Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by billysielu 2810 days ago
Why wouldn't you want a student seeking a secondary (or more) source? Just blindly believe what the teacher says and don't question it? That education system is failing that student.
2 comments

Given that you apparently didn't learn the difference between a primary source and a secondary source, I'd say the education system failed you.

A primary source is one that "creates" the information of history, e.g. a letter, journal entry, official announcement, or original research. A secondary source (nominally) synthesizes and summarizes primary sources into a coherent narrative.

I did learn the difference, over 20 years ago, and today is the first time it's come up since. No need to be rude.
That's not what "secondary source" means.
Thanks for clarifying that. Of course, nothing in a classroom is a primary source.
If you're saying that, you still haven't had the definition of "primary source" sufficiently clarified.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_source

> In the study of history as an academic discipline, a Primary Source (also called an original source or evidence) is an artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was created at the time under study. It serves as an original source of information about the topic. Similar definitions can be used in library science, and other areas of scholarship, although different fields have somewhat different definitions. In journalism, a primary source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation, or a document written by such a person.

Many, many things in a classroom will be primary sources.

At my school (UK) we had 2 main sources - the teacher, and the textbook. Niether were primary.

Students used the internet a lot, and Encarta (lol), and were constantly getting grief from teachers for doing so.

Your textbooks are highly likely to have contained excerpts from primary sources.
thank god you know more about my education than I do.