I was a graduate student in my doctoral program from 1998-2002. During that time I was taking classes in the philosophy of educational technology and advanced instructional design from a guy who was virtually encyclopedic in his knowledge of the "heavy hitters" of educational technology and the philosophies that support the field. He could type 100+ wpm, while simultaneously holding a conversation on another topic. He also was my boss at the time, because his department paid my salary. I was the tech guy for the college.
From 1989-1990, I was an exchange student to Switzerland, where the citizenry spoke German (though there are smaller pieces of CH that speak French or Italian). I learned to speak German that year.
Fast forward to a class, probably in Fall 2000, when this guy plops some chapters in front of us. They were from a textbook he was writing *for* the course, while we were *taking* the course. I noticed a word that was mis-spelled. A word he claimed was from Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein talked about the difference between Naturwissenschaften (Physics, Chemistry, etc.) and Geisteswissenschaften (social (or rather emotional or spiritual) sciences, like Education, Sociology, etc.) The word was mis-spelled as Geistweswissenshaften (a guy who types that fast, probably is inevitable to hit the W and E keys at the same time right?). So, I pointed the spelling error out to him. It didn't go well. Let's say, sometimes the typos take on a very much larger influence for some people... He never changed the spelling, or his pronunciation. I mean, HE was the expert on Wittgenstein, and I only heard of him from reading the assignments HE wrote.
Soooo.... I can fully understand the 4000 BCE v 400 BCE typo.
Thanks much for the thoughtful piece, and for the pleasant reminder of why some folks find me hard to get along with... :-)
Thank you so much for this. It resonates with a lot of things I learned the hard way as a foreign correspondent and specialist journalist. That job makes you either a secondary or sometimes a tertiary source, and the effort needed to get it right is considerable. In both cases you're translating primary sources out of a language your readers don't speak, although they may think they do. Your law professor was absolutely right.
The story about sixth graders is horrifying, although it does explain a lot about people who "do the research" on the internet. It seems to me that trust and judgement are the foundations of reliable research in the humanities and these things can only be taught by example.
At present I am writing a book about my mother, who was in charge of the efforts to break the German diplomatic cyphers at Bletchley Park and I have to say that the secondary sources describing the cypher are much easier to understand than the account she wrote out at the time for her section. On the other hand, the best of them contains an error directly attributable to trusting a primary source who lied — demonstrably — about his own role in the business. To check that claim out requires a lot of digging in the British national archives, but this guy published in an American specialist magazine, and of course an American writer will trust him.
Thank you so much for sharing those anecdotes! And yeah, "trust and judgment" is extremely hard to teach as part of a formal curriculum because it requires guided contact with chaos which is just really hard to do with a 40:1 student to teacher ratio.
I can agree with you from personal experience. There're several times I've read a primary-source account of something, and only come back later with a secondary source to dissect it and point out its limitations.
For instance, take C. S. Lewis's autobiography "Surprised by Joy". It's a good picture of his inner life, but (I later learned from another biography of him) he totally omitted his (pre-conversion) longstanding sexual relationship, and the (post-conversion) difficulties in his domestic life. It wasn't all his story to tell, Lewis explained at one point. That might be true, but it limits the story he did tell.
And even aside from motivated omissions like this, we can get bias. Other biographers comment, with details, that Lewis is offering a very biased negative picture of his childhood schools. He'd probably agree - but that means that anyone who's trying to draw conclusions about British boarding schools from "Surprised by Joy" is going to be off.
And that's just one of my favorite primary sources, which I'm reading in full, with significant background knowledge about the author and his time. I'd still have a limited picture without more specific commentary. People who read excerpts of primary sources, or who don't have so much background knowledge, can be left a lot worse off.
And in many cases, 'biographies' are so "primary" as to be so full of lies as to be useless... As say many, and not just German, 'Generals' bio arising from WWII, so many trying to white wash many events.
And not just autobiographies either - you can get the same thing about later biographies written by someone's fans! Though that, at least, blends into normal historical bias.
Excellent article, Eleanor. I've been doing this for a while and your article struck a chord because of what I'm reading now. I'm halfway through "Calm Your Mind with Food: A Revolutionary Guide to Controlling Your Anxiety" by Uma Naidoo, MD and realized after checking a few of the numbered references other sources and studies (primary sources) and the author's background, that as a practical matter I was going to trust her. This is in the context of having read widely on diet as related to metabolic syndrome, so I have a lot of background in this area from a lot of authors and sources. So thanks for documenting the approach - it's helpful to have it called out.
P.S. In 1968 I was in a junior year English class where we read "The Sword in the Stone." It's not very long but filled with vocabulary about falconry, armor, and other aspects of knights that went way over most of the class. I can't imagine trying to teach some of the things you described to 6th graders, even if they are more advanced than my generation at that age.
Somewhat late in finding this, but I completely agree, particularly with the first part. Although I will add that often primary sources are just flat-out terrible. To take an example near and dear to my heart, I have had many people who saw battleship guns fired swear up and down that they saw the ship move sideways. They did not. Some basic math using conservation laws shows that this is clearly nonsense, and I am an engineer, so this is not a hard call. But my math is by most definitions a secondary source.
More broadly, primary sources tend to be rather narrow in their view, and while they can be great for getting the feel of a time period, they are almost always worse for figuring out what happened than a good secondary source, which can look at a lot of primary sources and get some idea of balance out of it. I'm not saying you should never read primary sources, but you should definitely never read them first if you want to get an understanding of the landscape of history.
This was a really fabulous, perceptive piece on the ways and means of evaluating sources. I’ve been doing the history business for so long I tend to forget how overwhelming and confusing the Niagara of sources can be these days. Thanks for putting this all together.
Thanks! Feel free to share it with anyone who might get something out of it 😂 I'm just so over the oversimplified drum of "primary sources are most reliable"
Primary sources are the most *important* but not necessarily the most reliable. This is similar to a problem I've pointed out before; namely, that just because one has been in a battle (a kind of primary source) does not make you more insightful or reliable as to what happened than a later historian who has examined a large number of flesh-witness statements, visited the ground, read many secondary analyses of said battle, and who possesses a sound sense of judgement.
Excellent... and O.S./N.S. for the calendar flip of the English and empire from Newton to Pepys to 1750 when the act was finally passed.
WRT the BC/BCE, I occasionally get exercised over kWh (correct) versus KwH... er... I have no idea what that is (Kelvin Weber Henry but that makes no sense) when people spout of mostly of electrical energy and power...
I don't think I've ever seen KwH but I can see how the mistake would get made by non-technical people like me. Now I'm gonna be hypersensitive to it and on the lookout 👀
Thank you for the interesting article. I am curious about your use of BCE vs BC in the article, from your perspective as a history teacher. I haven't read much of your work on ancient histories, so if I missed a big discussion on it, forgive me. Every time I see BCE, I wonder is that a virtue signal or not. My background is not in history, but I do like to read histories and it seems to be more prevalent recently. Following your advice on this topic was a quick study in exactly what you are talking about.
I was a graduate student in my doctoral program from 1998-2002. During that time I was taking classes in the philosophy of educational technology and advanced instructional design from a guy who was virtually encyclopedic in his knowledge of the "heavy hitters" of educational technology and the philosophies that support the field. He could type 100+ wpm, while simultaneously holding a conversation on another topic. He also was my boss at the time, because his department paid my salary. I was the tech guy for the college.
From 1989-1990, I was an exchange student to Switzerland, where the citizenry spoke German (though there are smaller pieces of CH that speak French or Italian). I learned to speak German that year.
Fast forward to a class, probably in Fall 2000, when this guy plops some chapters in front of us. They were from a textbook he was writing *for* the course, while we were *taking* the course. I noticed a word that was mis-spelled. A word he claimed was from Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein talked about the difference between Naturwissenschaften (Physics, Chemistry, etc.) and Geisteswissenschaften (social (or rather emotional or spiritual) sciences, like Education, Sociology, etc.) The word was mis-spelled as Geistweswissenshaften (a guy who types that fast, probably is inevitable to hit the W and E keys at the same time right?). So, I pointed the spelling error out to him. It didn't go well. Let's say, sometimes the typos take on a very much larger influence for some people... He never changed the spelling, or his pronunciation. I mean, HE was the expert on Wittgenstein, and I only heard of him from reading the assignments HE wrote.
Soooo.... I can fully understand the 4000 BCE v 400 BCE typo.
Thanks much for the thoughtful piece, and for the pleasant reminder of why some folks find me hard to get along with... :-)
Thank you so much for this. It resonates with a lot of things I learned the hard way as a foreign correspondent and specialist journalist. That job makes you either a secondary or sometimes a tertiary source, and the effort needed to get it right is considerable. In both cases you're translating primary sources out of a language your readers don't speak, although they may think they do. Your law professor was absolutely right.
The story about sixth graders is horrifying, although it does explain a lot about people who "do the research" on the internet. It seems to me that trust and judgement are the foundations of reliable research in the humanities and these things can only be taught by example.
At present I am writing a book about my mother, who was in charge of the efforts to break the German diplomatic cyphers at Bletchley Park and I have to say that the secondary sources describing the cypher are much easier to understand than the account she wrote out at the time for her section. On the other hand, the best of them contains an error directly attributable to trusting a primary source who lied — demonstrably — about his own role in the business. To check that claim out requires a lot of digging in the British national archives, but this guy published in an American specialist magazine, and of course an American writer will trust him.
Thank you so much for sharing those anecdotes! And yeah, "trust and judgment" is extremely hard to teach as part of a formal curriculum because it requires guided contact with chaos which is just really hard to do with a 40:1 student to teacher ratio.
Very good article; thank you!
I can agree with you from personal experience. There're several times I've read a primary-source account of something, and only come back later with a secondary source to dissect it and point out its limitations.
For instance, take C. S. Lewis's autobiography "Surprised by Joy". It's a good picture of his inner life, but (I later learned from another biography of him) he totally omitted his (pre-conversion) longstanding sexual relationship, and the (post-conversion) difficulties in his domestic life. It wasn't all his story to tell, Lewis explained at one point. That might be true, but it limits the story he did tell.
And even aside from motivated omissions like this, we can get bias. Other biographers comment, with details, that Lewis is offering a very biased negative picture of his childhood schools. He'd probably agree - but that means that anyone who's trying to draw conclusions about British boarding schools from "Surprised by Joy" is going to be off.
And that's just one of my favorite primary sources, which I'm reading in full, with significant background knowledge about the author and his time. I'd still have a limited picture without more specific commentary. People who read excerpts of primary sources, or who don't have so much background knowledge, can be left a lot worse off.
And in many cases, 'biographies' are so "primary" as to be so full of lies as to be useless... As say many, and not just German, 'Generals' bio arising from WWII, so many trying to white wash many events.
And not just autobiographies either - you can get the same thing about later biographies written by someone's fans! Though that, at least, blends into normal historical bias.
Excellent article, Eleanor. I've been doing this for a while and your article struck a chord because of what I'm reading now. I'm halfway through "Calm Your Mind with Food: A Revolutionary Guide to Controlling Your Anxiety" by Uma Naidoo, MD and realized after checking a few of the numbered references other sources and studies (primary sources) and the author's background, that as a practical matter I was going to trust her. This is in the context of having read widely on diet as related to metabolic syndrome, so I have a lot of background in this area from a lot of authors and sources. So thanks for documenting the approach - it's helpful to have it called out.
P.S. In 1968 I was in a junior year English class where we read "The Sword in the Stone." It's not very long but filled with vocabulary about falconry, armor, and other aspects of knights that went way over most of the class. I can't imagine trying to teach some of the things you described to 6th graders, even if they are more advanced than my generation at that age.
Great example and I'm glad I was able to offer a helpful perspective!
And yeah, I like teaching 6th grade as a general rule, but none of us were particularly happy when they moved us to DBQ assessments
Somewhat late in finding this, but I completely agree, particularly with the first part. Although I will add that often primary sources are just flat-out terrible. To take an example near and dear to my heart, I have had many people who saw battleship guns fired swear up and down that they saw the ship move sideways. They did not. Some basic math using conservation laws shows that this is clearly nonsense, and I am an engineer, so this is not a hard call. But my math is by most definitions a secondary source.
More broadly, primary sources tend to be rather narrow in their view, and while they can be great for getting the feel of a time period, they are almost always worse for figuring out what happened than a good secondary source, which can look at a lot of primary sources and get some idea of balance out of it. I'm not saying you should never read primary sources, but you should definitely never read them first if you want to get an understanding of the landscape of history.
Oh yeah, optical illusions are a great example I hadn't considered when writing this but should have. Thanks!
This was a really fabulous, perceptive piece on the ways and means of evaluating sources. I’ve been doing the history business for so long I tend to forget how overwhelming and confusing the Niagara of sources can be these days. Thanks for putting this all together.
Thanks! Feel free to share it with anyone who might get something out of it 😂 I'm just so over the oversimplified drum of "primary sources are most reliable"
Primary sources are the most *important* but not necessarily the most reliable. This is similar to a problem I've pointed out before; namely, that just because one has been in a battle (a kind of primary source) does not make you more insightful or reliable as to what happened than a later historian who has examined a large number of flesh-witness statements, visited the ground, read many secondary analyses of said battle, and who possesses a sound sense of judgement.
Excellent... and O.S./N.S. for the calendar flip of the English and empire from Newton to Pepys to 1750 when the act was finally passed.
WRT the BC/BCE, I occasionally get exercised over kWh (correct) versus KwH... er... I have no idea what that is (Kelvin Weber Henry but that makes no sense) when people spout of mostly of electrical energy and power...
I don't think I've ever seen KwH but I can see how the mistake would get made by non-technical people like me. Now I'm gonna be hypersensitive to it and on the lookout 👀
Oh they are out there... a plenty unfortunately. ; ))))))
perhaps but gotta tell ya white text on black is hard for me to process.
I was raised on Zappa
If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.
I remember cobbling together reports on farming and weather from World Book and similar sources.
People learn what they need to or not. kids arent empty vessels to be stuffed full gradgrind style.
that was a lotta word splooge. I think if you concentrate you can tease out three or four key ideas.
I learned my profession, medicval transcription, by the seat of my pants
Thank you for the interesting article. I am curious about your use of BCE vs BC in the article, from your perspective as a history teacher. I haven't read much of your work on ancient histories, so if I missed a big discussion on it, forgive me. Every time I see BCE, I wonder is that a virtue signal or not. My background is not in history, but I do like to read histories and it seems to be more prevalent recently. Following your advice on this topic was a quick study in exactly what you are talking about.
It's honestly just habit: the materials I used when I was teaching had BC/BCE.