One of the things that is a bit different about the way I'm using primary sources in my US History 1 class this semester is that they don't necessarily conform with the "high points" of traditional American history.
I have always found the concept of primary sources an interesting concept. The term has a specific meaning to historians, but I think can have a broader meaning. I remember writing something once that I might now paraphrase as “to the learner a textbook is a primary source.” My meaning was that each learner processes multiple novel inputs to generate personal understanding. A historian share this understanding as a secondary source. A learner retains their secondary source as the residue of their learning.
That's an interesting perspective, if I'm following you. I agree that to the learner, the distinction between what a historian thinks is primary or secondary may be of less importance or interest. The one element where this might NOT be the case, I think, might be in the distinction between the contexts available to writers of secondary sources vs. primary. Even if it's the same author (for example, Teddy Roosevelt writing The Winning of the West vs. writing a speech as president), in one case he is writing retrospectively. For me, knowledge of "how the story ends" is a critical difference between primary and secondary.
I have always found the concept of primary sources an interesting concept. The term has a specific meaning to historians, but I think can have a broader meaning. I remember writing something once that I might now paraphrase as “to the learner a textbook is a primary source.” My meaning was that each learner processes multiple novel inputs to generate personal understanding. A historian share this understanding as a secondary source. A learner retains their secondary source as the residue of their learning.
That's an interesting perspective, if I'm following you. I agree that to the learner, the distinction between what a historian thinks is primary or secondary may be of less importance or interest. The one element where this might NOT be the case, I think, might be in the distinction between the contexts available to writers of secondary sources vs. primary. Even if it's the same author (for example, Teddy Roosevelt writing The Winning of the West vs. writing a speech as president), in one case he is writing retrospectively. For me, knowledge of "how the story ends" is a critical difference between primary and secondary.