I realized my students could be charged $75 for a history textbook which would distill huge periods of history down to a dozen or so pages each; and that my students would come away from reading those pages knowing a timeline, but not much else.

Or I could gift them with access to selected photographs and text of the ancient authors of the times we were supposed to be studying. And it turned out that rather than giving them primary sources at prohibitively high costs (around $95 for books containing the things I wanted them to read), I could do so with online texts for free.

I was elated when my school said yes to free sources. It turns out that having ninth graders read ancient and classical source materials is challenging and scary. But it’s also valuable and useful, and radically changes the nature of their learning experience. Instead of arguing about timeline, we’re actually discussing what Socrates said and did, and whether Xenophon or Plato is a better recorder of the old man’s deeds.

It’s a powerful shift, when we move from tertiary sources like textbooks to primary sources like Plato. And I hope that it will enliven a new generation of readers.

Research projects are woven into most (if not all) of our content areas, so I especially appreciate your suggestions for the process of working with sources.

I wonder if focusing on primary vs. print might also help students to determine when their own writing is primary or secondary in nature. As more and more work is web-published rather than print-published, this might be an important distinction for teaching writing.