How can Multiple Perspectives help historians?

1. Do Now – 3 Minutes • Explain why a historian would want to study a primary source and a secondary source. How can Multiple Perspectives help historians? 52

2. Primary vs Secondary Sources • Describe what the difference is between a primary and secondary source.

3. You have learned to distinguish between primary and secondary historical sources. • Diaries, letters, government documents, business accounts - these are the primary source materials that the historian uses to build a picture of the past. • (Archeologists use different kinds of evidence - pottery fragments, bones, jewelry, ruins.)

4. Groups - 3 Minutes 2. Describe how your interpretation of a primary source might be different if you: Group # 1,4,5,7 – Were a 60 year old man. Group # 2,3,6 – Were a person from the 15th century.

5. The records left by the past do not speak for themselves. • Historians must interpret this evidence to make sense of it. • Their writings are secondary sources. • But historians are human beings. • They reflect the culture in which they have been raised. • They have absorbed beliefs and attitudes from parents, friends, religion, and schools. • It is easy to understand why they interpret evidence differently.

6. Interpretations of the past offered by today’s American (or Russian, or Indian, or Arab) historians vary from individual to individual. • Interpretations of history also vary from one era to another. • British historians used to believe that their history was a gradual and inevitable journey towards freedom and democracy. • Marxist historians insist that history consists of class struggle. • Twentieth-century historians like Bloch have stressed the importance of geography, demography (population studies), and culture in helping us make sense of the past.

7. Groups -3 Minutes 3. Describe how a historian’s point of view on a subject can change over time.