Imagine having Albert Einstein or John Keats or Louis Riel as a guest speaker in your class. What would the kids ask them?
A lot has been lost between their original scribbles and the modern textbook that sits before you.
A lot has also been added too; and we bring to class the cumulative analysis of each generation since the primary experience. Amazingly their names and ideas are still very much alive.
How much can be lost in the re-telling of the original story?
Consider the end of Hans Christian Andersen's original fairy tale and Disney's Little Mermaid.
Why go back to the sources? Why use original and primary sources in your classroom?
Simply - because they bring history alive and great geniuses and rogues - to life.
- There is a power and resonance in original words and insight.
- There is a power and multi-dimensional quality in the words and sketches of an eyewitness, the first person to describe an historic or scientific event. They bring their personal presence and also their cultural and temporal bias.
- Original sources allow students to engage in, and even be inspired by human genius and important events. Learning is then not a passive acceptance of someone else's analysis or faded replication.
