(From the National Center for History in the Schools @ UCLA)
One of the most common problems in helping students to become thoughtful readers of historical
narrative is the compulsion students feel to find the one right answer, the one essential fact, the one
authoritative interpretation. "Am I on the right track?" "Is this what you want?" they ask. Or, worse yet,
they rush to closure, reporting back as self-evident truths the facts or conclusions presented in the
document or text.
These problems are deeply rooted in the conventional ways in which textbooks have presented history:
a succession of facts marching straight to a settled outcome. To overcome these problems requires the
use of more than a single source: of history books other than textbooks and of a rich variety of historical
documents and artifacts that present alternative voices, accounts, and interpretations or perspectives
on the past.(PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SOURCES -see below*)
Written history is a human construction that many judgments about the past are tentative and arguable,
and that historians regard their work as critical inquiry, pursued as ongoing explorations and debates
with other historians. On the other hand, careful research can resolve cloudy issues from the past and
can overturn previous arguments and theses. By their active engagement in historical inquiry, students
will learn for themselves why historians are continuously reinterpreting the past, and why new
interpretations emerge not only from uncovering new evidence but from rethinking old evidence in the
light of new ideas springing up in our own times. Students then can also see why the good historian, like
the good teacher, is interested not in manipulation or indoctrination but in acting as an honest
messenger from the past--not interested in possessing student's minds but in presenting them with the
power to possess their own
*Primary and Secondary Sources and How to Use them
(Andrea, Alfred J., and James H. Overfield. The Human Record: Sources of Global History. 7th ed.
Boston: Cengage Learning, 2012.)
No one can understand history without reading and analyzing primary sources. Simply defined, in most
instances, primary sources are historical records produced at the same time the event or period that is
being studied took place or soon thereafter.
Secondary sources- text books, books, articles, television documentaries, and even historical films
produced well after the events they describe and analyze. Secondary sources organize the jumble of
past events into understandable narratives. They provide interpretations, sometimes make
comparisons, and almost always discuss motive and causation. When done well, they provide pleasure
and insight. But such works, no matter how well done, are still secondary in that they are written well
after the fact and derive their evidence and information from primary sources.
To be a historian is to work with primary sources in all their diverse forms: The keys are hard work and
imagination, each is necessary…. Historians need imagination to reconstruct the past. History does not
consist of just irrefutable dates, names, and facts…documents provide factual data- dates, names,
statistics…etc…yet they have no meaning until they have been interpreted.
The Historian as detective…the historian is interested in discovering “what happened, who did it, and
why”… the historian must carefully examine witnesses (testimony of sources) and evaluate the validity
of the source, is it valid, or misleading, from what perspective or interest does the source testify… Even
eyewitness accounts can differ widely… Given this fact the historian must understand the sources
perspective and must ask several key questions….What kind of Document is it? Who wrote it? For
whom and why? Where was it composed and When? Discovering the nature of the source…what kind
of info can you expect to find in it? Can you accept all sources uncritically…they must be tested against
other sources… distance in space and time can influence perceptions and diminish the reliability of the
source.
Often there are no “answers” just more questions… the student historian/detective has to be able to
question…and in doing so begin to create a multi-dimensional view of the past…and realize that the
present and future are as equally multi- dimensional… realizing that any “truth” is relative and sensitive
to the time and place it is constructed.