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to The Boisterous Sea of Liberty Teaching Guide
Building
Student Skills
Like
a detective, a historian must reconstruct past events out of various
pieces of evidence. Historians typically rely on written documents-letters,
diaries, memoirs, newspapers, and government reports.
Some of this
evidence is reliable; other pieces of evidence are less trustworthy,
but valuable nonetheless. Still other pieces of evidence are misleading
or even fraudulent. Evaluating the evidence and interpreting its
meaning is one of the most difficult tasks a historian faces.
Generally,
historians consider "primary sources" to be the most
reliable source of historical documentation. A primary source
is an observer's first-hand account of a historical event. Yet
even primary sources raise difficult issues of assessment. It
is important to know whether a document was written at the time
an event took place or later; whether the document's author was
involved in the event or was an "impartial" observer;
and whether the author had ulterior motives for writing the document.
One of the
basic skills that all students need to learn is how to interpret
a historical document. After closely reading the document, the
students must respond constructively and analytically to the ideas
advanced in the text. It is useful for students to conceive of
the process of interpreting a historical document in terms of
a series of questions:
1.
Who wrote the document? What assumptions guide the author's
arguments?
2.
When was the document composed? What other events occurred around
the same time?
3.
For what purposes was the document composed? What evidence does
the document present to support its argument?
4.
How reliable do you consider the document as a source of factual
information?
5.
What information does the document convey?
6.
What is the document's historical significance?
7.
How does this information compare with other sources, of greater
or lesser reliability?
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