Primary Documents in the Social Studies Classroom: Not just for scholars anymore!

Whether this is accurate or not, whenever I think of a historian, I can't help but think of a man or woman in a tweed suit, with big glasses poring carefully over yellowed documents in the backroom of some library or government office, using tweezers to turn the pages so as not to disrupt the integrity of the primary sources they're investigating. However, thanks to an increasing amount of resources being put online and the increased knowledge of restoration and preservation of artifacts, you don't need that PhD and tweed suit to investigate the past in a hands on way! Students, even students as young as primary grades can have encounters with the past through primary documents.

Primary documents are an interesting and fun way to make history come alive for students. Rather than reading about events that happened through a textbook (and thus a historian’s interpretation of that event), students can piece together for themselves what happened and even assess multiple resources about the same event to try to find “the truth” or at the very least figuring out what most likely happened. 

Why Should Students Read Primary Documents? 

Primary documents help students develop the ability to analyze the value of resources, asking questions like: what is a credible source? Is this document written by a credible source? What does the author have to gain (if anything) by producing this document? Considering the vast amount of content students must parse everyday in the Internet-age, being confident in assessing primary documents is a useful skill (especially considering so many "studies" put online that are neither peer-reviewed, nor properly executed).

Primary documents also allow students to work on essential language arts reading strategies, such as making inferences, predictions, and connections. In a textbook, the author will usually explain an event explicitly and lay out step-by-step how various groups may have been affected. While it is useful to have that clarity, primary documents can be used in conjunction with the textbooks for students to compare and contrast the official narrative of the textbook with the narrative they read in primary documents.  

How Could Primary Documents be Incorporated into a Unit? 

How I would like to incorporate primary documents into a social studies unit in a classroom of my own would be through early explorer narratives and diaries for the Grade 5 “First Nations and Europeans in New France and Early Canada” strand. Looking at excerpts from the diaries of Cartier and Champlain can give a more insight into how rough the journeys across the Atlantic really were, and can give an interesting view of the European perspective of first contacts with the First Nations. 

I think of that exchange between Iroquois chief Donnacona and Cartier after Cartier and his men had erected a cross claiming the land for France as a good excerpt to read. Cartier’s account is far from an objective account, and students can have the opportunity to compare and contrast the description of this exchange in their textbook and in Cartier’s diary. They can also develop their predicting, inferencing, and empathy in imagining what they perspective looked and felt like to Donnacona. 

"Hey, you don't mind if we set up a giant cross and kidnap your sons do you?"
First encounter 1534. Retrieved from
https://jacquescartier1534.wordpress.com/first-encounter-with-people-in-1534/

There are also other interesting (read: depressing and appalling) sections of the journal that describe Iroquois people being kidnapped to be taken to France to show the King what Cartier had discovered. If students read that and then read how those situations are described in textbooks and official narratives, which mention nothing of forcible seizure and make it appear like Iroquois trotted happily onto Cartier's boat, waving goodbye to their family, excited for the adventure, it will certainly be food for thought. There's a link to the journal here, but there are also nicer translations available in print form. 

These narratives can be linked to Language Arts, looking at both reading texts and media literacy. Explorer narratives and adventure novels were historically very popular genres with strict conventions that portrayed aboriginal peoples in specific ways. This can be an introduction into the portrayal of aboriginals and other minorities in the media historically and today if you chose to use social studies as a starting point for conversations in other subjects.  

Let me know ways you'd like to use primary documents in the classroom or how your students feel about these more hands-on historical investigations!