I've worked with primary sources for years as part of the International
Baccalaureate curriculum, and the confusion over primary sources never
seems to go away. Most people have trouble telling primary sources from
secondary sources. The best way I've found to take care of the problem
is to continually hammer home the idea of what a primary source is, and
then to get kids to analyze the document for its reliability and
veracity. If you do this often enough the kids can figure it out.
However, as Susan point out, many adults and teachers don't always know
the difference, so it can get tough.
The other comment I have is that working with primary documents has,
until the advent of the internet, been something that very few have been
able to do. So, many of us are re-inventing the wheel on this one.
Plus, when you see the mistakes trained historians sometimes make when
dealing with primary sources, we can view our kids as not all that far
off the mark.
Brett Silva
Susan Veccia wrote:
>
> The confusion about primary vs. secondary sources is one that goes
> back to
> the very early days of American Memory when we did the first user
> evaluation. In many cases, what I found when I did field interviews
> was
> that *many* students and also teachers thought the special
> presentations or
> "exhibits" were the primary source collections themselves. Many, many
> people
> had difficulty distinguishing the difference between the two. American
> Memory collections that employ both primary and secondary sources
> provide a
> great opportunity to teach research methods, and examining sources is
> an
> integral part of this process. When we wrote the grant application to
> Kellogg that initially funded this educational outreach program, we
> stated
> that "raising the visibility of primary sources" was a fundamental
> goal.
> And, it continues to be just as valid today as it was then.
>
> I am convinced that as this corpus of primary source materials grows
> and as
> more and more people have access to it, we will learn "to read"
> sources more
> independently and with more care. The notion of "instant access" in
> this
> electronic world is both good and bad. On the one hand, we have
> access to
> stuff we never had before. On the other hand, because it sometimes
> seems so
> easy, we can get sidetracked from the real issue of synthesis: What
> does it
> mean?
>
> At 08:25 AM 10/11/97 -500, you wrote:
> >Thanks, Bill, for the thoughtful post on your's and Harlene's
> project. I
> >was particularly interested in your statement:
> >>Students have initially found the American Memory site complex to
> use, but
> >>as their familiarity with it grew, it became easier to find
> material. Some
> >>students mistook background statements and overviews of the
> collections for
> >>primary sources themselves, and I corrected them as we went along.
> >This fascinates me. I've become very interested in how people read
> such
> >material. What happens when kids read so that they mistake
> >overviews/background material for primary sources?
> Susan Veccia, Educational Resources Specialist
> National Digital Library
> Library of Congress
> email: [log in to unmask] voice: 202/707-6151 fax: 202/252-3173
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