A "Genuine Relationship with the Actual": New Perspectives on Primary Sources, History and the Internet in the Classroom.

Abstract

THE PEDAGOGIC VALUE of using archival holdings2 for the teaching of history has long been appreciated. Using primary sources in the teaching of history transcends the rote learning of facts and figures. It encourages critical thinking skills, introducing students to issues of context, selection and bias, to the nature of collective memory and to other like aspects in the construction of history. As Professor Peter Seixas, Canada Research Chair in the Study of Historical Consciousness, has observed, "historians do have something very important to offer students, which is neither the one big story, nor the recall of a common set of facts, but rather a way of using the traces of the past to construct meaningful stories in the present."3 Many constraints ranging from the fragility and rarity of documents to the physical and intellectual inaccessibility of the