Using Secondary Sources in High School History
Teachers can use differing interpretations of historical events to help students move from memorizing events to analyzing and interpreting them.
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History is not just “what happened” or a series of events to be memorized. History is the human experience: real people’s lives, decisions, fears, and failures. Historians delve into this complexity by asking meaningful questions, evaluating evidence, making connections across time periods, and forming arguments.
The results of their analysis and interpretation are what we call secondary sources. As a high school history teacher, I use secondary sources to promote curiosity, engage students to evaluate evidence within an argument, and realize that history is complex—because it is about people’s lives. For students, this becomes much more meaningful than memorizing a list of facts.
How to teach with secondary sources
Most historical articles are too lengthy and complex to be accessible for most students. High school teachers don’t have time to dedicate multiple class periods for students to read an entire article about a specific historical topic, especially one that covers only one standard.
However, reading excerpts, such as those that consist of just a few paragraphs, can easily be done in small groups or individually during a single class period. Using a meaningful excerpt can allow students to practice the skill of interpretation, which might even result in an argument that contradicts their textbook. This practice can also help students appreciate the nuance that goes into history and how different historians can view the same development differently.
When presenting secondary sources, teachers should guide students through practices that promote evaluation of the author’s argument. First, as students are reading an excerpt, they should annotate or underline key names and vocabulary. Annotation helps students to actively read. Second, the main argument in historical articles often appears near the beginning, and paying attention to topic sentences in each paragraph will help students to identify that argument. Third, when possible, teachers can ask students how the author’s argument is different or unique compared with other writings. Fourth, historians write their arguments using historical evidence. As students are reading through the excerpt, they should circle or highlight the evidence used to support the argument, and then evaluate whether or not the evidence effectively supports the argument. Students will learn: Just because it is written does not make it true.
An example from the New Deal
Historians debate the New Deal and how it changed the role of the federal government and American society. Did the New Deal uphold capitalism or challenge it? How successful was the New Deal in combating the Great Depression? Should President Franklin D. Roosevelt have done more?
Historical scholarship is abundant for the New Deal. In my class, I use excerpts from A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn (in which he argues that the New Deal left the capitalist structure in the U.S. largely untouched), and The American Nation, by John A. Garraty and Robert A. McCaughey (in which the authors argue that the New Deal brought fundamental changes by embracing social welfare for citizens).
I have students read four paragraphs in each and identify how each source views the New Deal. After they evaluate the evidence that supports each source’s argument, I ask students which argument they think is stronger, and we discuss it as a class. By simply evaluating arguments, students move from being able to recite “what happened” to understanding how history can be interpreted differently.
Dueling Historians in AP U.S. History
What I have just described is nothing new to teachers of AP U.S. History (APUSH). The “dueling historians” short answer question on the APUSH exam asks students to explain the difference between two historians’ interpretations of a specific event (a difference that is always far more complex than “positive” versus “negative”). The next two questions ask students to cite and explain evidence from a specific time period that supports each interpretation. Recent Chief Reader reports for APUSH make it very clear that this question is challenging for students, and the recommendation is to prepare them by embracing secondary sources throughout the school year.
Where to find SEcondary sources
The most difficult part of teaching with secondary sources is finding good excerpts. Obvious databases include JSTOR and ProQuest, but mining the treasures in these sites is time-consuming. My favorite work for secondary sources is Historical Moments: Changing Interpretations of America’s Past, which includes excerpts of up to seven secondary sources for various topics throughout U.S. history. Teachers are able to see how historians’ interpretations have changed over time and can choose which excerpts to provide to students. Additionally, John Irish’s book Historical Thinking Skills contains a section with dueling historians for students to analyze.
When Peter Stearns addressed the question “Why study history?” for the American Historical Association, he answered that studying history provides “enhanced capacity for informed citizenship, critical thinking, and simple awareness.” Secondary sources can help move students toward that ideal. By broadening how they engage with history, secondary sources allow students to move beyond “what happened” to evaluation and interpretation of the messy but meaningful human experiences that mark our past.