K-12 Social Studies teachers will talk with their students about primary and secondary sources in a couple of weeks, either as the first history lessons of the year or as review to see what they’ve forgotten over the summer. It’s easy to stick to the basic and concrete – primary sources are contemporary evidence of the past, and secondary sources are everything else.
Elementary students will learn that the text of the “I have a Dream” speech is a primary source, while their textbook accounting of it is a secondary source. High school students might wrestle with a little more complexity, both Captain Thomas Preston’s trial testimony and Paul Revere’s engraving were contemporary to the Boston Massacre, but only Preston was actually there, so his account is a primary source and Revere’s is a secondary source. In fact, he may have even copied his famous engraving
These primary and secondary source lessons are concrete and clear-cut. Even better, they’re easy to test. Anyone who has ever taught social studies knows that history itself is none of things.
A textbook is a secondary source, unless you are using it to study the way history textbooks have changed over time. John Adams’s account of the independence debates are primary sources, because he was there. But what about his accounts of those debates written 40 years later? Is he still a primary source?
Teachers shouldn’t leave students with simple explanations of primary and secondary sources, they should help them wrestle with exceptions like these – and here’s a way they can do just that.
Put ten examples of evidence in front of students in a Google form survey, asking them to decide it each is a primary or secondary source – or both. Then pull the results up on the screen as fodder for a whole-class discussion. I’ve done this with teachers in department meetings and team taught it with 4th grade students. Trust me, it works.
So how do I do this?
Make your own copy of the Primary and Secondary Sources Quiz and explain to your students that they have to complete the quiz by choosing one answer for each question. Each question has an example of historical evidence that they have to classify as
- A) Primary Source
- B) Secondary Source
- C) Both
Tell your students they are going to take a practice quiz with ten questions, which they will do by themselves or with a partner before you will go over it with them as a class. There are ten questions, give students as much time as they need to think through them and answer each – either on their own or in a discussion with a partner. The quiz includes things they’ve never thought about as evidence, neither have you, a lock of hair, a product sold by Amazon and not one, but two, teachers.
Important – force them to pick one answer, they have to choose either Primary, Secondary, or Both. They also have to be prepared to share their explanation as to how the evidence can be classified that way.
You can then use the aggregate results to fuel a whole-class discussion with students about every question, talking about the ways in which the evidence is strictly an example of a primary source or a secondary source. You might have some pretty interesting questions when you have students who choose “both”.
The “both” response opens up a wide spectrum of conversations about this evidence and makes it almost impossible to say any answer is right or wrong. This practice quiz gives both you and the students the permission to talk about good reasons for one answer and good reasons for another answer – then just leave it at that. This will allow you to say – “you know, I really don’t know”.
So …. What are the answers, really, can you tell me?
Nope, didn’t you just read that there are no “right” or “wrong” answers? See how difficult it is to break this habit?
This is a painting of George Washington was painted by Gilbert Stuart in 1796. Washington “sat” for the painting, meaning he posed for it. Because it was painted in 1796 and Washington stood in front of the painter, there’s little reason to say this is anything but a “primary” source.
One could get a little abstract and say that the artist interpreted the subject while painting him, making it a “secondary” source, but not many people would agree. Stuart painted two portraits of Washington, this one is referred to as the “Lansdowne” portrait, the other is used as the model for Washington’s image on the one dollar bill. You can learn more about this painting here
Would “both” be a better answer?
This one is a little more tricky. The actor portraying Lincoln is clearly a secondary source, but what about the speech he is reading? The speech by itself is a primary source, you might even be able to go to the national archives and see the original written by Lincoln, in his handwriting, on a piece of paper that is only 160 years old. If that is a primary source, does the reading of it by an actor in the 1990s make it a secondary source? Is the actor going to read the speech with the same tone and inflection as Lincoln when he gave the speech himself? Does that interpretation make it a secondary source?
This one should be easy – the letter written by Thomas Jefferson to his daughter is clearly a primary source. It’s good to show students that historical figures were people long before they became historical figures. Jefferson’s letters to “Patsy” (Martha) in the fall of 1783 reveal a man trying to raise his children from a distance, five years after their mother passed away. In this letter he tells his daughter “I expect you will write to me by every post. Inform me what books you read, what tunes you learn, and inclose me your best copy of every lesson in drawing”. You can tell your students that Thomas Jefferson gave his daughter homework. He also advised her “Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word consider how it is spelt, and if you do not remember it, turn to a dictionary.”
You can read the rest of the letter here. You might be surprised by the fashion advice he gave his daughter in
this letter.
One more thing, it might help to remind students how nosy historians are. We are reading someone else’s
mail. We also read their private journals and diaries if we can get our hands on them. Some of the people of the past knew this, and made sure in some cases to protect those they loved and made sure that some of their lives would remain private. Letters exchanged between Jefferson and his wife Martha do not survive, he destroyed them.
This might be an easy one – it has to be a secondary source, right? It was written in 2017, long after the Revolutionary War. But the author includes quotes from the diary of Joseph Plumb Martin. Martin’s diary is used by many historians. Would students change their mind if there are quotes from primary sources in this book?
The quotes might be primary, but didn’t the author decide what quotes to include and which ones to ignore? Does that return it to secondary status?
Most adults you ask would probably say that the footage of the launch of Apollo 11 is a primary source. Do you students know that the United States was able to create a vehicle that allowed humans to travel more than a quarter million miles to the moon so they could get out of the craft, walk around on the moon, pick up some rocks, and travel all the way back alive?
If we are not certain of an event, how can we identify if a source is primary or secondary?
Photographic evidence is very tricky as a primary source, images can be modified and changed. Don’t think this just happened with recent technology, Stalin was photoshopping his enemies out of pictures in the early days of photography.
This allows you to talk about the fact that “primary” doesn’t always mean better evidence and secondary
doesn’t always mean worse. They both have their advantages and disadvantages. This question will probably provoke the most debate.
First, let’s establish the authenticity of this, here is a post from the Library of Congress that should settle that question. Yes, this is really some of James Madison’s hair. He gifted it along with a portrait of himself to a
young lady he was trying to impress, Catherine “Kitty” Floyd. They were even engaged for a short time, though she broke off the relationship. If they did get married, we wouldn’t have Dolly Madison to talk about.
Anyone that starts reading about the past is going to realize that the past is not just stranger than you think – the past is stranger than you can think. Madison’s first fiancé is a case in point, he was 32 when he proposed, she was 15. If you’re interested, here’s the rest of the story. And a more detailed version is here.
This one should be easy, and most students should be familiar with it. This is clearly a secondary source. It’s fair to say that the woman who would go down in history had little , if anything in common with the Disney version. So this is a secondary source, right?
But what if you are a graduate student writing a thesis on the “disneyfication” of history in the late 20th century? If you are doing this history of movies like this, this is a primary source, not a secondary source. See how this works?
This statute is a gift sold on amazon. It might look exactly life the statue in the Lincoln Memorial, but it is not the memorial itself. That makes it a secondary source, right? Isn’t this like the Washington painting we started with? If the Washington painting is a primary source, shouldn’t the Lincoln statue be a primary source also?
The Lincoln memorial was dedicated in 1922, long after Lincoln died. But not so long that his son could not attend the ceremony.
Teachers might always be considered secondary sources. But what happens when they read a primary source document aloud does that make them “primary” sources. Like many of these, we have to say “it depends”
I hope someone who happens to come across this suggestion gives it a shot. If that’s you, let me know how it went.
