Part 2: Primary Sources and Complex Thought

In the previous Investigation, we pointed out that active learning—having students engage in complex thought processes rather than merely be passive receptors of information—is a basic way to motivate them and increase their depth of learning. Active learning occurs when they confront situations, problems, and puzzles requiring them not merely to remember, but to hypothesize, generalize, synthesize, make value judgments, and so on.

But there’s a major obstacle in the path toward active learning: the textbook.

The typical American history textbook is a collection of conclusions. When there’s an inference to be drawn, the author draws it. If there’s a significant relationship to be noted, the author points it out. There are no loose ends or incomplete analyses. The textbook is as refined as the author is capable of making it—but the author does the thinking.

It’s a great deal like handing a student a crossword puzzle with all the squares filled in.

The Alternative: Primary Sources

What we need are historical resources for classroom use that open up the learning situation, and allow students to think in complex ways. The best way to supply these resources is to move as close as possible to the historical reality they are studying, using documents and artifacts created by those participating in history. The unprocessed information in these sources open wide-ranging opportunities for student thought. Primary sources are essential to active learning. Working with these sources requires kids to do what ordinary life requires them to do all day, every day: make sense, for themselves, of experience.

A single piece of unfamiliar data—a personal letter, political poster, tombstone epitaph, bill of sale, child’s toy, if accompanied by a question or two, can have students using and refining every known cognitive process. Some version of “What’s going on here? Why?” rather than “How much can you remember of what we studied?” shows a proper respect for student intellectual potential and a concern for the intellectual demands their futures will place on them.

The previous Investigation illustrated one of the many ways that primary sources may be used for active learning. This student materials that follow also provide primary data related to life in a town—in this case a Puritan village.