There are no questions of bias or reliability to be asked



of these contracts, because it is their very existence thatprovides evidence of slave-hiring. Unless Clay was somentally disturbed that he spent his days fabricating these contracts, there is no reason to think that suchhiring did not take place. Historians do not work un-der the assumption of a worst-case scenario in which

people in the past invented misleading details of theirdaily lives to fool future scholars.Moreover, even when working with certain kinds of

testimony, questions of bias and reliability may be ir-relevant. Like many slaveholders, Brutus Clay placednotices in his local newspaper to announce the avail-

ability of slaves for hire; these often began by adver-tising “Good Cooks and Washers.” One could easily conclude that such advertisements were not reliable, be-cause Clay was trying to convince hirers that his slaves

were worthy. Thus he had a motive for referring to them

as “g ood” cooks and washers, whether they were or not.But historians are unlikely to be interested in whetherthese slaves really were good cooks and washers; histori-ans are interested in how slaveholders appealed to po-tential hirers, and again, it is the very existence of theadvertisements’ text that provides evidence to answerthis question.

In many circumstances, historians seek out sourcesprecisely because of their bias. To understand a va riety of viewpoints that were operative during the U.S. civilrights movement, for instance, historians — and stu-

dents — would need to read sources written from theperspectives of Malcolm X, George Wallace, the Bla ck Panthers, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com-mittee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,and others. Each of these would be “biased,” in thateach advocates a particular social and political agenda,but that does not make them useless as sources of his-torical knowledge. Quite the contrary. It is the uniquebias of each source that helps us understand the rangeof viewpoints people held at the time. A great deal of historical analysis is devoted to just this question: W ha t

were the ideas, attitudes, and beliefs of people in thepast? To answer the question, biased sources must beused, because that bias constitutes evidence of peoples’ideas. As Seán Lang points out, historians do not ask,“‘Is this source biased?’ (which suggests the possibilityof unbiased sources), but rather, ‘W ha t is this source’s

bias, and how does it add to our picture of the past?’”6

This is not to say that recognition of bias is unim-portant. All historical research involves considerationof bias, but it only occasionally involves examiningthe bias of particular sources, as many classroom exer-cises and research tasks suggest. Rather, historians aremore interested in the bias that results from the typesof sources that are used. Any set of sources constitutes a selection from among all the possible records that werecreated, or that could have been created. Some people(or institutions) left behind records whereas others did

not, and some records have surv ived whereas others havenot. Theref ore, historical remains are biased tow a rd those who produced records that have surv ived to the pres-ent.

For example, evidence for patterns of life in the Co-lonial Era is weighted tow a rd the literate and elite, be-cause these are the people who most often created en-during records. No individual source is necessarily un-reliable, but the overall body of evidence is weightedtow a rd particular segments of the population and is un-likely to be representa tive of those who left behind less

evidence of their ideas or behavior. In evaluating his-torical accounts, students should learn to look for therelationship between the kinds of claims made and thetypes of evidence used, but this is a far cry from having them look at individual sources and try to “spot thebias.” The mistaken belief that historians’ chief task isthe evaluation of bias in individual documents has ledto the next two myths of primary sources.

Myth 4. Using primary sources engages students in au-thentic historical inquiry . This myth often constitutesthe implicit rationale for including primary sources in

textbooks, on tests, or as part of classroom exercises. Themere presence of primary sources appears to lend au-thenticity to historical exercises. That is, historians usesuch sources, and if students use them, they too mustbe engaged in historical inquiry.

This myth stems from a lack of understanding of how historians use primary sources, and so it may be themost fundamental misunderstanding of all. Historia nsdo not often use sources in any of the ways that areusually identified by educators. That is, they are notprimarily concerned with “sourcing” them, corrobo-

A great deal of historical

analysis is devoted to just this

question: What were the ideas,attitudes, and beliefs of

people in the past?



rating them, or explaining their meaning. In fact, it would be rare for historians even to use the phrase “pri-ma ry sources,” except in a bibliography. What histori-ans work with is evidence . Primary sources are one of the most important forms of evidence, but the differ-ence between these two concepts shows just how far

educators’ ideas diverge from the work of historians.One common use of primary sources is to engagestudents in a “document-based activity,” either as a class-room lesson or as an assessment activity. At its simplestlevel, students may be given a single primary source andasked comprehension questions. For example, a copy of the North west Ordinance may be accompanied by ques-tions such as “What does this say about slavery? Aboutf ug itive slaves?” At a more sophisticated level, studentsa re given a variety of primary source documents, often

written from conflicting viewpoints, and asked to re-

spond to an essay question using the entire set. One Ad-vanced Placement document-based question, for exam-ple, asked, “To what extent had the colonists developeda sense of their identity and unity as Americans by theeve of the Revolution?” The sources provided includedprivate correspondence, a speech in the British Pa rlia-ment, a declaration by the Continental Congress, pub-lished works from the 18th century, a list of relief do-

nations, and the famous “Join, or die” illustration.7

Neither activity engages students in authentic his-torical inquiry. The first requires only basic compre-hension of a text, yet it is difficult to complete becauseof the antiquated and legalistic language of the docu-ment. The second is more complicated, but it is no more

authentic, because the task has been created outsidethe context of historical research. That is, the sourcesha ve already been chosen, and the students are simply asked to explain what they mean. But historians do not

work with “source packets,” and they would never al-low anyone else to select their sources for them.8 His-torians ask questions about the past, and they seek evi-dence that will help answer those questions. They se-lect the evidence themselves, and they do so preciselybecause of its authorship and purpose. They do not an-a ly ze sources in the ways suggested either by document-

based questions or by resea rch on sourcing, because they ha ve no reason to work with other people’s collectionsof documents.

Myth 5. Students can build up an understanding of the past through primary sources . Many of us are prone tothe belief that, if a little is a good, a lot must be better.So if working with primary sources helps students bet-ter understand history, then spending all their time withsuch sources will improve students’ understanding im-measurably. Evidence suggests that this assumption isincorrect. But it makes little sense to think that know l-

edge of a subject as vast as history could be built upentirely through piecemeal analysis of primary sources.How many thousands of sources would students haveto consult to develop an understanding of the Indus-trial Revolution, or the history of women’s rights, or thereasons for the Vietnam War? Students don’t need toconsult 200 years of census records to learn how thepopulation of the U.S. has grown; they can simply betold or read it in a book. They should know that s ome-one has consulted the records, but doing so themselves

would be a misuse of their time.

Moreover, students’ ability to make sense of primary sources depends directly on their understanding of thecontexts in which the documents were produced. Stu-dents can learn a great deal about slavery from adver-tisements for runaways, for example, but to do so theyneed background information: what life was like forslaves, what their legal status was, what the geographyof the region was, and what means of transportation

were available. Simila rly, students will be able to inter-pret Ma rtin Luther King’s “I Ha ve a Drea m” speech only if they know that African Americans at the time faced



segregation and legal discrimination, that the speech was part of a larger movement for civil rights, and thatKing was a leader of that movement. They also mustunderstand his references to the Declaration of Inde-pendence and the Emancipation Proclamation, or elsethe speech will be unintelligible.

None of these things can be read directly from thesources themselves; students need to encounter expla-nations of these topics in secondary sources — a teach-er’s description, a passage in a trade book, or a file insome electronic medium. Historians do the same. Al-though they use primary sources as evidence, they wouldbe unable to do so without knowledge of the larger frame-

work of the past, and this comes from having read theseconda ry works of other historians. Without prior know l-edge, sources are literally incomprehensible, and it is im-possible to construct meaning from them.9

Myth 6. Primary sources are fun. Although numer-ous publications have described students’ motivationand enthusiasm when using primary sources, such sourc-es are not inherently interesting, and students do not al-

ways enjoy working with them. Educators in the UnitedKingdom, where “sourcew ork” has featured prominent-ly in history classrooms for many years, have becomeacutely aware of how sources can be used in ways thata re neither exciting nor motivating — and certainly notfun. The use of primary sources is an expected part of history classrooms in both primary and secondary schools

there, but sources sometimes become the focus of iso-lated lessons that are separated from specific historicalk nowledge or meaningful inquiry. That is, teachers some-times simply assign sources to see if students can ex-tract information and identify bias, and such “source-

w ork for sourcew ork’s sake” becomes mechanistic anddull. British history educators even have a name for thispractice: “Death by sources.”10

The use of sources in North America may be head-ing down the same path. Countless lesson plans for pri-ma ry sources are available commercially and throug h

g overnment or nonprofit websites, but these lessons of-ten emphasize the same mechanistic approach that Brit-ish educators are coming to avoid. Too often, studentsa re simply presented with a document — one that may have no connection to their prior knowledge, experi-ence, or interests — and asked to identify when it was

written, by whom, and for what purpose. In exerciseslike these, the ability of primary sources to raise ques-tions, inspire wonder, and provide evidence is lost, andstudents may find themselves completing boring andirrelevant tasks that transform their initial interest in

history into active avoidance and dislike. Myth 7. Sources can be classified as “pr i ma ry” or “s e c ond-

ary.” Sometimes students are taught that certain sourc-es (such as diaries, photographs, wills, depositions, andso on) are primary ones, because they were producedby direct participants in the events of the past, while

other sources (usually newspapers and the works of his-torians) are secondary, because their authors were notpresent during the events. (Textbooks and ref erence work soften are considered “tertiary,” because they are a fur-ther step removed from primary sources.) Yet just as itis impossible to determine a word’s part of speech with-out knowing how it functions in a sentence, there is no

way to identify a source as primary or secondary with-out knowing how it is used as evidence.

The nature of a source does not derive from the kindof object it is (i.e., a letter versus a textbook), but from

the purpose it serves in a historical investigation. If ahistorian (or a history student) wants to know how text-books of the 1940s portra yed interactions between Na-tive Americans and Europeans in the 18th century, thenthose textbooks are primary sources; for informationon the interactions themselves, however, they are by nomeans primary. Simila rly, if we want to know what Georg e

Washington thought about British treatment of pris-oners of war, his letters are primary sources, but if we

want to know how those soldiers actually were trea ted,the same letters are secondary sources. The simple fact

that a document is a textbook or a letter provides noindication of whether it should be classified as primaryor secondary.

Furthermore, some sources defy categorization al-together. A documentary about World War II, for ex-ample, seems like a secondary source because it wasproduced by someone not present during the war, yetit may be composed entirely of photographs, new sreelfootage, and interv iews with participa nts — each oneof which is a primary source. However, these primarysources will have been edited to shape the overall ac-

count that is presented in the film. Can a collection of prima ry sources be transformed into a secondary sourcesimply because it has been arranged in a particular way?If so, then there can be no primary sources at all, be-cause we do not have complete and unmediated accessto the past: all historical sources have been shaped bythe circumstances of their creation and preservation.

Ultimately, we might be better off jettisoning themisleading distinction between primary and secondary sources altogether. A more inclusive phrase such as “orig-inal historical sources” might help counter the belief



that sources can be sorted into neat categories that areindependent of any broader historical inquiry.

WORKING with original historicalsources can be more interesting than reading from a textbook or

listening to a lecture. Such sourcescan create personal connectionsto history, as students read the words written by liv-ing, breathing humans like themselves. (Students don’ttypically view textbook authors as real people.) Visua levidence such as photographs, art w ork, and advertise-ments, meanwhile, can tap into alternative forms of prior knowledge and increase access to history for stu-dents who do not respond well to written texts. Andmaterial artifacts that students can touch and manipu-late — such as old tools, clothes, or appliances — can

be popular additions to the classroom. Indeed, muchthe same could be said for historical fiction, games andsimulations, or role plays and dramas. What, then, arethe unique contributions of original historical sources,the functions they can serve better — and more authen-tically — than other approaches? There are at least four:

1. To motivate historical inquiry. Much of the poten-tial of original historical sources lies in their ability tostimulate curiosity, just as “discrepant events” do in sci-ence. Science teachers often use physical demonstra-tions (such as objects of unequal weight falling at the

same speed) to pique student interest and create cog-nitive dissonance. Students usually cannot explain suchevents using their prior mental framew orks, and whenthey face tangible evidence of such limitations, they mightbe motivated to engage in further study and investig a-tion. People generally strive for more consistent and com-prehensive views of the world, and direct observationcan reveal gaps and fault lines in previous conceptualunderstanding. In history, original sources can servemuch the same function.

Sta rtling or unusual sources — whether physical arti-

facts, visual images, or written text — often provoke ques-tions. Elementa ry students who explore household objects from the 19th century, for example, may wonder what their purpose was and how they were used. Photo-graphs of white resistance to school integration can leadmiddle school students to ask what was going on, why it was controversial, and what happened to the peopleinvolved. And secondary students who examine certif-icates of indenture, advertisements, property lists, andlegal statutes from the early Colonial Era can develophypotheses about relationships between race, national-

ity, religion, and legal status.11 All these questions shouldlead to self-motivated inquiry. But such questions willnot develop automatically, because few sources are in-herently interesting. Teachers must help develop stu-dents’ engagement through careful probing and discus-sion.

2. To supply evidence for historical accounts. Most schol-ars who advocate the reform of history education ar-gue that students need to understand how historicalaccounts are created. This argument has been the im-petus for much of the attention to original sources in

recent years. There are, however, at least three ways in which sources can contribute to this goal, and educa-tors need to strike a balance among the three. The firstis the most familiar: in order to learn that historical ac-counts a re tentative and that they are based on incom-plete and sometimes conflicting evidence, students canbe given a set of documents, such as those in the Lex-

ington Green activity, and asked to reach conclusionsabout questions such as “Who fired the first shot?” Thisis similar to a laboratory exercise in science in that itprovides practice with authentic materials, but the out-come is known in advance — even if, in this case, theoutcome is that we cannot be certain who fired first.Such exercises are important, but they should be usedsparingly. Students need to learn about the indeter-minacy of historical sources, particularly if they havenever encountered the topic before, but the goal of suchlessons should be to prepa re students to investigate more

open-ended questions.Such open-ended investigation involves using evi-dence to build supportable accounts of the past, andthis should be one of the main activities of the historycla ssroom. Evidence comes in part from original sourc-es, but it can also come from those usually classified asseconda ry. A student presentation on how women didla undry in the early 20th century, for example, is like-ly to be based on what students have read in encyclo-pedias and trade books, and it may also involve illus-trations taken from magazines of the time, artifacts

Much of the potential of

original historical sources lies in

their ability to stimulate curiosity,

just as “discrepant events”do in science.



such as irons, and perhaps interv iews with grea t-g ra nd-pa rents. Simila rly, students who investigate desegreg a-tion a re likely to use trade books and ref erence work s,memoirs of participants, photographs and televised new sfootage, and newspaper articles from the 1950s and 1960s.In both these cases, the students would be doing just

what historians do: using a variety of sources to supportconclusions about what happened and why. The only time they are likely to rely exclusively on original sourc-es is when they are investigating a topic for which therea re no secondary sources — such as the history of theirown family or perhaps of the local community.

One further use of sources as evidence deserves men-tion. Although it is not often seen in schools, it shouldbe. This involves the careful analysis of how sources havebeen used as evidence in the accounts produced by ot he r s .

When students read a textbook or a trade book, when

they watch a documentary, or when they hear someonerefer to how life used to be, they should immediately ask, “What kind of evidence is this based on?” The pur-pose of such questioning is not to dismiss every his-torical account as “just an opinion.” It is, instead, tounderstand better the strengths and limitations of thoseaccounts and to appreciate how conclusions and per-spectives might vary if different evidence were used.Students should be able to recog nize, for example, thatan account of gender roles in the 19th century that isbased on popular magazines may represent expectations

of the white middle class, while census records couldprovide a different picture. Indeed, some people may not have shared the expectations or experiences depict-ed in the magazines at all. This is perhaps the most au-thentic use of primary sources, because in our adult livesmost of us only occasionally create our own historicalaccounts, but we are surrounded by the accounts of oth-ers, and we need to view them with an appropriately critical eye.

3. To convey informa-tion about the past. A ba-

sic principle of instruc-tion is that lectures are ap-propriate when students

will learn from them justas well as if they had lo-cated the information ontheir own. Students don’tneed to read the North-

west Ordinance to findout that it provided forthe return of slaves who

had escaped to certain states in the North. Telling themthat information is just as effective — and much moreefficient — than having them scour the document tolocate it themselves. Sometimes, though, original sourc-es can be a more effective way of conveying informa-tion. Teachers who want students to visualize a miners’

strike in the 1920s aren’t going to laboriously describethe scene in words; they’re going to show photographs.Simila rly, oral or written explanations of historical chang-es in architecture, fashion, or technology won’t be near-ly as effective as having students look at pictures or ar-tifacts that represent those same changes. This kind ofinformation is best conveyed through visual media,and original historical sources can supply such imag-es.

Other times, written historical sources are more elo-quent and thoughtful than secondary ones, and so stu-

dents should study them directly. We still listen to the“I Have a Dream” speech, not only because it had animpact on historical events but because we want to know

what Ma rtin Luther King said and how he said it. There’sno point in trying to paraphrase the speech — Kinggot it right, and we can learn what he said through di-rect engagement with his words. Simila rly, the Decla-ration of Independence, the Seneca Falls Declaration,and many other public documents represent clear andinspiring statements of principle, and studying them on-ly through lectures or textbooks — without reading the

original text — would devalue them. By contrast, stu-dents can learn about the significance of some docu-ments without reading them directly; they would losenothing in a paraphrase of the Northwest Ordinance,for example, or even of the Magna Carta.

4. To provide insight into the thoughts and experiences of people in the past. Some historical information cansimply be conveyed, but other times students have to

work harder to construct meaningful understanding.This is especially true whenthey are trying to under-

stand the lives and expe-riences of people in thepast. Students could rea din a textbook that life wasdifficult for settlers trav-eling West in the 1800s,but that would providethem with only superfi-cial knowledge. Thoug ht-ful engagement with orig-inal historical sources, such



as diaries, letters, and published works, would enablestudents to construct a more complete understanding,

with more specificity and detail. Simila rly, reading the words of 18th-century Native Americans would allow students to develop greater insight into the meaning that settlement, removal, and warfare held for people

affected directly by those events. The greater depth andrichness of original sources in these cases allows stu-dents to construct a more complex and nuanced un-derstanding of past life than most textbooks or lec-tures are likely to do.

This is one of the most rewarding uses of originalhistorical sources, as anyone who has struggled to un-derstand people in the past will recognize. Just what

were these people trying to say? What did they think about the choices they were making, and what rea sonsdid they give for their actions? How did they feel about

their lives and circumstances, their triumphs and trage-dies? What hopes and dreams did they entertain, and what were their everyday feelings and opinions? Text-books and lectures, by themselves, cannot easily com-municate such thoughts and experiences, and even themost eloquent historians include quotations from orig-inal sources throughout their works. By carefully rea d-ing these sources and considering their meaning, wereach our own conclusions about how people in the pastexperienced their lives. In this way, original sources areused not just to establish the existence of historical trends

and events but to provide insight into the meaning they held for people who lived through them.

Ef f ective use of original historical sources requires care-ful attention to their educational purposes. Each of themyths in this article derives from the assumption thatanalyzing sources constitutes an end in itself — as thoughmeaning inheres in the sources rather than in the usesto which they are put. The instructional activities thatresult from this assumption and its associated myths canstand in the way of effective history instruction. If stu-

dents work with sources in isolation — “sourcing” them,spotting bias, answering comprehension questions —then they will not learn very much historical content,they will not learn how historical knowledge is construct-ed, and they will not learn to use evidence to reach con-clusions about issues that face them as citizens.

Each of these important goals of learning history de-pends on using sources within a context of inquiry. Suchinquiry requires that students develop and pursue mean-ingful questions, that they make informed choices aboutthe evidence that can be used to answer those questions,

and that they gain experience drawing conclusions fromevidence. This process requires more than the analysisof original sources themselves. It requires learning abouthistorical context through lectures, books, or other media;it requires learning about the range of historical evidence;and it requires learning how sources are used as evidence

in the accounts produced by historians and others.Original sources should certainly be a centerpiece of the history classroom, because they are the foundationof historical knowledge. However, their use should beinformed by a more complete and ref lective understand-ing of their utility, rather than by popular but misguidedmyths.

1. Keith C. Barton, “Primary Children’s Understanding of the Role ofHistorical Evidence: Comparisons Bet ween the United States and North-ern Ireland,” International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching, and Re s e a rc h, June 2001, available at www.ex .a c.uk /history resource/ journa l2/

journalstart.htm.2. Peter S. Bennett, What Happened on Lexington Green? An Inq ui ry intothe Nature and Methods of History (Menlo Park, Calif.: Addison-Wesley,1970).

3. Denis Shemilt, “Adolescent Ideas About Evidence and Methodologyin History,” in Christopher Portal, ed., The History Curriculum for Teach-ers (London: Heinemann, 1987), pp. 39-61.

4. Keith C. Ba rton, “ ‘Good Cooks and Wa shers’: Sla ve Hiring, DomesticLa bor, and the Ma rket in Bourbon County, Kentuck y,” Journal of Ame r i-can History , September 1997, pp. 436-60.

5. A number of resea rchers have used similar tasks as a way of eva lua tingthe nature of students’ or teachers’ historical thinking. See, for exam-ple, Keith C. Barton, “ ‘I Just Kinda Know’: Elementary Students’ Ideas

About Historical Evidence,” Theory and Research in Social Education,

Fall 1997, pp. 407-30; Bruce A. VanSledright, “Fifth-Graders Investigat-ing History in the Classroom: Results from a Resea rcher-Practitioner De-sign Experiment,” El e me nt a ry School Journa l , November 2002, pp. 131-60;Samuel S. Wineburg, “On the Reading of Historical Texts: Notes on theBreach Between School and Academy,” American Educational Research

Journa l , Fall 1991, pp. 495-519; and Elizabeth A. Yeager and O. L. Da v is, Jr., “Classroom Teachers’ Thinking About Historical Texts: An Explor-atory Study,” Theory and Research in Social Education, Spring 1996, pp.146-66.

6. Seán Lang, “What Is Bias?,” Teaching History , October 1993, p. 10;and Tony McAleavy, “The Use of Sources in School History 1910-1998:

A Critical Perspective,” Teaching History , May 1998, pp. 10-16.

7. Greater Cincinnati Television Educational Foundation, “Lesson 1: Pri-mary Sources Provide Context for the Underground Railroad,” avail-

able from http://safepassageohio.org /resources/Lessonl.pdf; and College En-trance Examination Board, “The Document-Based Question (DBQ),”a vailable from www.colleg eboa rd.com/a p/history /html/dbq001.html.

8. S. G. Grant, Jill M. Gradwell, and Sandra K. Cimbricz, “A Questionof Authenticity: The Document-Based Question as an Assessment of Stu-dents’ Knowledge of History,” Journal of Curriculum and Supervision,Summer 2004, p. 326.

9. Bruce Va nSledright and Peter Afflerbach, “Reconstructing Andrew Ja ck-son: Prospective Elementary Teachers’ Reading of Revisionist HistoryTexts,”T he ory and Re s e a rch in Social Ed uc a t i on, Summer 2000, pp. 411-44.

10. Christine Counsel, “Editorial,” Teaching History, May 1998, p. 3.

11. David Gerwin and Jack Zevin, Teaching World Hi s t ory as My s t e ry (Ports-mouth, N.H.: Heinemann, forthcoming). K


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