The primary source exercise we performed in class provides an interesting way to learn from the past, and a method we should in our best interests always use when looking at the life and times of those who came before us. By studying first hand accounts of the industrial revolution, we attain an exact sense of the feelings and themes of the events of that age, and even a small picture can speak a thousand words.
Obviously first hand accounts should always be used when studying the past, as simple second-hand records can never fully account for what really has really happened. While a first hand document may contain bias and a skewed perspective, that same viewpoint can be used with others to create a full understanding of the history of a people or land. Second hand sources are also not without their own interpretations of events, and by being continuously transcribed through other works the backbone of a movement can become convoluted and distorted, disobeying the truth.
I believe that through this exercise I have not looked at history differently, but have merely looked at it through a little used but valuable perspective. Primary sources are the most important part of studying history, though not all are easy to come by compared to a textbook that will contain snippets of first hand information while mainly delivering a secondary view of the facts.
I wonder why the rebellious people of the 18th and 19th centuries, after successfully undermining the two greatest powers of the western world, seemed to throw personal safety away in reckless abandon to focus on a different revolution, that of metal and steam. The proud men and women of both American and European society were hobbled by corporate masters during the industrial revolution and through poverty remained passive as they worked long, dangerous shifts as they turned the gears of the new age, replacing absolutist monarchies with ‘absolutist companies’ and conglomerates that dominated the lives of millions to meet the demands of the slowly modernizing world.
After completing the analysis of the documents for the Industrial Revolution, I feel that this type of work has taught me much more about history than textbooks can. By evauluating primary sources both written and pictorial, my group and I were able to draw our own conclusions about the time period, and use our own ideas to form opinions, rather than reading the opinions of the author's of our book. This method of learning teaches students that there is not always one right answer to history. A lot of times, ideas on what has occured in the past comes from a variety of sources that can contradict one another. In working in a group, I was able to develop my own opinion on a document, but then allow for the influence of my peers as well. They offered me new insight to things I might have missed when first examining, as well as providing more evidence or information on a certain topic that one of their documents covered in greater detail. For example, when given Document 51, an English painting by William Turner, we at first thought the subject of the photo was a wine bottle, which we could relate to another document we had that portrayed the employer's as heavy drinkers. However upon further analysis we determined the 'wine bottle' to be a steam locomotive, which fit better into the atmosphere of the Industrial Revolution, especially as a technological change. This project enabled us to take many ideas and thoughts and apply them to our documents to create an understanding of the way society functioned during the new wave of technology that took over. Analysis of sources teaches that there isn't always one 'right' answer, many thoughts can be correct and add to the picture of the time period. We found this in document 8 when we all had different ideas on how a the picture of the harbor contributed to life in the Industrial Revolution. We determined that it would effect economics, such as shipping and foreign trade; social order, by creating new jobs for workers; and technology, as the steam ship was a new invention. By looking just at this picture we were able to draw multiple conclusions all that can be considered correct. I feel that I have looked at history differently through this exercise. I came in with a limited knowledge of the Industrial Revolution, and insted of simply learning the material through my text, I created and shaped my own conclusions on society, technology, econmomy and political thought by analysis. Before, I had only read that child labor was a horrific experience, and factory conditions were poor. Now I know this is true because of my examination of Document 30, a Commission to the King of England which specifically explained in detail the conditons of factory workers and the employment of children. Rather than simply being told, I found out through my own research. However, one downside to document analysis is that some questions are not fully answered. Specific primary sources can not always paint a clear picture of life during that time, especially if they are written by author's with similar view points or statuses in society. After analyzing my documents, and hearing the reports from the other groups, I still don't know what measures were taken to curb the terrible working conditions in the factories. Documents 30, 37 and 38 all tell of the government employees urging for reform, but I never learned whether or not these changes actually occured. This is where a text book might have come more in handy, as it would give an account of life and times both previous to and following the Industrial era. Overall I found this work to be a very positive experience. It helped me to work with a group to form and support an opinion with evidence that we had analyzed and discussed. It opened me up to more detailed and informative documents that created a much better picture of life during this time than simply a recount through a book could have done. I enjoyed this project and I think we should do more with primary source analysis as a way to learn about the past.
I took a European History class last year in my old school. This class was a lower level class than the A.P. and the class was very straight forward and simple. The class consisted of just reading a text book that gave a outline of History, and when you learned something, you forgot it a couple months later. The primary source exercise takes last years learning to a whole knew level. Instead reading another’s analysis of history, I create my own by reading text and pictures that were written and taken during the actual tome period. I take bits and pieces of each source and I put the together to make a broader picture of what happened during the time period studied. With this exercise I have become a historian, not just a student. (that last sentence was the corniest thing I’ve ever written, Maybe it will give me an A on this Blog response though).
Before history was just a story, words in a text book that had no value or meaning. This exercise is real, the sources were written by actual people of the time period. This exercise teaches that we are history, we are the generation that came to be from all the things that happened before us. The events that happened were real, effected real people, and thus the chain of influence appears, we are the end of the link, yet we will soon be old links, and new links from new generations will appear. That is what history is all about, its more than a story.
This exercise, however, gave a negative view of what the time period was like. The exercise was biased, and failed to explain anything good that came from the time period. Was there anything good that came out of the time period? If so, why is it masked by the negative aspects?
Is it better to give an account of what actually happened, than primary sources which are usually biased in some way?
This response was the corniest thing I’ve ever written, Maybe it will give me an A though
What is probably the most important lesson to take away from this exercise is the fact that most of history is an interpretation of incomplete truths. An accurate analogy of this would be trying to find out what a puzzle looks like by assembling only part of the pieces. Without such complete information, the real facts will inevitably be distorted to the interpretations of the people studying it. Through this exercise, the documents were viewed by those who did not have a complete background of the Industrial Revolution, which simulates what real historians view history as when they study a time period that we do not know much about. Thus, some of the documents had pieces of information that were not seen for what they were when they were first viewed. As an example, one of the documents depicting a row of factories and a canal running between them had a railroad track that ran along the canal that was missed. By looking carefully for the railroad track, it showed that barges that went down the canal could be loaded with supplies to be sent to other places. This proves extremely important, as England had countless canals that connect the whole countryside and is a rival for the greatest mileage of canal works in Europe. From this, it can be understood that history as we know it is only true from the facts that we do find and not all that exist.
Through this exercise, I have come to appreciate the study of history somewhat more in that finding the real truth is much more difficult than one would think. This goes to show that perhaps the parts of history that we think are fact may actually be distorted from either incomplete information or selective interpretations. This is, of course, unavoidable in the study of history and gives new light to the idea that history is written by those who have power. The total collection of facts is almost never there and sometimes important pieces of information can be lost forever, leading to very different views on what may have actually happened at different time frames. While this does apply to relatively recent events, one would expect that this problem would grow exponentially with the passage of time as events grow farther and farther away.
After completing the reviews of the Industrial Revolution documents, I still wonder how the large factory owners were able to keep such a large number of the population in what appeared to be complete poverty. One would think that the people would be able to better their conditions when almost all of the lower class was working in either the factories or coal mines. Some of the documents did reveal the government’s first attempts at regulating the conditions that the workers could be put in, but almost all of them seemed insignificant toward actually improving their well being. Thus, the question arises, how successful were the reforms the government attempted to put in place and at what point in time did the worker’s conditions really start to improve?
The primary source analysis exercise performed during the course of this week, taught the class how to look at history by studying the documents and pictures that were written or taken during this period. Even though some of the pictures were taken recently, all of the buildings, bridges, and other land features are from the period. The class has taken United States History previously, so these documents reinforce what we already know. History is not just learned through a textbook; if this were true, no one would gain the taste and appreciation for the time period.
As a class, many different topics were taught through the use of primary resources. One topic that was not known was the makeup of a poor house. The poor house was divided into able-bodied and infirm men and women. One surprising factor was that the poor houses were very self-sufficient. They seemed to be located on a farm because contained in the poor-house was a “cow house” or stable for the cows (providing milk). The house also contains its own morgue or “dead house.” When first looked at, the house seemed to be a large farm manner. Attention is drawn to the large master-suite and many other smaller rooms for underlings or possibly children. When studied closely, especially the dead house, this was not a manner, but in fact a poor-house. This increases the ability to study history by teaching the class to fully inspect documents.
Another case of not fully inspecting the documents is a photograph. The photograph contained a canal with a bridge in the distance and buildings surrounding the canal. During the presentation, it was realized that to the left of the canal, there was parallel tracks. Obviously these were train tracks. If Mr. Kirby were not there to point out this subtlety in the picture, a major technological advantage would have been forgotten.
Many criticisms were also explained through opinion reports. The Chadwick Report, in the first of two parts, explained the horrible sanitary conditions during the nineteenth century. He explained that the water was the cause of all the diseases running through the city. He said, “Contaminated London drinking water containing various micro-organisms, refuse, and the like…That the formation of all habits of cleanliness is obstructed by defective supplies of water.” He also explains that the poor people are living in the slop and grime of the city streets. In the second part of Chadwick’s report, he explains that the only way to handle the sanitary problem is to cart the water out of the city in a continuous flow. However, he does not supply a solution to this dilemma. This was a helpful tool to actually read what somebody had to say about these horribly living conditions.
Finally, the graph plotting the average income, consumer price index, and actual earnings against year was a very helpful tool in explaining the high inflationary time of the early to mid-nineteenth century. This explained how the “average Joe” barely made enough money to cover the many costs of living which were increasing during this time. Finally at the turn of the twentieth century the actual earnings surpassed the consumer price index raising the standard of living in Great Britain.
Mr. Kirby was very helpful in filling the gaps that the groups were not able to fill. Combined with Spielvogel’s Chapter 20, I have a very good understanding of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. I am wondering what happens to Europe at the turn of the century when the economic turns to the better and Europe becomes a more affluent society. Another topic left almost unanswered is the condition of the remaining portion of Europe during the growing Industrial Revolution. Spielvogel provides some insight, but I do not have a full understanding of this topic.
This exercise provided a new way of studying history. The exercise forced the class to make assumptions about the Industrial Revolution using documents that were not complete. It was like putting a puzzle together and deciphering a picture without all the pieces (as if one was doing a puzzle of the United States and was missing the Mid-West, but still had to connect the Pacific Coast to the Eastern Coast). This primary document analysis exercise provided not only a new way of studying history, but also insight to what society was like during the Industrial Revolution.
This exercise can teach us a lot about how we look at history. It shows how very little clues are needed to decipher something about a given time period. Through a series of documents that are inter-connected, we made inferences about the time period of the Industrial Revolution. This demonstrates how a nearly complete picture of a time period can be constructed with nothing more than a few essays and photographs. This exercise can also teach us a lot about the study of history. It can teach us how we must go straight to the source in order to get unbiased information on history. When evaluating primary sources, you usually get the unslanted true idea of what things were like in the time period. This is much different than reading it out of a history book where an editor can omit what he likes. The only bias you get on the photographs is that of the instructor who can assign whatever documents he wants to. A bad instructor could show you all pictures of mansions and manors, and you would get the idea that everyone flourished during the Industrial Revolution. Fortunately, I trust Mr. Kirby so I don’t believe this happened. I definitely looked at history differently through this exercise. I guess I tend to look at history as something that is just taught in a book and accepted as fact. This exercise helped me realize that there is a lot more to history than what was included in the book, and that the book just includes what someone else thought was important. It made me realize that it’s up to us to draw our own conclusions about the study of history based on the information we are given. The only questions I had that were left unanswered were: how did the rich and middle class fare during the Industrial Revolution? It seemed like most of the pictures were focused on the situations of women and children, and mostly the lower class. It would have helped my understanding of this time period to learn more about the upper and middle classes. My only other comment is about how some of the photographs were from much more modern times. I think it would be better not to include these photographs as some modern elements in these pictures were often misinterpreted. If possible it would be better to include all pictures taken from the time period.
The document and pictorial analysis of the Industrial Revolution helped give the class as a whole a new perspective on history. While reading a text book, not only is it simple to overlook important details, but it is inevitable that some part of the chapter will not be understood. Using the techniques in class, my group and I were able to take history into our own hands and creating conclusions using prior knowledge. Every opinion and prediction had to be backed up by facts either from previous knowledge or other documents. Each document and picture was like little pieces in a massive puzzle that we were able to create using our own minds. I personally think this document and pictorial analysis was the most productive way of looking into history. It almost felt as if we were getting a first-hand experience because of our ability to put together pieces of history.
Although it was difficult understanding with documents related to other documents and what exactly certain pictures were of, I was able to better relate and connect between different time periods. Other than a brief overview of the Industrial Revolution, I have never studied the subject. The participation in analyzing these documents and pictures helped to reinforce prior knowledge and draw new conclusions about this time era. For instance, I was well aware of the amount of poverty sweeping across the nation, but I was not aware of the disease. Not only was their accumulative disease with regards to the ghastly living and working conditions of the lower class people, but disease did not even put a dent in the rising population. Of course, this time period was surely known for overpopulation growth hence the lack of jobs and sufficient housing. So many factors contributed to the rise in the population but also the downfall in living quality. Firstly, there was the over population which caused overcrowded housing. Living in such tight quarters created more susceptibility to infections and disease. This caused many to die at a young age yet did not decrease the population growth in any way. Overcrowded housing also meant overcrowded and overbooked work places. Too many people working in one area led to lower wages. These lower wages were not enough to pay for enough food or suitable living conditions. It really was a vicious cycle that encompassed all people of the time period.
The only information that was given to me that helped me draw the before written conclusions were those of my limited previous knowledge and the sources we were given in class. Every document was a new link and every picture was a mystery. Within our groups we were able to not only learn history, but create it.
Mark Morris A.P. European History December 22, 2006 Mr. Kirby
Primary Source Review
This was a very well thought out lesson that allowed the students to view actual photos, and read actual documents related to the topic we are studying, the Industrial Revolution. By viewing actual pictures from the time period we as a class were able to get an actual idea for the living conditions, the working conditions, and view architectural and technological achievements. One of the pictures we saw was that of the first iron bridge built in England. This showed us that technology had increased form building wooden and stone bridges over small rivers, to building large complicated and sturdy structures over longer, deeper, and wider rivers, and gaps. It also gave us a small insight into the design techniques for bridges as well as other structures, for example the factories themselves. These were brick buildings simply designed to be functional factories. This shows us that during the industrial revolution there was emphasis on making money, so the only extravagant housing was that of the owners of the factories. We were also presented with documents pertaining to the time period. These documents revealed what life was like back in the time of the industrial Revolution. It told both of times of hardship as well as times of growth, as well as problems facing the country at the time. Reviewing both the pictures and the documents gave us first hand accounts of what life was like for the factory workers, child and women labor, the growth of factories, the living conditions, as well as the views of those in Parliament and poems written during the era. This exercise gave us as students, and unbiased account from people as well as pictures from the time period. We were shown how life was really like for the workers, the owners, as well as others. These accounts were formed by those who actually lived during the time period, and prove a far more valuable resource than that of the often tainted description from some author living in the 21st century. This lesson also helped show us how historians do their job. They often do not get the full puzzle and more often than not must rely on logical reasoning to piece together what happened exactly. Historians must rely on pictures, paintings, and documents to infer what happened over the course of our history. Historians must study architecture of the time to see what styles arose form the period. They must read works of common people, to find out how they lived, and worked. From these details they must patch together the fabric that makes the quilt of our history. Wow that was really bad poetry. The exercise we completed gives us an idea of how historians put together what has happened, the economic patterns, factory conditions, living conditions and much more. For this exercise we had to relay back to the class our ideas and inferences on what the pictures showed us, and in the most basic sense this is what historians around the world do every day. I have and do look at history inn a different manner now that I have seen done this exercise. I realize what happened back before the present is often lost to time. What we piece together is often only a fractional bit of what people have left behind. We will often never no what happened during the life of Joe Shmoe the common person, but we can guess based on things he left behind. During battles, we can only imagine the chaos and the terror that befell the soldiers. Only by living the action can one truly perceive what it is like to be shot at, or fight for your life. I have come to realize that our history books only present the past to use, and do their best to teach us what life was like before now. This exercise has helped me learn the only real way to be sure of history was to have been there, and experienced it. Pictures and documents can only sow us the horrors of working in a factory during the Industrial Revolution, but what was it really like suffering from day to day doing banal and dangerous tasks. This lesson has taught me that the closest we can get to the past is viewing the pictures of the time period, and reading the manuscripts of those who experienced the time, but we will never ourselves go through the paths walked by those long deceased. Their experiences however well documented, will exclusively experienced by them, and forever lost to our knowledge. The one question I have left to ask is how do we know historians are correct in their teachings? How do we know whether or not we are being spoon fed bs, and being none the wiser. I know there are many debates circulating the historical community, but how do we truly know who is right and who is wrong. Are we just left to accept the findings of professors and archeologists’ around the world or will some day new evidence be found to totally destroy previously “correct” theories of the past? I understand the use primary sources in their use by giving the viewer insight to life during the past, but much of a historians job is guesswork, leaving them to make educated guesses as to what occurred long ago.
The industrial revolution primary document exercise showed me that history is not just learning about the past from a textbook. History is about understanding all the components of the past, exploring an issue from all sides, and being immersed in it. Traditionally, history is taught from one point of view, from a textbook, by a teacher. But in this exercise, we had a chance to form our own opinions, and discover things for ourselves. We could take information that was being presented to us and process it ourselves, learning along the way. We examined documents and tried to form a picture of what the era was like based on the documents. For example, by looking at a photograph of a factory, we can learn that they relied on steam power, that they used rails for transportation, that they emitted a lot of pollution, and that they used rivers and waterways as sewage. Because we discovered these things ourselves, we could understand them better. We had thought for ourselves, and not just memorized facts. And this, I feel, is what history really is. You can’t find history by reading a textbook and memorizing fact. You have to take bits and pieces of history and put it together for yourself. The study of history is taking information about past events, and analyzing it, so that you can create a picture of what the past was like. Because of this exercise, I look at history differently. Before, history was a subject where you memorized facts, dates, and times. But now, history is an analytical science. It must be studied, examined, scrutinized, and synthesized. This project showed me that history must be analyzed to be fully understood. For example, one idea you might learn about would be increased child labor. You could just learn about child labor. But, to see children in factories and read accounts of it is much more informational than just learning about it. You understand why there was an increase in child labor, and how the people felt about it. You get a much more complete picture of the topic. And that is how I look at history, as an analytical science where you have to analyze the facts presented to draw your own conclusions. In general, this project answered all questions I had about the industrial revolution. I understand why the period occurred, what it entailed, and what came of it. I would like to know a bit more about the politics of the time, and what effects they had on the economy and other aspects of life. Did any politicians care about child labor? Did government encourage big business? These are more specific questions I still have. But, other than that, I have no further questions. Overall, I felt that this was an excellent group project. It was a new and different way to examine history, and a good break from the normal method of teaching. I feel that the whole class learned something from this project. And, I would be happy to do it again.
This is Andrew Morris, unable to log on to any of my 4 accounts I have made with this webiste.
This exercise taught us a great deal about history. The graphs and photographs were especially important because they were the most unbiased. Back then you couldn’t change a picture. They showed exactly what life was like. They didn’t have opinions or slants to a topic, they just showed the facts. The graphs were very important because they showed raw data. That also was fact and could be changed by a third or fourth replication of the graph like peoples stories. The accounts of factory life were also very insightful because they were told through different views depending on each document. After reading all the documents one got a pretty good idea at what most groups of people were thing about the important issues of the time. These documents were also first hand accounts and were no changed by people telling them over and over. These documents showed us that the best account of an event is a first hand account. Also it showed me that if one will look at people’s opinions on large topics of the time, then they should see what all classes of people thought not just one or two, to get a complete picture. These sources painted a picture of a very tough life for the working class of Europe. Everyone who worked was forced to work a long sixteen to eighteen hour work day six days a week. During the day people had very few brakes. Many people especially the children were malnourished. The working conditions were very poor and unsafe especially in the coal mines. During this time women were still looked down on by men and made less money. However the employment of men and women was fairly equal. During this time the government didn’t interfere much in the affaires of the businesses. However to cut costs businesses made very unsafe work environments and hired anyone of the street do the jobs at ridiculously low prices. Also they employed children and treated them very inhumanely. Many didn’t even get an education. Because of the wrongs among others the government stepped in and began regulating thing like how long someone could work and at what age children could be hired. Also the government set out to improve living conditions in the cities by making sewage and drainage systems. I have looked at history differently. This assignment showed me that history isn’t just dates of battles and major events. It is about individual’s experiences and hardships. These documents showed what many people would have just glossed over and what people had to deal with. They showed that one doesn’t have to be a famous general to make history. Look at the factories. Enough ordinary people complained about the atrocities that were taking place and brought sweeping change to the entire industry through reforms. Also it taught me history is about ideas. For example when a businessman got the idea that he could make more money having his workers in a factory than in cottage businesses he made his employees work in a factory. He made set times they had to be at work and taught strict discipline. This idea caused other people to follow in his footsteps and eventually changed the entire lifestyle of almost everyone in Europe. A few questions I had that were unanswered were how did the wealthy factory owners live during this time? Did they live like nobles or more like today’s wealthy company owners? Also were there any positive points about culture or standard of living in this time? All we learned about were the hardships.
I think that using primary source documents, including pictures, graphs and written documents, to draw conclusions about the Industrial Revolution was a great way for us to get a first hand view of what life was like during this time. I felt like I was getting a better sense of this time period from this exercise than I would have from a textbook. This type of exercise let us draw our own conclusions about history, rather than reading another author’s views of life during this time period. This type of exercise also showed us how historians can form judgements about the past by using primary source documents. From this exercise, I also realized that history can be interpreted in so many different ways.
I think that I have looked at history slightly differently through this exercise. Instead of just reading the “facts” about the events and occurrences during this time, I taught myself about the conditions of this time period. I have also learned to be more aware of the primary sources that exist because they do provide valuable information for understanding a time period.
From looking at these documents, we were able to determine many of the major events that occurred during this time. For example, we concluded that child labor existed during this time. We also concluded that there were very poor working conditions in general, and many advances in transportation were occurring, such as railroads and canals. We were even able to draw conclusions about the economic situation. Knowing these things tells me a little about the Industrial Revolution. However, I am still left with many questions. I will have to rely on my textbook to supplement this information. I would like to learn more about the events that occurred to cause these changes in society, and the action taken by the government to improve and change these conditions.
I do think that primary sources are a pivotal tool for determining the history of a time and place. However, I do not think that they should be the only tool that we use for learning history. I think that secondary sources are also necessary for a complete understanding of history. Authors send considerable time researching and we can benefit from the connections and conclusions they make. There are always gaps that only secondary sources can fill. This was a useful exercise for learning new ways to view history.
This type of exercise teaches students to use their own abilities of observation and attribute them to the Industrial Revolution and its economic, social, and political effects among others. Based on the topic and time frame given by the documents, the center of focus was the Industrial Revolution and primarily social inequalities with new technology. According to the provided documents, “The Girl of the Period” was inferred to be a distasteful social development as well as the growth in child labor. This method of observation teaches students to work in various perspectives to paint a picture of the time period. Since history is always biased to an extent, as minute as it may be, students must learn to look at their documents that include reports, pictorials, and graphs in different ways to achieve different meanings for the significance of the document.
Before history had seemed to be a one way street where the interpretation given was assumed to be the only interpretation of a source, but this exercise’s need for attention to detail made history appear differently. Most obviously in the pictorial documents, more attention has been paid to each individual object in the picture that could stand for something as simple as the main center of focus in the piece, or a clue as to the time period. Since this was not only a group assignment, but an assignment that started as an individual and would then be presented within their group whom would then present to the entire class, willingness to be open to ideas was prevalent. The information gathered is drawn not only from an individual’s own documents, but their group’s documents as well. This allows trends to become apparent where history may repeat itself or a document explained the effects or causes of various things.
A personal question that I had mostly wondered about throughout the ordeal is what is necessary to know and what isn’t. My group had been the first to go and due to a time restraint, we did not present a document that was mine that spoke of a political group that had failed in an uprising. In the end, we never went back to it and since this is linked directly to our midterm, I’m honestly wondering what’s necessary to know and what not to. Notes were taken during class, but it seems too much to ask for the personal memorization of each individual document rather than several main ones that had the core topics.
In the end, I believe that this exercise was extremely helpful to the class as a whole. Looking at individual things, I realized that this exercise has made me more alert to small details and allows me to pick up on things much faster with many inferences. This is a skill that is essential to being a historian and because of such , I think this exercise does a good job of teaching everyone how to analyze their documents in time for DBQ’s in the future. On top of just teaching us how to analyze, it also is teaching us about the Industrial Revolution in particular, so this period is known inside and out.
After completing this exercise on the Industrial Revolution I have come to realize that history is a process, one that isn’t and cannot be rushed. In analyzing documents, photographs, and other primary sources, one must spend much time looking at every aspect and detail so as to gather as much information as possible. From there, you can infer and develop questions to further your conclusions. These questions you have come up with can then possibly be found in other sources. This exercise can also teach you that history can be interpreted in many ways and that there is no “right” way. By coming up with different interpretations, our group was able to logically make sense of various possibilities for what may have truly went on during the Industrial Revolution. If everyone were to come up with the same conclusions, there’d be no one to challenge.
There were many primary sources in our group investigation that contained photos. The saying, “A picture paints a thousand words,” was quite evident in our group attempt to interpret history because from each painting and photograph, we were able to infer, find out, and confirm just as much information as we would from a normal written source document. Photographs, still life captured in time, are so significant in the study of history. Each photo represents something that has meaning or is conveying a message. When people look back on the past, they take out photos because photos are the key. They are the key to moments, events, feeling, and emotions.
I have found that after completing each document analysis, I saw history in a different light. I developed a more appreciative understanding for what we have discovered about the past throughout the ages because it’s not easy to recover events and moments lost in time, especially when you only have photographs, poems, or journal entries. I also looked at history in a different way, the kind regarding ourselves. We as people are history in the making… every action that we make and every word that we say. I began to wonder, how are future historians going to look back on 2006 and what are we going to be known for. This also lead me to questions such as, what kind of documents would future historians be using to come up with conclusions to how society was, or significant events such as 9/11 or the “war on terrorism.”
Analyzing the Industrial Revolution primary documents was an extremely helpful exercise in learning about European history during this time period and about history in general. First of all, it showed that history is subjective. When my group was looking at the documents, we each analyzed them a little differently and obtained varied interpretations. So, history depends on who is looking at it. And since different people don’t look the same thing the same way, this exercise gave me a more reliable understanding of the Industrial Revolution than our textbook did. The textbook and other secondary sources provide us with someone else’s analysis. While this, at times, is helpful in providing different viewpoints on a subject, it may not be as reliable as primary sources because in a secondary source, evidence can be manipulated by the author to prove a certain point. The primary documents allowed us to create our own analysis of the time period. They also have a closer narrative proximity, so they are as reliable sources as we can obtain, short of going back in time and experiencing it for ourselves.
In addition, firsthand accounts make history seem more concrete. The primary documents gave concrete examples of life during the Industrial Revolution, instead of the general descriptions that the textbooks might offer. This makes it seem more personal and more realistic and tangible, so to speak.
However, this exercise showed me how difficult the job of a historian’s can be. Some of the documents were somewhat difficult to analyze because we didn’t always know exactly what a photo was depicting, or the photo might be unclear, or we didn’t know who the author of an article was, and in these cases, we had to speculate; I imagine historians often go through the same process. This activity also showed me that historians must pay very close attention to detail. A photograph may contain more than meets the eye, and one must “dig” to find it. For example, the photograph of the two children changing the bobbins of a machine shows more than just two children and a machine. It showed the lack of government laws about child labor and safety in the workplace, the detrimental conditions of the workplace, the low wages that the workers earned, and the use of new technology.
Moreover, historians’ jobs might also be made more difficult by the fact that documents might not give a complete picture because of the viewpoint of the author or his bias. For example, in this activity, the documents were mostly from middle class and working class points of view. Thus, this made me wonder how the nobility and royalty felt about industrialization.
Additionally, this exercise was also helpful for me because I feel that I know the information better since we ourselves put forth the effort to analyze the documents instead of just studying someone else’s analysis, and so I will be able to better remember the things we studied. All in all, this exercise contributed greatly to our study of the Industrial Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution primary documents exercise was a different approach to learning about what was going on during this time period. By analyzing documents that directly came from the time period of the Industrial Revolution, I was able to see first-hand accounts of what was really occurring, instead of a summarization from a textbook. I was able to analyze the language used by the people during the time period, and I was able to identify what form of documents were used during the time period; whether it be a photograph or a report. By reading and analyzing various documents, one is able to draw conclusions about how events throughout history directly affected various groups of people, whether it was for the better or for the worse. The exercise showed me how one event in history can affect all levels of society, and people’s different interpretation/opinions on a single event. This exercise also affects the way people study history. One can look at the documents and identify possible solutions people were proposing to different problems, and can see if these solutions were ever successful. Also, by reading certain documents, one may begin to have a biased opinion, and instead of looking at the whole picture, they have a skewed perception of what really happened. Just the opposite can occur too, which can only benefit history. By having first-hand accounts of events throughout history, and a variety of documents, the study of history can be more accurately summarized. Historians can also identify new facts and have varying opinions, which can only benefit the study of history. This exercise did allow for me to look at history in a different way. I have just read textbook summaries on the Industrial Revolution, and have drawn my conclusions from that. Textbooks are less specific and talk about the main ideas, whereas these documents expressed specific opinions from varying social classes. It was also fun to look at these documents that talked about struggles or success people were going through, and know that things either turned out for the better or worse for them. Some questions left unanswered were what happened to the people who were distressed during this time period. Throughout the documents, complaints were being made, and issues were being discussed. The only questions I have are if these problems were solved or even addressed, and what after-affects they had on these people. I also wonder if these documents had any impact on the people. Were they were published and broadly distributed, or were they were banned and hated for the revelations they had made about the Industrial Revolution? This exercise was very valuable to me and I think I now have a greater understanding of much of an impact the Industrial Revolution had throughout Europe. I was able to read and analyze various thoughts and opinions, which I would not have gotten through a textbook. It was a different way to approach learning about a huge event in history, while still practicing analyzing primary documents.
This exercise was definitely an eye-opening experience on the study of history. Students rarely experience the primary documents before reading or examining some secondary sources beforehand. In 6th grade, our social studies teacher had us do something similar by bringing in random objects and having us examine them and shape a culture (we were learning about early man) out of the objects and their supposed uses. It was even more meaningful this time around, in which the documents and pictures we examined were from an actual period in time.
First off, history is a hard subject to class, define, and teach. The information available on an area is constantly being updated and our views shifted. Furthermore, history is a subjective art. The viewer’s take on a subject is actually being seen through many different lenses—all the different biases and POV’s an object went through before it reached the current ‘historian’. For example, the documents seen in class could have been censored by the government of different eras, the paintings rendered with the specific artist’s tone on the era. Therefore, history is a tricky thing to study in all its diverse facets. It’s important to eliminate bias that can come from under-coverage of the population or culture one is studying, but it is also important to not suffer from bias that can come from individual ‘artifacts’ from the time period. How does a historian tell objective from subjective if there aren’t enough ‘pieces’ of evidence to complete the whole picture puzzle?
And yet, raw primary sources also add some spice to learning history. The textbooks we read are more or less objective. But in achieving that objectivity and trying to cover many viewpoints, readers often miss out on the subjectivity of the different aspects of the people and events of the time. Bias is an interesting thing to read and study, and it is also a crucial part of defining history. By sucking out that bias and subjectivity, what conclusions can students take from textbooks besides hard facts that we have not much evidence to support?
It was amusing, piecing together the documents our group got, and then puzzling over what each meant and what part it played in the big picture. Some documents, such as legislation, were easier than others. Dates and other definitive markings allowed us to bring in prior knowledge of the Industrial Revolution and make things click that way (although bringing in prior knowledge really defeats the purpose, since historians with no prior knowledge on an era could not have done so). Although more challenging, the art pieces were a lot more rewarding to study, since art is a very subjective medium. I was happy to incorporate some of the skills on evaluating artwork that I took from my high school art classes. The tone of the piece, the colors, and the strokes incorporating the ability to analyze art was something I’ve never really done before in history class. It made me appreciate historians a lot more. They’re not just dried up old individuals who examine dried up old antiques and try to establish objective, cold, and lifeless facts with equally boring methods that had nothing to do with any other subject. Rather, the study of history encompasses all other subjects learned in and out of school, since history is what runs parallel to the achievements created through time.
Since this is getting rather lengthy, I’ll wrap it up. One question left unanswered by this activity was… well, all the holes left through studying the documents our group was given. While the documents were informative and interesting, they were a sort of ‘icing on the cake’. It would take lots more of those documents to piece together the brunt of the information on the Industrial Revolution. I have to ask: “What year were these pictures taken? Where were they taken? When was this act passed? Who passed it? What was the environment like when these were made? What were people’s reactions to these at the time?” The document we had held none of those answers, even if they were informative by themselves. Reading the textbook helped a lot, though (I would never have gotten the Crystal Palace without reading Chapter 20). It’s nice that there are compilations of information out there that give an overall briefing of a subject. However, the fact that the documents raised many questions also leads me to realize another aspect of history, and knowledge in general. The more you know, the more questions arise. It’s a never-ending cycle, really. I’m sure even the author of the textbook has questions left unanswered about the Industrial Revolution. Since Spielvogel knows so much already, he probably has a lot more questions than I do.
In spending the last couple of class periods looking at the Industrial Revolution primary source documents, I gained a more thorough understanding of the time period and the effect that it had on the countries and their people. Being able to look a photos of life in the factories, and hear through poems and journal entries about the hardships faced by children and women, gave me a better appreciation of the difficulties that they faced. It made me realize how much this introduction of new industrial technology, really was a revolution and that it impacted European life socially and economically. While paragraphs in our textbook may be able to relay this information to us, it doesn’t have the same effect as a first hand document. First hand accounts allow the reader to interpret what was going on, and how people felt about it at that time. Thus this exercise showed me that history is meant to be interpreted by those who study it and that everybody may look at it in a different way. By studying a primary source document the beholder is given a different angle in which to absorb the information that is being given. So often do we rely on what our textbook says that we miss what the real point of studying some event or time period was. I think that these documents force the viewer to think outside the box and open their minds to new possibilities. In some cases it may expose an idea or thought that could be valuable to our understanding of a certain situation or problem. Primary sources allow us to see the thoughts and actions of certain people during a certain time period, and therefore we are allowed to put ourselves in their position and think about what we would have done. On the other hand, while primary source documents help us to better understand a time period in history, they also create more questions for those who view them. If anything, they make the reader curious to know more about what happened and consequently they begin to research more about the topic. For instance, one of the pictures I looked at contained a bridge over a river in a heavily forested area. There appeared to be a house in the background, and my guess was that it was center of some industry that was powered by the river. I was somewhat unsure why this was relevant to the time period and my question was answered in the textbook reading. I learned that river water was used to power machinery and that it also was used to transport goods. Mostly, the primary sources just made me more curious about why this time period was considered such a revolution in industry. Overall, I feel that this was a valuable exercise to do in class and it made me more appreciative of the time period and the effect that it had on the nations and their people.
This type of exercise can teach us many things about history. It can help inspire new types of thinking, motivate new ideas, and help the people of present day to try and not make the same mistakes of those in the past. It allows people to see the trial and error of things that have occurred in the past. It offers new ideas for government, leadership, rights, and laws. It opens the doors for new ideas and inventions to be explored. These primary source documents can help to understand the true experiences that people went through and saw. Reading them from another source could prove them to possibly be not as accurate as when it is heard from the people who lived it.
I didn’t learn anything drastically new from this exercise. I spent a good majority of sophmore and junior year studying the Industrial Revolution in history. One thing that did surprise me though was when a girl said when she worked, many of the men around her worked naked. I thought that was a little peculiar that the men would work, or even be allowed to work naked. Another thing that I was surprised about was how many paintings there were of this time. I never would have expected there to be so many paintings, because sometimes when a change as big as the Industrial Revolution occur, the people living in it don’t even notice that it is going on.
I think the biggest question left unanswered was how all of these bad conditions were allowed to take. People were noticably being harmed in the production of new goods, as many children as adults. I understand it is important to make a dollar and be to be able to provide for your family, but it isn’t worth the risk of humanity.
When we started this exercise, I knew we were going to have to use our own knowledge of the Industrial Revolution to depict every picture or document to understand what they were saying. In my group particularly, there 3 pictures that we had no idea what was going on. There was one picture of a bridge, one of a river by a factory, and one of a homeless man on the street. Some of my group members mentioned that the Industrial Revolution was all about new ways of building and using machines to build new things, such as bridges. The other picture with the river was low and looked murky by the factory, so we thought it represented the new pollution during the Revolution. Lastly, we thought that the homeless man represented the men and women left without jobs and suffering the low salaries during this era. From looking at these pictures, as well as reading the documents, this exercise taught me that you don’t have to know everything about history to understand what’s going on. Most of us had little background information about the Revolution, but that didn’t stop us from interpreting the pictures to understand the thoughts of others. History deals with people and the effects of their feeling and actions. Seeing the pictures and reading the documents was just like seeing into someone else’s mind and showing me what their experience was like and their feelings on the time period. I didn’t need so much knowledge on the Industrial Revolution to comprehend what people’s opinions are and what’s going on. Using our knowledge of what we knew helped us understand a different side to the Revolution that we never really thought about. When I thought about the Revolution in England during the 18th century, I thought it was a good time full of prosperity and profit. This activity showed me the opposite viewpoint of this era. Most of our documents dealt with the problems with pollution, the population growth, and the terrible working conditions with child labor and low wages. I now realize that this was a time of goodness, but was also a time of hardship and despair for many people and the environment. From seeing a new side to the Revolution, I just want to know more about the positive side of the Revolution. Was there more bad than good during this period? Did most people have the negative outlook on it as most of our documents presented? Overall, I really enjoyed this activity. I liked having the ability to not need knowledge on the subject to understand what people were writing about or what photographers wanted people to see in their pictures. I hope we do more of these!
During the past few classes we have been analyzing a set of primary source documents in groups. All we knew about these documents was that they were from the Industrial Revolution. After examining them we were able to deduce a great amount about the Industrial Revolution. I feel that analyzing primary documents is an excellent way to learn about the past. When you learn history simply by reading a textbook, you will only be learning the history from the author’s point of view. It is much more effective to analyze documents that were written during the Industrial Revolution before reading the textbook. It is also much more entertaining. As much as I love history, I find that the textbooks often present the material in a dull way. They don’t let you form your own opinion, or come up with your own inferences.
I have definitely looked at history differently after performing this exercise. From now on, I will not simply look at a picture, or read a poem, and decide what they are expressing. I will examine them scrupulously until I am able to make a fairly thorough conclusion. While analyzing a picture, Mr. Kirby suggested splitting the picture into four quadrants and analyzing each part separately. This helped me become conscious that small details in a picture may not be very noticeable but can portray a lot about the time period. It is easy to look at a picture and come up with an overall mood of the picture. However, unless you analyze the document meticulously, you might miss a lot of useful information. For example, one of the documents that I was analyzing was a picture of a city. When I first looked at this picture I was able to see a line of brick buildings packed close together with a canal running between the buildings. I was able to infer that there was urbanization occurring during this time period. I was able to tell that buildings are growing taller rather than wider, so they can cram them close together. They also started building with bricks. Since we had two pictures with canals in them, I was able to infer that there was an increase in canals being created. Despite these inferences that I was able to make I had completely missed the most important part of this picture at first sight. Until I split the picture into four quadrants, I did not see the smokestacks on top of one of the buildings. This is exceedingly important because this is possibly the earliest picture in history I have seen with a smokestack in it. This tells me that factories are starting to be created.
I have learned that you have to be careful who you are learning from because history can be told from a very biased perspective. This is why I feel that it was important that we worked in groups rather than alone. I believe that if history is told from secondary sources time after time, then eventually much of it will be lost. This is why it is important to look at primary sources, and piece together parts of history. I have learned that when analyzing a primary source document it is important to recognize your assumptions, since they might be false. For example, one of my group’s documents was a graph which showed the population growth in Britain during the Industrial Revolution. One of my group members assumed that the population growth was a result of families having more children. Although this is a possibility, I understood that there are other explanations. For example, death rates could have rapidly decreased, or maybe increases in health care could have led to this population growth. Other explanations could be a rise in immigration or possibly an end to epidemics.
This exercise helped us understand the terrible conditions of the lower class. However, we did not learn whether or not the upper class was satisfied with their position in society. Did they want further reform? Were they unhappy with the government at the time? I did not learn much about the attitudes of people belonging to the upper class of society. Because of this, we have to refer to secondary sources like our textbook to fill the gaps. I feel that this exercise is very effective, and should be performed more often throughout the year. It is a great supplement of learning to our textbook.
After hearing some of the primary sources being analyzed, there is a lot one can learn about history by reading these sources. One thing is for sure that there really isn’t any “experts” in history. Unfortunately I had to learn that the hard way when Mr. Kirby made fun of me in front of the class asking me what I had thought these expert historians were. History can be analyzed and broken down in many different ways. Especially in unclear photos and records. To one person an object can appear to be a trash bag and to another person the same object maybe nothing more than a shadow. The important thing to learn about this exercise and about the study of history is that there really right and wrong answers when analyzing history. Sometimes things are just too unclear to say that one object or point of view is correct and others are wrong. It is all about the way you view these items. The thing is it is also very important to understand the time period too. That is the difference between some of us and those that have a large scale amount of knowledge about the time period. This background knowledge allows you to make more accurate interpretations on what your seeing or reading. That is why these people claim to be experts, because they have spent their whole lives devoted to a certain era so they can understand the events that unfolded during that time.
You definitely look at history differently through this exercise. While looking at a picture or analyzing a document your basically going on what background information you have on the topic. That is the way I went about analyzing what was going on the photos and documents based on what little knowledge I knew or thought I knew about the Industrial Revolution. Too often do people form opinions on what they were told in a text book or by a teacher. By looking at these documents without already reading the section, you are able to form your own opinions and draw your own conclusions from the sources that were given. Sometimes a textbook analysis may be no better or even worse than your own analysis. Being able to form your own observations and compare and contrast it to additional informational and what has already been said about the sources is the best thing to do when analyzing sources. (even though you may not be able to on a DBQ).
I still had a few questions on my mind after doing this exercise. One main question is especially with the source I read on water and pollution, What year was this being written? I assume that the document was during the time period, but the document seemed more reflective than present. Another question that really wasn’t answered was what was going on with the upper class during this time period? We really didn’t have many sources vividly describe how the upper class lived during this time period. I think that knowing more about the upperclass can really show you the differences and similarities in terms of living environments and health conditions between the two.
All in all this proved to be a very important exercise. It gave us a chance to be able to see what actually was going on during the Industrial Revolution, and made people think about what was going on during the time period without actually learning about it through a textbook.
This exercise teaches us how to gather information about history from different documents, articles, and pictures. In order to gain information you must analiyze the document and show your general understanding of the subject.This document also teaches us about how different people interpreted history. While one person will paint a painting to express how they feel about a certain event,, another might write an editorial to a newspaper. There is no limitation to finding historical facts. They are not just in books and newspapers, but in photos, paintings, poems, etc.
After doing this exercise I have realized how much our country has changed since the industrial revolution. So many laws have been made that if they were around back then, millions of people would be put in jail. I have realized the hardships many people faced and the pressure to support their families.
Questions that were left unaswered would be what happened to all the people who were affected badly by the revolution? Many wrote letters or gave their opinions, but was anything done about them?
After reading these articles I have gotten a better understanding of the people affected by the industrial revolution because of their thoughts and opinions. In a regular text book I would not be able to find whata young kid thought of his working conditions, or a what a mother thought about leaving her young kids at home so she can work and put food on the table.
This exercise provided a great insight into what life was like in the Industrial Revolution. This exercise proves studying history does not just come from reading a text book. In order to really study history you have to spend time analyzing documents so that you can make you own interpretations. It was also beneficial to be working in a group so that some thought processes could be shared. It is important to have several people analyzing documents so that you can compare your results.
This exercise has made me look at history very differently. I always thought history was just about certain dates and people. This project showed history is composed of different eras that are made up of these dates and people. That is not the important part. The important part is to be able to analyze these different time periods through documents like letters and pictures. Everybody has to interpret history in their own way. Some of the photographs we got represented several different aspects of the Industrial Revolution. This is why it is okay for two people to come up with different responses to one photo.
There are still a couple questions left unanswered from this exercise. First of all, how did people get away with abusing what are common human rights to us today? It seems ridiculous that children were forced to work in such bad conditions for such long hours. How were children denied their own childhoods? Also, the Industrial Revolution had to happen for us to be where we are today. However, what was the final push that really motivated the revolution to take place?
This exercise really changed my beliefs on history. It really made a difference in my understanding of the revolution because it taught me things I could never learn in a book. It showed the real emotions people involved in the revolution were feeling.
The analysis of primary documents was a new and unique way that I was able to learn about the Industrial Revolution. This type of exercise is extremely valuable because we are able to learn different things about history than through other means, such as a textbook or another secondary source. For example, through this exercise, we are able to gain an understanding of not only the main themes of the Industrial Revolution, but the connections between different aspects of these themes. It would be difficult, for example, to connect social, economic, and political aspects of the Revolution through a textbook that outlined the major events and people. Through this activity, however, we were able to make numerous connections between the various themes of the Revolution.
We are also able to gain an understanding about the study of history through this exercise. Studying history shouldn’t just be a memorization of important dates, events, and people, but a true understanding of the underlying concepts of these events. This deep comprehension is what we can gain by looking at history in different ways, just like the primary source analysis we performed in class. Analysis of primary sources gives the historian a true account of what the time period was like, which can be much more important than a secondary account of the period.
Through this exercise, I definitely have a different view on the Industrial Revolution. When we began this unit, I thought of the Industrial Revolution in fairly basic terms. I viewed it as a growth in manufacturing and other industries, and saw it as the framework for today’s world economy. However, I had no idea of the extent of the poor working conditions, and the horrific quality of labor for women and children. Upon hearing the analysis of the girl’s account of her daily routine at work, one of the primary documents, I was appalled by the fact that this was being allowed to occur within factories across Europe.
In the end, I am left with a few questions regarding the Industrial Revolution dealing with the thoughts of factory owners. I realize that these men were doing whatever it took to maximize profit, but I imagine that the owner or managers conscience would limit the horrors that occurred in the factories. The answer to these questions can really only be found through the further analysis of primary documents dealing with statements or thoughts made by these owners or managers.
Overall, this exercise has certainly provided a deeper understanding of the Industrial Revolution, especially its themes and the connections between them. The exercise provided a view of history that could not have been received form any other source, such as a textbook.
The primary source document exercise done in class this week proved to be a helpful activity when it came to analyzing primary source documents. In the duration of this exercise we learned how to apply our previous experiences with primary source documents and tie them into a simple fill-in sheet. We were asked to examine the purpose, the tone, and to ask questions of the documents.
An exercise such as this asks us as the students to look at a picture, or a chart, or a poem, and see it through the eyes of the photographer, the statistician, and the writer. For example, when asked why a photographer would photograph a suspension bridge, I not only answered, "to depict industrial advancements in engineering," but I explained how the surrounding area was most likely rich in trade, and why the trains were so important.
This taught us that when studying history we can not merely log on to a website or open a book on our topics. We must find primary sources, pieces of history recorded with an undisputed reputation for accuracy, because only by looking at these primary sources can we see the world through the author's eyes. And while gazing through this window in time, we are more apt when writing papers or having discussions in class.
Through this exercise I believe the class has looked at history differently than before. We witnessed the exploitation of children in the factory, marvels of engineering, and and increase in the standard of living right when it happened. Instead of having a book tell you what happened during this date with these people we are allowed to look at it from our own perspectives and interpret it any which way.
Although this exercise provided an in-depth look at life during the revolution, I still have some unanswered questions. I can't seem to comprehend why parents would let their children work in these dangerous factories and mines, for hours on end, with a pay that scarce. After reading a sad recollection from an eight-year old girl who "never say the light" it made me wonder how heartless the owners of these mines really were and if they realized what they were doing. I also do not understand why these workers, who were working more than ten hours a day, getting injured in the workplace, and were being payed so little, decided not to strike or revolt in any fashion. Poems and stories were written. Laws were set into place, but little changed. The workers stood idly by, doing backbreaking work for meager pay, and did absolutely nothing.
All in all I think that this exercise was very helpful in teaching us how to examine primary sources and provided a wider understanding of the Industrial Revolution.
Over the past week we have divided into groups to analyze primary sources. The only thing we knew was that all the sources were related to the Industrial Revolution, and we had to make our own opinions based on analyzing the documents like a historian would. The activity was similar to solving a puzzle with some pieces missing, because each group had different documents, so they had to formulate their own opinions about the Industrial Revolution based just on prior knowledge and the information they were provided with.
Participating in an activity like this is effective, because it gives students a hands-on experience. Plus, by having a limited amount of prior knowledge, we can make our own opinions about the topic instead of taking the opinions of that of a textbook. Textbooks aren't always the most reliable sources either, because they give a "watered down" account of history, and not everything is brutally honest based on censorship and depending on whose perspective it's coming from. By reading primary sources, we get a more realistic version of what actually happened. Instead of just repeating facts after facts, the author gets more personal, sometimes describing his/her own experiences. When you read something that has happened to another person and put yourselves in their shoes, I think that's when you really understand the depth of something. Personally, after reading so many first hand accounts about child labor, I felt for the children, because I realized how atrocious working conditions really were.
Since we didn't get to finish presenting the documents, I would just like to hear about what types of sources other groups had. One major question I have though is, what did factory owners think? Aren't they humans too? I wish I got a chance to read/hear about a document written from the perspective of a factory owner who forced children to work in such horrible conditions.
By studying the primary documents we have been reviewing over the past few classes on the Industrial Revolution, there is much to gain. When we are taught about history, many times we learn from just the textbook or by watching a movie that we are never able to absorb much information or opinion from. In the textbooks, many times opinions are not expressed by either side in any situation due to the authors need to remain unbiased about certain historical topics. We always end up learning the surface of a subject or event in history. By reviewing, reading, and analyzing primary documents such as photos, paintings, poems, interviews, or articles, we are able to hear what the people of the era had to say. It is a much more interesting and in depth way to learn about a historical topic. I feel that after doing such an activity, I come away with more knowledge about the topic than I would have if I was only learning by lecture, text, or video. As for what studying primary documents can do for the study of history, it can create it into, as I stated before, much more interesting. Many times the primary documents were either controversial or stating an understudied opinion.
Throughout this activity, it has opened my eyes to different views or conditions during the Industrial Revolution. This being said, I would not consider it to have altered how I view history. In the past I have studied primary documents so this was not an unusual way to look or study history for me.
Due to the fact we have not finished reviewing all the documents, I have many questions left unanswered. I have not been yet introduced to any of the political views during the Industrial Revolution for instance. After reviewing a few, I do not have any questions about the child labor or working hours we discussed but it does leave me wondering about the rest of the conditions of this time period as a whole.
The recent exercise done on the various documents on the Industrial Revolution discloses many things about history in itself. Primarily it demonstrates how history is very ambiguous. The viewpoint of an author or painter will not necessarily be the same to one person as it is to another. A person’s perception, judgment, background, and other influences are all filters by which one’s conclusions and inferences are based about certain historical documents or works of art. It is therefore this ambiguity that makes history less lucid then other subjects, because in order to study it one must maintain somewhat of an open-mind taking into account the various sentiments about a historical topic. History is also not just words compiled to form documents, books, or articles, but also consists of works of art composed not eloquently by the pen, but by simple strokes of a paintbrush. It is a simple picture that reveals much about history. But with pictures, one must look upon them dually, in that a historian should perceive a picture as a whole or as a body, yet at the same time study the parts that constitute the whole. Any minute detail can contribute to the meaning and theme of the entire picture or painting. This exercise has made me look at history differently, and as a result I will strive to look deeper and less superficially at certain historical documents. I must ask myself questions such as what were the circumstances and influences at that time period that could have shaped the author’s perception on a historical happening or event? Were there constraints in society at the time that would explain his or her sentiment? These questions will continually be in back of my mind while I analyze various primary and secondary source documents.
I learned so much more studying the primary source documents in class then any document could have taught me. Instead of being taught by some else, you actually had to delve into the past and decipher what everything meant. Although due to many snow delays we only got to listen to two documents from another group. I learned that history can not be divided into neat little sections. One document can be either a social and economic issue or even just a social issue but under that, you have child labor, adult labor and so much more. When I first heard that we were going to be doing this project, I was a little afraid because I had never actually done anything like it before. It has always been primary source documents dumbed up by history books. But I found this easier to learn about history because you actually have to put some sort of effort into. So overall I can’t cite specific connections between the different groups documents because we never actually got to it, I can say that reading our documents helped me learn a lot about the Industrial Revolution.
After doing the primary resource exercise, I feel I have a better understanding of the Industrial Revolution. By studying the primary resources, we had to interpret what we thought was going on in the documents. Usually, we are just told what happened during a certain event or time period, so all we have to do is memorize the facts. By studying the primary source documents, we had to teach ourselves what was going on. And what we were teaching ourselves may not have been exactly what really did happen, but we were trying to use the documents to piece together what the Industrial Revolution was. Also, by studying these documents, we were able to understand how the people that had lived during the Industrial Revolution felt about what was happening. When we use a textbook to learn about a certain topic, the information is very non-biased, but the documents were very opinionated and biased. Some of the documents we were able to analyze were photographs, paintings, maps, and graphs. These types of documents help to better one’s understanding about history because they are a different form of studying history. A very famous saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words. And I think that this is very true. Depending on how you look at the picture, it may seem as one thing is going on, when to another person, they might think something completely different is being portrayed.
I don’t think I will look at history completely differently than before because of these documents. I have used and analyzed primary source documents before, so I am used to using this method of learning. However, by analyzing these documents, I feel that I have attained some valuable analytical skills.
I do have many questions left answered. One of the main reasons for this is that we haven’t finished going over all the documents in class. I have a feeling that the questions I have can be easily answered from gaining information that someone else had in their documents. I don’t have many questions about child labor or working conditions during the Industrial Revolution, but I do have questions about the political views and the economy during the Industrial Revolution.
This primary source exercise can teach several different things on how to interpret history. One is that it taught others and me that when looking at history one must not just look at what happened but how it affected others and what those people had to say or feel about that situation. For example, one of the documents we had to examine was of a series of interviews of mineworkers and owners. To understand the conditions in which the workers had to work in one must look at what the workers said but also what the owners say about it. The reason is that by looking at both sides of the views one can understand not just how the workers were treated but why they were. By gaining this knowledge then we can truly understand the situation and make a better decision of whether the actions following those articles were correct. However, even though this exercise has greatly helped me to have a broader view of history it still leaves some issues unanswered. For instance where does one start to look for those information and what other information do we need to know before we analysis the current one.
Analyzing primary source documents as we did in our recent exercise concerning the Industrial Revolution can teach one some things that one cannot learn properly through a third party. For instance, in Document 14, a photo of child laborers, one can truly feel their exhaustion and misery, in a way that one could not through a simple recounting of the events from an entirely detached historian. In document 36, a an excerpt from record of parliamentary debates, the speaker recounts that in one town, more than eighty children were quickly assembled when he wished to see all who were deformed from factory work. This example provides the reader with a more poignant sense of the plight of working children in the industrial revolution than reading that children were deformed through their work would. Looking at history through primary sources allows one to view history through the view point of those who lived it. This can be helpful in some ways and detrimental in others. Eyewitnesses of an event often have a much clearer idea of what occurred then someone born generations later. However, the bias of the time is present, and can obscure the reality of the documents. Politicians who were unpopular at the time may be made to seem downright evil, while they may not have been much different from his colleagues. The largest question left unanswered by these documents is why the people of Industrial Europe seemed unwilling to do anything about the horrible conditions faced by the working class. It seems odd that the working class, who had much larger numbers than the wealthier industrial elites, would simply accept their fate. It also seems strange that the upper class would remain indifferent to the plight of those that often made them their wealth. I think that when one is examining a collection of primary source documents to help develop a picture of the time period, one should realize that it is much more difficult to remain emotionally detached from the subject matter, than when one is studying from a textbook. Some may not view this as negative, but I feel that the most accurate image of an era is developed when one does their best to detach themselves emotionally.
During the past week, our class has split up into groups to analyze a series of primary documents, both individually and as a team. These documents took a variety of forms, including photographs, paintings, interviews, poetry, and many more. Through this activity, much can be learned about history and how it is studied. This learning was enhanced through the variety of the documents (in both topic and type) and through sharing the different ways people viewed the documents. This exercise demonstrated just how intricate history is- many pieces are interdependent and connected. As we sorted out the documents into three categories (economic, social, and political), there was debate over several of the documents. Depending on which aspect of the document was focused on and how it was interpreted, some of these documents could be placed in more than one category. The multi-category documents helped to connected all three categories into a more solid, detailed image of the industrial revolution. In studying history, this detailed image is the goal. However, such an image of any given time period cannot be formed by not looking all the relationships between the many aspects of history. This activity helped me to look at the industrial revolution, not in separate pieces, but pieces that are connected to make a greater whole.
The primary source exercise was interesting and very educational. Primary sources are better to learn from because they teach more about the time period than other works written afterwards. Other documents can be biased and important details can be lost in history if they are not recorded during the time in which they happen. When using primary sources, people learn what life was really like during the time period because the authors of the works experienced what they wrote about. This allows for a more detailed account. Primary sources are better to use in a lot of instances when doing resesarch. For this topic, the primary documents expressed how hard life was for the common people during the Industrial Revolution. The parliament records described what life was like in the factories as told by workers. The pictures depicted harsh working conditions and the difficulty of life. I did start to look at the Industrial Revolution differently after this exercise. I previously knew that living conditions were unsanitary and the work was long and difficult, but hearing what people looked like and the actual experiences they went through changed my views on how harsh life actually was at the time. I also thought it was interesting to learn the solutions that some people were coming up with to solve harsh working conditions. One man came up of an idea of a utopia, but the people still did the same type of tasks that they were doing, just only an hour per task. This seemed to create a lot of the same kinds of problems that the world already had. One of the things I wonder is if people actually tried to employ these ideas of utopias to society and how they worked out.
The Industrail Revolution Primary Documents Exercise By William Si
Over these last few days, we have been going over primary source documents to try to produce an image of what the Industrial Revolution was like. From stories to pictures to graphs, a lot of different sources were put in front of us to analyze. Even if the image is incomplete, this type of exercise can teach a lot about our history. Not only is different stories preserved in different mediums but each one tells about a specific example of life during the time. Comparing it to a text book, this provides us a much more depth of knowledge as we are coming up with ideas ourselves. Even if the text is easy to read, all it does is present analyzed information to us for us to memorize. Without our own views on history, we could never really truly understand its importance in our life today.
After going through this exercise, even the study of history has changed for me. Instead of just reading a book full of information, I could try to use that information and piece everything together to form an idea of the life instead of just memorizing what is written. For primary source documents, I know more on how to analyze them and to extract the information for my own opinion. Even the smallest details such as if the man wore a hat or not can show me part of the life during the time. From the widest of views such as urbanization to the meticulous details such as brick, I can understand further than what I can extract out of a plain text.
From this now, history appears in a different light. Not to say that what I learned was wrong but it was only one view on how to see things. Also with this, text books become unbiased sometimes as it is just like they are saying that events just happen. Instead of just one street through history, side roads now spread out with different opinions and other ways of viewing everything. By realizing the issues / topics ourselves, we can find connections too between events in history that we may have missed while reading a book.
But even after going through an exercise like this, questions still arise. If we are given a bunch of documents to analyze ourselves, what are we supposed to take out of it? How through should we go through them and when is enough. It is possible to go and over analyze an document to the point of seeing radically different views throughout different articles. Another question that comes up is how we are sure that the views are all of the ones during the time. There is no guaranties that everything is like what is presented but how do we know that it is all of it. Even for my own documentation of my sports team, I tend to not record the sad parts and other times, I just missed out of the opportunity. Parts of the history are missed and the true image of the time cannot be completed.
Getting lengthy and almost one page in Word, it is nice to have a different approach to history. Even though right after we completed it, we got swamped with more of the regular reading, it complements the knowledge of what we already have and learned. It was not a waste of time and it has affected the way many think about history.
I think that the main thing that you can get out of an exercise like this is how seemingly unrelated topics in history are really very close. Had I just seen these documents laying around, I would never have thought that a poem called "The Cyclops" and a picture of an iron forge had anything to do with each other, but when you go deeper into it, it is clear that they are about the same thing.
I think that this did change my view of history a little. We had always been taught how poor the working conditions were in the factories and how much the people who were put into these conditions suffered. Before, it had always seemed like the "evil" factory owners fault. The more that we went over the documents, however, the more it was clear that it was more the politicians faults, because they were the ones who actually had the power to change things in society.
I am still very curious about there could have been a time in history with such sheer and utter disregard for human life. Today, aborting an unborn child is a big issue and causes an uproar with human rights groups. It really puzzles me how in the decades following the enlightenment, where the ideas of natural rights first came about, they would use children in factories because "they were smaller and could fit into smaller spaces."
I think that this assignment was really helpful in teaching how to analyze primary source documents. Though we had all used them before, it helps to do an excercise like this because now you really know what to look for when going over a document.
The act of looking upon a primary source document in complete ignorance of all other opinions--of, indeed, looking upon such a document as the people of that time must have seen it--can only be described an historical revelation. This type of excerise has us live the history rather than merely learn it; has us realize that history, while it is about the big picture, is also about putting the pieces together. So often, in school and in life, we look at history as one big event, throwing a blanket definition and description over ever-changing eras. We come at the study of history from above, as impartial viewers, while, in reality, when this history was being made, it was seen from below, in bits and parts; in a poem and a painting; a photograph of a metal bridge; in the testimonies of workers. How can one truly understand history without seeing it from both above and below? This exercise also showed me that history is subjective. The truth differs from person to person; a child laborer might speak of the exhaustion they feel, the long hours spent standing; an architect might talk about the new advancements, the bridges and buildings and materials that now lie at their fingertips; and the owner of a factory would probably mention the new prosperity, the dawning of a better age. We were presented with all these voices in our primary documents, all speaking different truths. It is up to the person listening to decide what is true to them, and in that way, yet another version of the same history is written. As, while performing this exercise, I came to understand this, I came to look at history differently. It is hard, sometimes, to remember, while flipping through the dry pages of our textbooks, that all this was real; that real people laughed and suffered during the Industrial Revolution. One can become so consumed in that analytical aspect of history, that you forget there is a living side too. It seems to make history more important to look at it this way. It is true, many of my questions were left unanswered. I cannot completely accustom myself to so brief and scattered a look at the Industrial Revolution. Despite all my fine talk about looking at history in parts, I still feel as though I am trying to put together a puzzle with too many pieces missing. I think, in some ways, no matter how much I learn, there always will be questions unanswered and empty spaces. Even if I spent the rest of my life studying a single day during the Industrial Revolution, I could never learn all of the histories that were formed during that day, in an hour, a minute, a second. I think that this is the greatest lesson I took away from this exercise--that in history, there is always more to discover.
Looking at primary sources teaches not only a more direct view of history, it can completely change the way we view it altogether. By reading about horrid working conditions in textbooks and narratives of the time, we can get a good idea as to the terrible things that the working class had to survive through. But by seeing pictures and reading first-hand accounts of men with “trenchfoot”, women who are forced to work on mechanized loons for twelve hours a day, and children who are sticking their hands into constantly moving machines, the reader experiences a substantial metamorphosis in their ideas. By viewing pictures and reading first-hand narratives, the impact of the words read from the textbook are exemplified and the emotions that can be induced from simple photos is almost scary. It gives the reader the ability to not only learn history, but to sympathize and empathize with those who had to go through the torments of it, such as the British industrial revolution working conditions. Primary and first-hand sources do not leave me with many questions; however, the main one would be whether those who had to suffer through some of these unsafe conditions believe that it was worth it because of the reforms and good that came from it in the end. This question, though, is essentially unanswerable and fairly impossible to decide a stand-point on. Personally, I like reading things such as this. Baradat can teach our class quite a bit about political policy and terminology, but by reading something from the Greek philosophers who first enacted a true democratic society, it would take it to a whole new level. I think with every chapter or area we study, there should be more first-hand accounts to read. Text book tests are fine, and the chapters are well-written, but nothing would prove to us the significance of some of these things as a quotation from Plato would.
The primary source exercise we did in class provided more information concerning the attitudes and ideals of the people from that time period. A textbook can only give facts but some details are always left out. One important thing that this exercise taught me is that there is not clear line or black and white when studying historical events. After reading some of the testimonials and first-hand reports I discovered that certain types of people had different views and values than I thought they would on the key issues (such as child labor and labor laws). Another important thing that I took away from this exercise is that variation in interpretation is essential to understanding different historical event. It was really helpful to hear the different interpretations of my classmates. It made the ideals of the Industrial Revolution a lot easier to understand. For example, one of the documents was written by a factory owner. When I read this document myself I was unable to pick up on this important information until it was discussed in class. The unveiling of this crucial information added a new (and accurate) meaning to the document which I otherwise would not have noticed. The one question that I had left unanswered was what the repercussion were for factory owners who did not follow the labor laws set in place? Were they fined or were their factories shut down completely? Also were there any rebellions or riots that took place concerning labor rights? It seems that horrid conditions that the laborers were forced to work and reside in would have fostered some sort of ill-feelings and hatred that would have surely lead to rebellion.
I felt that this was a very effective exercise. For me it was very helpful to see different picture and read different documents from the time period. It helped me really get into what life as like during this time and I was able to connect and understand the time better. This exercise is great because it can teach you that anything and everything is history. A picture of a river with train tracks running over, or of a steam tug pulling away an old ship into the distance. History isnt just studying and memorizing facts that happened before. It is the understanding of what happened in the past and how it worked back then and how it is in effect now.
This exercise has definitely shown me a new way of studying history. At first I thought that it was just going to be boring reading and notes. But it showed me that observations and thinking can better your knowledge of the past without memorizing one fact. After this exercise I definitely feel that this is a productive activity and is well worth the time put in to it.
This type of exercise can teach us a whole lot about history, as well as the study of history. This type of exercise teaches us that there is more than one way to interpret history. It teaches us that there is not one right way to look at something, and therefore the book is not always right. However, it also teaches us that we are never 100% right in our observations. We see this because we do not get the full picture ever. Yes, they are primary sources, but you weren’t actually there observing, Therefore, you don’t REALLY know what was going on. You can make educated observations, but you will not know the truth ever.
I think that I somewhat look at history differently through this exercise. I think that in the back of my mind I realized that history was in the hands of the victors, and that what’s written in the books is what does not offend, not necessarily what happened. This has proven to me that there is always more to learn, and that you can never stop asking questions, and trying to find the answers. That’s what I love about history. You don’t KNOW…but you know.
The questions that are always left unanswered when looking at primary source documents are why the author/photographer wrote the piece/took the picture, what was going through their minds, and what they hoped people would get out of it. And honestly, these questions will never be answered unless we talk to that person. That’s OK though. We come up with our own answers to these questions through careful observation and research. And we learn so much more about whatever we are studying because we do not only have that one point of view of the author.
This industrial revolution exercise can teach people a lot about history. The primary source documents allowed us to guess the main topics of the revolution before we read about them. We were able to get a first hand view about the conditions during the revolution. It teaches us through history that there are so many interconnecting topics and ideas that make up a general topic such as the industrial revolution. Since we were all split up into groups, we were able to make assumptions based on our set of documents. However once we went as a class to talk about the industrial revolution, all the ideas and topics came together to form the broader picture. This exercise also teaches us about the study of history. The study of history requires a lot of critical analysis and close reading. You may be able to get an overview of the topic by casually glancing through documents and pictures, but the more important details take a closer look. By reading through a primary source document you can get an idea of a topic without reading any background on it. However you do realize when doing this exercise, that to comprehend the documents it takes some time and careful reading/ I have looked at history differently with this exercise. I know now that history is not just something you can read about in a textbook, but that you can get facts through primary sources. I was able to get an idea about the actual people in this time period and their views on the industrial revolution. It wasn’t just background reading, it was a more complete description of the time period from people who actually lived back then. Instead of an unbiased vague description of a history topic, I was able to understand people’s tones and what they were really saying about what they thought. Usually I looked at history as facts, but when we analyzed the different pictures, I was able to get another idea of the industrial revolution, a visual aspect of it. That was a lot different then what a normally viewed history as. I had some questions that were left unanswered. We didn’t really have a chance to finish all the documents, so there are definitely some aspects of the industrial revolution that I don’t know too much about except for a general description. Also we didn’t go into too much depth with the interconnecting topics of the industrial revolution, such as politics, economics, and social. The big picture is there, but the details that all interconnect is not that clear. Overall I thought that this exercise was good to get a description and idea of the industrial revolution.
I think that this exercise was one of the most informative that we have done all year. Being an abstract random learner I always prefer the hands on approach to just simply reading a textbook. By doing this exercise we were able to delve deeper into the roots of the problems that plagued people in American during the industrial revolution. If we had read just the textbook we would have just learned the names of important people and we would have dates burned into our memories. With this exercise we were able to see what the whole time period looked like from the p.o.v of the people who were really experiencing it. What I found to be most moving was the document I had to read, I belive it was number 28 that described the working conditions of children my age. They worked 12 hour workdays and rarely saw light except fro Sunday. My views were changed because I used to think that only certain people had it bad during this time but the documents that I reviewed helped me to see how widespread the trouble really was. The only thing that I would have liked to have seen was statistics on the life expectancy and death rates of the workers, because although they alluded to how bad the working conditions were there was no description of deaths actually taking
The Industrial Revolution Primary Documents Exercise was a helpful and different way to increase understanding of the important changes during that time period. The documents and pictures gave us a closer look into the events that took place. By viewing photographs, and reading first hand accounts, the student has the ability to truly see the experiences of the people who were there. Because I am a visual person, looking at pictures really helped my understanding. Rather than just reading what our text books and other second – hand accounts tell us, it is really helpful to have first hand accounts to refer to. Also, it helps to see all of the different sides of history. It gives us the ability to see opinions that were formed, and all of the people who were affected. Because these documents mostly only showed the negative side of the Industrial Revolution, we only got to see and read about the bad effects. I found that there were a lot of unanswered question, I wanted to know some of the benefits, and I wanted to see who was benefiting. I wanted to see not just the working class, but also the people who were higher up in society, and how their families benefited. I enjoyed this exercise because I find it easier to learn through photographs, and other visual components. Also, working in groups was good too, because it made things a little bit more interesting. In addition, we didn’t have to do all of the work ourselves, because at the end, all of the groups shared their findings.
This exercise that we have done in class can teach us a lot about history. First and foremost, it can give us a rare glimpse at the past seen through the eyes of people that were living it. It is easy to read facts from a textbook, but it's fascinating to see the reactions of contemporaries of the time period. Furthermore, textbooks generally tend to be very objective towards many events like wars and when a continent experiences a revolution of some sort. These primary sources give us emotions and reactions people had, varying from the business owners who were prospering to the working class who were suffering greatly. This exercise therefore greatly changed the way I view history because I didn't just read to memorize facts, but rather to comprehend the emotions of the people living at the era and thus trying to understand how they lived their life. My only unanswered questions are, during this time, how influential was the government and the Catholic church. Also, where was Eastern Europe in this industrialization movement?
This type of exercise is extremely different than learning from textbooks, and can teach us a variety of different things. It showed us how many aspects of a society are all interconnected and relate to one another. By using primary documents we learned more about the actual feelings of the people of the time period and their thoughts on life. Through this exercise we looked at many different points of view, which showed us how different classes viewed society. Another thing that this exercise allowed us to do was that it let us come up with our own interpretations of the documents and then compare our ideas with one another. This exercise teaches us that in the study of history there is not always a right and wrong answer. By viewing primary documents there is always room for interpretation.
This exercise did make me view history differently because slthough I learned about the hardships of the time period, I never actually completely grasped what had happened. Through looking at pictures and at actual people's accounts it helped me understand the time period more.
After doing this exercise I just wonder why the politicians allowed human lives to be completely disregarded. It's really hard to understand how these hardships existed among humans. It would also be interesting to find out more about the upper class during this time period and how they were effected by the Industrial Revolution.
The Primary purpose of this exercise was for us to examine and look at documents from the 1860s. By studying the pictures and first accounts of the 1860s we learn many things about the industrial revolution. We see the life and hardship of lower class workers and the workers stand point of the revolution
I have looked at the study aof history more differently. before this exercise i thought the study of history was mostly about reading and papers. From this Exercise i learned that history is not limited to papers or documents but also papers,pictures, interviews, and graphs. From these things we can also learn about history.
My Article was on the Fourier world of New Harmony. I thought it was really bizarre and i did not see how that fitted into the Industrial revolution. I see how Fourier wanted to improve efficiency of the factories but the ideas for New Harmony were just ridiculous.
This type of exercise can teach about history in more depth than a standard textbook. It shows history from all different viewpoints, opinions, and levels. While a book can give an event a step by step explanation, this type of exercise makes it possible to see the time period or event through the eyes of people living through it. People with both positive and negative reactions, those so influenced that they created artwork on it This has helped me to look at history differently in the fact that I was able to really look into primary sources of the industrial revolution in a way I probably would not have otherwise. I was able to see the negative ways it influenced individuals, families, children, and morale. And at the same time I was able to see the positive ways it boosted the economy, production, and affected our world today as we know it. Through the activity it really helped to make history not so much as dates in a book, but personal notes of people that lived through it. Even most of the official documents were made in a way that affected the people, and which I was able to see through the other pieces that they wrote or reflected on through art how those documents were really lived. One thing that really and truly shocked me was how poor the conditions were for children and how young they actually began to work. Some children as young as five years old could be seen working with equipment before some laws (although they probably weren’t well enforced) were put into place. These young kids really missed out on childhood. This has a lasting impression on me that I don’t know I would have received through anything other than this activity. The photos taken and endless reports on them were simply amazing. The only thing that it really left out was a few of the facts. Based on opinions and views of people of the time, one can get a feel for what was going on, but not without bias. It would be crucial for someone to read a background to go along with this project. Between the two, I don’t have any questions on it. Together they greatly added to my understanding of the Industrial Revolution.
This exercise can help to teach you many things about history. The primary sources give a mix of both visual and text documents. These allow the user to get a better and more complete picture of that time, because it was it was for the most part with out bias. The primary source documents are a good change from the book text, which provides more of a simple factual view on the time period. In combination with the pictures of a particular time the reader gets to see the entire picture of the period, both what it was like from pictures and what from a written text such as journals, books, and other sources. They show a new and easier way to grasp the depiction of the period in time. The accounts of factory life were also very useful because they were told through different views depending on each document. After reading all the documents you had a pretty good picture of what most groups of people were doing at the time and how they were treated in society. It also gave a far more visual view. These documents were also first hand accounts and haven’t been changed by people writing them years later, looking back and intercepting these sources. These sources showed a view of a very hard life for the working class of Europe. Everyone who could work was forced to work a long ten to twelve hour work day six days a week, in order to pay for the cost of living. In addition these working conditions were often poor and unsafe, especially in the coal mines. Companies also employed children and treated them very inhumanely. Many of these children did not even receive a chance to get an education. These views were portrayed better than through our books. Rather than just reading what our text books tell us, it is really helpful to have first hand accounts to refer to.
Through this exercise, I have come to appreciate the study of history differently. I found that finding the real truth is much more difficult than it’s believed. This means that perhaps the parts of history that are taken as fact could actually be distorted from either incomplete information or biased interpretations. This is unstoppable in the study of history, but has given me a new insight into history. Interpretations of primary sources will eventually warp the fact, and that piece of history would be lost in that persons view. The continual study of primary sources allows for new analysis and interpretation, without losing the real and original significance of an event.
One of my questions I had that were unanswered was how did the wealthy factory owners live during this time? Did they live comfortably or did they struggle a bit as well. Also how was rural life at this time? The sources told primarily of suburban life but not that of rural. In addition what was the culture like?
This type of learning not only teaches students specific events and documents of history, it also stimulated the senses, and allowed the students to create a big picture from the many documents, like completing a jigsaw puzzle. This kind of exercise also exposes the students to more type of resources such as graphs, pictures, and observations, which differ greatly from our previous form of study; analyzing the analysis of history by Spievegel. This exercise additionally exposes the students to the type of work and analysis done by historians, whom did not have a textbook to learn from, and instead understood history by piecing documents such as these together, and coming to a valid theory on what happened, and why it happened. . I have literally looked at history differently through this exercise. I was able to examine pictures, and graphs which were indeed at times more meaning full and exciting to examine than a handful of words. These pictures and stats related what words could never have told me, a sensual understanding of the age. By examining where they lived, how much they earned, their mudded and worn out faces, I can related personally and thus understand deeply how they lived, what they faced. This was a truly eye opening experience.
The only question that was unanswered happened to be the political spectrum of the age. I understood that this would spark reforms in the future; however, I do not recall any information on the internal politics in Britain during the revolution or any information on international politics during the industrial revolution. Has this spur in economic progress lead to increased dependency on each countries, and thus established unwavering alliances? Or has this economic competition sparked rivalries among enemy nations?
One thing that took me by shock was, however, the extensive canals and water transportation used in Britain. As it was discussed in class, there must have been miles upon miles of canal systems. How did this affect the ecosystem, and society? With all the waste being disposed into the water ways, could it not have lead to another diabolic plague outburst?
Over the past week we studied documents containing much information about the Industrial Revolution in England. The documents consisted of photos, graphs, articles, and poems and they each taught/represented some form of information about the revolution. This type of exercise is a very good way of teaching because it is different from the traditional handouts and textbook form of learning. The documents were more hands on and we were able to use our imaginations more because we were given the chance to analyze the document before we were told what it was actually portraying. Concerning the study of history, this exercise can show how history can be more thoroughly understood if it is more hands on and up close with the person studying it. This exercise has definitely caused me to look at history differently. I have realized that history can be interpreted rather than dictated and one can use his imagination to understand and make assumptions. Prior to this exercise I had thought that history was always fact and there was very little to know other than what you are taught and shown. Upon reflecting on the exercise I have realized that history is not always exactly what you’re taught. There is always more to learn. Prior to the exercise and the readings, I had viewed the Industrial Revolution as any naïve, middle class child would. I thought of it as a time when many industries were created. I had no idea the extent to which people suffered through poor working conditions and poverty. I did not know that children worked in awful factories from sun up to sundown without even a decent pair of shoes on their feet. Some of my questions left unanswered are “what were the rest of the documents like?” (because our class did not finish) and “how could people tolerate living that way without major uprisings?” I assume there were uprisings and I would like to look into this further. Overall I believe the assignment was not only fun and relaxing, but also a great learning experience. I learned about using my imagination rather than knowing facts word for word. In the future I would like to do more activities like this because of their help in analytical thinking and because they are a nice break from lectures/discussions.
This type of exercise helps us to learn how to study history from the point of view of a historian. This exersise helped me to realize how hard it is for a historian to interpret documents, especially because I have previous knowledge on the topic, and they are the ones searching for the “previous knowledge” others can use. It also helps us to form our own opinions and interpretations of documents, particularly pictures, rather than being told what something means and being forced to memorize it. This was a new and different way for me to learn from history, by doing the interpreting and understanding on our own.
This project did not really change how I look at history, but it did give me a greater respect for historians who spend all their time doing this tedious task. This also gave history a new and different spin, as we needed to rely on other people within our group as well as other groups of people to understand the documents because we did not each get all of them.
One this I did not understand when project was completed was a question I had after we looked at the resources vs. population group graph. It was how the resources did continue to group as exponentially as the people. As humans I realize we do have the power to change our environment, but I did not realize that we could have such a great impact as to change the amount of resources available merely because the population grew so exponentially.
The exercise was very interesting and it gave a more detailed perspective of the industrial revolution. Examining primary source documents can really complete one’s knowledge of a certain aspect of history. Instead of reading someone else’s analysis of the time period, you can actually read documents, look at picture, and examine charts and graphs from that period and interpret history through your own thought process. Each picture or documents adds a small amount of knowledge which through the course of 50-60 documents gives you a pretty detailed picture of the past. Now with these smalls bits of history captured on paper or on film, you have to put together the puzzle of history. A picture or a document can be interpreted differently by every single person, yet each person’s analysis must be supported by these primary sources. What this shows me is that history is not an exact science, there is no one answers that is correct. As stated before, because history can be interpreted differently by different people the challenge lay in defending the theories and primary source documents are the most dependable evidence to support one’s theory. Though word of mouth and verbal stories have passed down much of history, documents and pictures are the most valid and acceptable form of the capturing of history. Without these items, much of history would have been lost. Though this exercise was unique and interesting, it did not change my views on history. In 8th grade, my teacher had once told me to challenge the accepted theories on history using primary source documents. This exercise has only strengthened that claim and gave it substance. Primary source documents are the greatest weapon in a historian arsenal to paint the most accurate and unbiased portrait of history. The only unanswered question that remains is, with all this information regarding the ill treatment of the working-class and the struggles they encountered to reach acceptable treatment, do workers today realize the true history of how they have such a comfortable environment and how much blood, sweet, and toil was put into making it a possibility?
This primary document exercise teaches us that the study of history is a matter of opinion and interpretation. Facts may be facts, but a written account of an event or situation will always contain some amount of bias or slant on perspective. The best a comprehensive historian can do is collect a variety of such accounts from as many perspectives as possible and then come to a consensus as to how something actually was or existed. Many of the primary documents we studied were written with the purpose of getting something accomplished or getting a message across. For example, a report on pollution and its effects, laws about child labor, or commentary on the status of women. Since these were written with a certain purpose in mind, the author could have chose to include or exclude any kind of details or perspective concerning the situation at hand. It can never be assumed that a document reflects a completely objective view on how something existed in history. The same of course is true for a photograph—the picture shows what the photographer wants to be shown. Analysis of the primary documents adds another level to the subjectivity. Interpreting the evidence involves choosing what aspects to highlight or determining what is important about it. So having one person in modern times pick out what is important from what a person in a given time period thought was important may provide us with a limited picture. Basically two people can look at the same thing and have different thoughts. Therefore, the point of a variety and balance of perspectives comes up again. Many times history is not the solid reality of everything that occurred during a time period, but the details and events that people have deemed to be of importance. I have known this to be true of history for a while, and this exercise reinforces my idea of it. I know that history is not all indisputable fact or unchanging reality. There are dates to be remembered and events of importance but the piecing together of opinions and interpretations provides us with an increased understanding of how the world was. I have questions as to what the situation was like outside of England—was the rest of Europe and/or the industrialized world experiencing the same conditions or would it come for them later? Did this shift the focus of livelihood for the people from mainly rural and agricultural to urban and industrious? Do I have better things to do on Christmas Eve? :P
The primary source documents reviewed in class over the past few days provided an interesting technique to analyze history. This exercise showed us how to study history in a different manner. Being a student I have always studied and interpreted history through words / extensive readings, however viewing history through reading journals and unbiased material, I learned how to create a vivid picture of the topic studied in class which related to various aspects of the industrial revolution. One may have heard the famous proverb “a picture is worth a thousands words”, I believe that this exercise proved this proverb due to the examination of various photographs from the industrial revolution. This exercise provided a different learning experience to students studying European history. Exercises like these not only teach students events through historical documents, however allow students to stimulate their mind and visualize the bigger picture which the exercise is trying to get across. This exercise taught me European history through the use of a different technique, a technique which allowed me to understand and draw conclusions from primary source documents given to me. In addition I believe that this technique gave me a better understanding of historical events and allowed me to view the bigger picture that such historical documents are trying to get across towards historians as apposed to studying the interpretations of other historians through extensive readings. As far as questions being left unanswered I always pondered upon the reason why eastern Europe wasn’t studied during the industrial revolution and why was the focal point of this exercise centering on the impact the industrial revolution had on Great Britain when the course taken is supposed to focus on the entire continent of Europe and how it was impacted in various eras such as the industrial revolution.
Nick A said... I thought this exercise was a fun and clever way to help us understand what life was truly like during the industrial revolution. Through the pictures of factories, charts, and reports such as the Chadwick report I feel that I have learned more through this type of exercise than I would if the assignment was to read a couple packets about it. It gives a visual to what we are learning which is always a good supplement to teaching a certain subject. If we were to do more things like this I think more people would understand what is really happening, and have found that learning is not always through reading information but having supplements such as pictures and then discussing them and getting everyone’s thoughts on what we thought each thing was trying to say. I think I look at history the same way I have looked at it even after this exercise. I have always been interested in it and this has not changed my viewing of history for the worse at all and if anything it has made me even more interested in it. I of course have some unanswered questions because like everyone else in my class because we didn’t finish discussing all the documents and pictures so I was left wondering what some of the documents meant. Some additional comments would be that I hope you do some more exercises like this because it was a good learning experience
This type of exercise was much different than a usual history exercise. I usually expect lextures and textbooks, but documents from the period were acceptable too. They taught from a different perspective. The view was not that of a teacher trying to portray all sides but from a person living in or around the time that had their own opinion. They were records of thoughts and ideas. This definetly made me look at history differently. It kind of hit home. The view of the children expecially from the mines made me look at the sitations present from the eyes of someone closer to my age rather than an over the hill history teacher. I would have much rather though had full documents. I don't feel that any unanswered questions are left in my mind and I hope that we do some more exercises with first hand accout documents this year
60 comments:
The primary source exercise we performed in class provides an interesting way to learn from the past, and a method we should in our best interests always use when looking at the life and times of those who came before us. By studying first hand accounts of the industrial revolution, we attain an exact sense of the feelings and themes of the events of that age, and even a small picture can speak a thousand words.
Obviously first hand accounts should always be used when studying the past, as simple second-hand records can never fully account for what really has really happened. While a first hand document may contain bias and a skewed perspective, that same viewpoint can be used with others to create a full understanding of the history of a people or land. Second hand sources are also not without their own interpretations of events, and by being continuously transcribed through other works the backbone of a movement can become convoluted and distorted, disobeying the truth.
I believe that through this exercise I have not looked at history differently, but have merely looked at it through a little used but valuable perspective. Primary sources are the most important part of studying history, though not all are easy to come by compared to a textbook that will contain snippets of first hand information while mainly delivering a secondary view of the facts.
I wonder why the rebellious people of the 18th and 19th centuries, after successfully undermining the two greatest powers of the western world, seemed to throw personal safety away in reckless abandon to focus on a different revolution, that of metal and steam. The proud men and women of both American and European society were hobbled by corporate masters during the industrial revolution and through poverty remained passive as they worked long, dangerous shifts as they turned the gears of the new age, replacing absolutist monarchies with ‘absolutist companies’ and conglomerates that dominated the lives of millions to meet the demands of the slowly modernizing world.
After completing the analysis of the documents for the Industrial Revolution, I feel that this type of work has taught me much more about history than textbooks can. By evauluating primary sources both written and pictorial, my group and I were able to draw our own conclusions about the time period, and use our own ideas to form opinions, rather than reading the opinions of the author's of our book. This method of learning teaches students that there is not always one right answer to history. A lot of times, ideas on what has occured in the past comes from a variety of sources that can contradict one another. In working in a group, I was able to develop my own opinion on a document, but then allow for the influence of my peers as well. They offered me new insight to things I might have missed when first examining, as well as providing more evidence or information on a certain topic that one of their documents covered in greater detail. For example, when given Document 51, an English painting by William Turner, we at first thought the subject of the photo was a wine bottle, which we could relate to another document we had that portrayed the employer's as heavy drinkers. However upon further analysis we determined the 'wine bottle' to be a steam locomotive, which fit better into the atmosphere of the Industrial Revolution, especially as a technological change. This project enabled us to take many ideas and thoughts and apply them to our documents to create an understanding of the way society functioned during the new wave of technology that took over. Analysis of sources teaches that there isn't always one 'right' answer, many thoughts can be correct and add to the picture of the time period. We found this in document 8 when we all had different ideas on how a the picture of the harbor contributed to life in the Industrial Revolution. We determined that it would effect economics, such as shipping and foreign trade; social order, by creating new jobs for workers; and technology, as the steam ship was a new invention. By looking just at this picture we were able to draw multiple conclusions all that can be considered correct.
I feel that I have looked at history differently through this exercise. I came in with a limited knowledge of the Industrial Revolution, and insted of simply learning the material through my text, I created and shaped my own conclusions on society, technology, econmomy and political thought by analysis. Before, I had only read that child labor was a horrific experience, and factory conditions were poor. Now I know this is true because of my examination of Document 30, a Commission to the King of England which specifically explained in detail the conditons of factory workers and the employment of children. Rather than simply being told, I found out through my own research.
However, one downside to document analysis is that some questions are not fully answered. Specific primary sources can not always paint a clear picture of life during that time, especially if they are written by author's with similar view points or statuses in society. After analyzing my documents, and hearing the reports from the other groups, I still don't know what measures were taken to curb the terrible working conditions in the factories. Documents 30, 37 and 38 all tell of the government employees urging for reform, but I never learned whether or not these changes actually occured. This is where a text book might have come more in handy, as it would give an account of life and times both previous to and following the Industrial era.
Overall I found this work to be a very positive experience. It helped me to work with a group to form and support an opinion with evidence that we had analyzed and discussed. It opened me up to more detailed and informative documents that created a much better picture of life during this time than simply a recount through a book could have done. I enjoyed this project and I think we should do more with primary source analysis as a way to learn about the past.
I took a European History class last year in my old school. This class was a lower level class than the A.P. and the class was very straight forward and simple. The class consisted of just reading a text book that gave a outline of History, and when you learned something, you forgot it a couple months later. The primary source exercise takes last years learning to a whole knew level. Instead reading another’s analysis of history, I create my own by reading text and pictures that were written and taken during the actual tome period. I take bits and pieces of each source and I put the together to make a broader picture of what happened during the time period studied. With this exercise I have become a historian, not just a student. (that last sentence was the corniest thing I’ve ever written, Maybe it will give me an A on this Blog response though).
Before history was just a story, words in a text book that had no value or meaning. This exercise is real, the sources were written by actual people of the time period. This exercise teaches that we are history, we are the generation that came to be from all the things that happened before us. The events that happened were real, effected real people, and thus the chain of influence appears, we are the end of the link, yet we will soon be old links, and new links from new generations will appear. That is what history is all about, its more than a story.
This exercise, however, gave a negative view of what the time period was like. The exercise was biased, and failed to explain anything good that came from the time period. Was there anything good that came out of the time period? If so, why is it masked by the negative aspects?
Is it better to give an account of what actually happened, than primary sources which are usually biased in some way?
This response was the corniest thing I’ve ever written, Maybe it will give me an A though
What is probably the most important lesson to take away from this exercise is the fact that most of history is an interpretation of incomplete truths. An accurate analogy of this would be trying to find out what a puzzle looks like by assembling only part of the pieces. Without such complete information, the real facts will inevitably be distorted to the interpretations of the people studying it. Through this exercise, the documents were viewed by those who did not have a complete background of the Industrial Revolution, which simulates what real historians view history as when they study a time period that we do not know much about. Thus, some of the documents had pieces of information that were not seen for what they were when they were first viewed. As an example, one of the documents depicting a row of factories and a canal running between them had a railroad track that ran along the canal that was missed. By looking carefully for the railroad track, it showed that barges that went down the canal could be loaded with supplies to be sent to other places. This proves extremely important, as England had countless canals that connect the whole countryside and is a rival for the greatest mileage of canal works in Europe. From this, it can be understood that history as we know it is only true from the facts that we do find and not all that exist.
Through this exercise, I have come to appreciate the study of history somewhat more in that finding the real truth is much more difficult than one would think. This goes to show that perhaps the parts of history that we think are fact may actually be distorted from either incomplete information or selective interpretations. This is, of course, unavoidable in the study of history and gives new light to the idea that history is written by those who have power. The total collection of facts is almost never there and sometimes important pieces of information can be lost forever, leading to very different views on what may have actually happened at different time frames. While this does apply to relatively recent events, one would expect that this problem would grow exponentially with the passage of time as events grow farther and farther away.
After completing the reviews of the Industrial Revolution documents, I still wonder how the large factory owners were able to keep such a large number of the population in what appeared to be complete poverty. One would think that the people would be able to better their conditions when almost all of the lower class was working in either the factories or coal mines. Some of the documents did reveal the government’s first attempts at regulating the conditions that the workers could be put in, but almost all of them seemed insignificant toward actually improving their well being. Thus, the question arises, how successful were the reforms the government attempted to put in place and at what point in time did the worker’s conditions really start to improve?
The primary source analysis exercise performed during the course of this week, taught the class how to look at history by studying the documents and pictures that were written or taken during this period. Even though some of the pictures were taken recently, all of the buildings, bridges, and other land features are from the period. The class has taken United States History previously, so these documents reinforce what we already know. History is not just learned through a textbook; if this were true, no one would gain the taste and appreciation for the time period.
As a class, many different topics were taught through the use of primary resources. One topic that was not known was the makeup of a poor house. The poor house was divided into able-bodied and infirm men and women. One surprising factor was that the poor houses were very self-sufficient. They seemed to be located on a farm because contained in the poor-house was a “cow house” or stable for the cows (providing milk). The house also contains its own morgue or “dead house.” When first looked at, the house seemed to be a large farm manner. Attention is drawn to the large master-suite and many other smaller rooms for underlings or possibly children. When studied closely, especially the dead house, this was not a manner, but in fact a poor-house. This increases the ability to study history by teaching the class to fully inspect documents.
Another case of not fully inspecting the documents is a photograph. The photograph contained a canal with a bridge in the distance and buildings surrounding the canal. During the presentation, it was realized that to the left of the canal, there was parallel tracks. Obviously these were train tracks. If Mr. Kirby were not there to point out this subtlety in the picture, a major technological advantage would have been forgotten.
Many criticisms were also explained through opinion reports. The Chadwick Report, in the first of two parts, explained the horrible sanitary conditions during the nineteenth century. He explained that the water was the cause of all the diseases running through the city. He said, “Contaminated London drinking water containing various micro-organisms, refuse, and the like…That the formation of all habits of cleanliness is obstructed by defective supplies of water.” He also explains that the poor people are living in the slop and grime of the city streets. In the second part of Chadwick’s report, he explains that the only way to handle the sanitary problem is to cart the water out of the city in a continuous flow. However, he does not supply a solution to this dilemma. This was a helpful tool to actually read what somebody had to say about these horribly living conditions.
Finally, the graph plotting the average income, consumer price index, and actual earnings against year was a very helpful tool in explaining the high inflationary time of the early to mid-nineteenth century. This explained how the “average Joe” barely made enough money to cover the many costs of living which were increasing during this time. Finally at the turn of the twentieth century the actual earnings surpassed the consumer price index raising the standard of living in Great Britain.
Mr. Kirby was very helpful in filling the gaps that the groups were not able to fill. Combined with Spielvogel’s Chapter 20, I have a very good understanding of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. I am wondering what happens to Europe at the turn of the century when the economic turns to the better and Europe becomes a more affluent society. Another topic left almost unanswered is the condition of the remaining portion of Europe during the growing Industrial Revolution. Spielvogel provides some insight, but I do not have a full understanding of this topic.
This exercise provided a new way of studying history. The exercise forced the class to make assumptions about the Industrial Revolution using documents that were not complete. It was like putting a puzzle together and deciphering a picture without all the pieces (as if one was doing a puzzle of the United States and was missing the Mid-West, but still had to connect the Pacific Coast to the Eastern Coast). This primary document analysis exercise provided not only a new way of studying history, but also insight to what society was like during the Industrial Revolution.
This exercise can teach us a lot about how we look at history. It shows how very little clues are needed to decipher something about a given time period. Through a series of documents that are inter-connected, we made inferences about the time period of the Industrial Revolution. This demonstrates how a nearly complete picture of a time period can be constructed with nothing more than a few essays and photographs.
This exercise can also teach us a lot about the study of history. It can teach us how we must go straight to the source in order to get unbiased information on history. When evaluating primary sources, you usually get the unslanted true idea of what things were like in the time period. This is much different than reading it out of a history book where an editor can omit what he likes. The only bias you get on the photographs is that of the instructor who can assign whatever documents he wants to. A bad instructor could show you all pictures of mansions and manors, and you would get the idea that everyone flourished during the Industrial Revolution. Fortunately, I trust Mr. Kirby so I don’t believe this happened.
I definitely looked at history differently through this exercise. I guess I tend to look at history as something that is just taught in a book and accepted as fact. This exercise helped me realize that there is a lot more to history than what was included in the book, and that the book just includes what someone else thought was important. It made me realize that it’s up to us to draw our own conclusions about the study of history based on the information we are given.
The only questions I had that were left unanswered were: how did the rich and middle class fare during the Industrial Revolution? It seemed like most of the pictures were focused on the situations of women and children, and mostly the lower class. It would have helped my understanding of this time period to learn more about the upper and middle classes.
My only other comment is about how some of the photographs were from much more modern times. I think it would be better not to include these photographs as some modern elements in these pictures were often misinterpreted. If possible it would be better to include all pictures taken from the time period.
The document and pictorial analysis of the Industrial Revolution helped give the class as a whole a new perspective on history. While reading a text book, not only is it simple to overlook important details, but it is inevitable that some part of the chapter will not be understood. Using the techniques in class, my group and I were able to take history into our own hands and creating conclusions using prior knowledge. Every opinion and prediction had to be backed up by facts either from previous knowledge or other documents. Each document and picture was like little pieces in a massive puzzle that we were able to create using our own minds. I personally think this document and pictorial analysis was the most productive way of looking into history. It almost felt as if we were getting a first-hand experience because of our ability to put together pieces of history.
Although it was difficult understanding with documents related to other documents and what exactly certain pictures were of, I was able to better relate and connect between different time periods. Other than a brief overview of the Industrial Revolution, I have never studied the subject. The participation in analyzing these documents and pictures helped to reinforce prior knowledge and draw new conclusions about this time era. For instance, I was well aware of the amount of poverty sweeping across the nation, but I was not aware of the disease. Not only was their accumulative disease with regards to the ghastly living and working conditions of the lower class people, but disease did not even put a dent in the rising population. Of course, this time period was surely known for overpopulation growth hence the lack of jobs and sufficient housing. So many factors contributed to the rise in the population but also the downfall in living quality. Firstly, there was the over population which caused overcrowded housing. Living in such tight quarters created more susceptibility to infections and disease. This caused many to die at a young age yet did not decrease the population growth in any way. Overcrowded housing also meant overcrowded and overbooked work places. Too many people working in one area led to lower wages. These lower wages were not enough to pay for enough food or suitable living conditions. It really was a vicious cycle that encompassed all people of the time period.
The only information that was given to me that helped me draw the before written conclusions were those of my limited previous knowledge and the sources we were given in class. Every document was a new link and every picture was a mystery. Within our groups we were able to not only learn history, but create it.
Mark Morris
A.P. European History
December 22, 2006
Mr. Kirby
Primary Source Review
This was a very well thought out lesson that allowed the students to view actual photos, and read actual documents related to the topic we are studying, the Industrial Revolution. By viewing actual pictures from the time period we as a class were able to get an actual idea for the living conditions, the working conditions, and view architectural and technological achievements. One of the pictures we saw was that of the first iron bridge built in England. This showed us that technology had increased form building wooden and stone bridges over small rivers, to building large complicated and sturdy structures over longer, deeper, and wider rivers, and gaps. It also gave us a small insight into the design techniques for bridges as well as other structures, for example the factories themselves. These were brick buildings simply designed to be functional factories. This shows us that during the industrial revolution there was emphasis on making money, so the only extravagant housing was that of the owners of the factories. We were also presented with documents pertaining to the time period. These documents revealed what life was like back in the time of the industrial Revolution. It told both of times of hardship as well as times of growth, as well as problems facing the country at the time. Reviewing both the pictures and the documents gave us first hand accounts of what life was like for the factory workers, child and women labor, the growth of factories, the living conditions, as well as the views of those in Parliament and poems written during the era. This exercise gave us as students, and unbiased account from people as well as pictures from the time period. We were shown how life was really like for the workers, the owners, as well as others. These accounts were formed by those who actually lived during the time period, and prove a far more valuable resource than that of the often tainted description from some author living in the 21st century.
This lesson also helped show us how historians do their job. They often do not get the full puzzle and more often than not must rely on logical reasoning to piece together what happened exactly. Historians must rely on pictures, paintings, and documents to infer what happened over the course of our history. Historians must study architecture of the time to see what styles arose form the period. They must read works of common people, to find out how they lived, and worked. From these details they must patch together the fabric that makes the quilt of our history. Wow that was really bad poetry. The exercise we completed gives us an idea of how historians put together what has happened, the economic patterns, factory conditions, living conditions and much more. For this exercise we had to relay back to the class our ideas and inferences on what the pictures showed us, and in the most basic sense this is what historians around the world do every day.
I have and do look at history inn a different manner now that I have seen done this exercise. I realize what happened back before the present is often lost to time. What we piece together is often only a fractional bit of what people have left behind. We will often never no what happened during the life of Joe Shmoe the common person, but we can guess based on things he left behind. During battles, we can only imagine the chaos and the terror that befell the soldiers. Only by living the action can one truly perceive what it is like to be shot at, or fight for your life. I have come to realize that our history books only present the past to use, and do their best to teach us what life was like before now. This exercise has helped me learn the only real way to be sure of history was to have been there, and experienced it. Pictures and documents can only sow us the horrors of working in a factory during the Industrial Revolution, but what was it really like suffering from day to day doing banal and dangerous tasks. This lesson has taught me that the closest we can get to the past is viewing the pictures of the time period, and reading the manuscripts of those who experienced the time, but we will never ourselves go through the paths walked by those long deceased. Their experiences however well documented, will exclusively experienced by them, and forever lost to our knowledge.
The one question I have left to ask is how do we know historians are correct in their teachings? How do we know whether or not we are being spoon fed bs, and being none the wiser. I know there are many debates circulating the historical community, but how do we truly know who is right and who is wrong. Are we just left to accept the findings of professors and archeologists’ around the world or will some day new evidence be found to totally destroy previously “correct” theories of the past? I understand the use primary sources in their use by giving the viewer insight to life during the past, but much of a historians job is guesswork, leaving them to make educated guesses as to what occurred long ago.
The industrial revolution primary document exercise showed me that history is not just learning about the past from a textbook. History is about understanding all the components of the past, exploring an issue from all sides, and being immersed in it. Traditionally, history is taught from one point of view, from a textbook, by a teacher. But in this exercise, we had a chance to form our own opinions, and discover things for ourselves. We could take information that was being presented to us and process it ourselves, learning along the way. We examined documents and tried to form a picture of what the era was like based on the documents. For example, by looking at a photograph of a factory, we can learn that they relied on steam power, that they used rails for transportation, that they emitted a lot of pollution, and that they used rivers and waterways as sewage. Because we discovered these things ourselves, we could understand them better. We had thought for ourselves, and not just memorized facts.
And this, I feel, is what history really is. You can’t find history by reading a textbook and memorizing fact. You have to take bits and pieces of history and put it together for yourself. The study of history is taking information about past events, and analyzing it, so that you can create a picture of what the past was like.
Because of this exercise, I look at history differently. Before, history was a subject where you memorized facts, dates, and times. But now, history is an analytical science. It must be studied, examined, scrutinized, and synthesized. This project showed me that history must be analyzed to be fully understood. For example, one idea you might learn about would be increased child labor. You could just learn about child labor. But, to see children in factories and read accounts of it is much more informational than just learning about it. You understand why there was an increase in child labor, and how the people felt about it. You get a much more complete picture of the topic. And that is how I look at history, as an analytical science where you have to analyze the facts presented to draw your own conclusions.
In general, this project answered all questions I had about the industrial revolution. I understand why the period occurred, what it entailed, and what came of it. I would like to know a bit more about the politics of the time, and what effects they had on the economy and other aspects of life. Did any politicians care about child labor? Did government encourage big business? These are more specific questions I still have. But, other than that, I have no further questions.
Overall, I felt that this was an excellent group project. It was a new and different way to examine history, and a good break from the normal method of teaching. I feel that the whole class learned something from this project. And, I would be happy to do it again.
This is a dummy blog
This is Andrew Morris, unable to log on to any of my 4 accounts I have made with this webiste.
This exercise taught us a great deal about history. The graphs and photographs were especially important because they were the most unbiased. Back then you couldn’t change a picture. They showed exactly what life was like. They didn’t have opinions or slants to a topic, they just showed the facts. The graphs were very important because they showed raw data. That also was fact and could be changed by a third or fourth replication of the graph like peoples stories. The accounts of factory life were also very insightful because they were told through different views depending on each document. After reading all the documents one got a pretty good idea at what most groups of people were thing about the important issues of the time. These documents were also first hand accounts and were no changed by people telling them over and over. These documents showed us that the best account of an event is a first hand account. Also it showed me that if one will look at people’s opinions on large topics of the time, then they should see what all classes of people thought not just one or two, to get a complete picture.
These sources painted a picture of a very tough life for the working class of Europe. Everyone who worked was forced to work a long sixteen to eighteen hour work day six days a week. During the day people had very few brakes. Many people especially the children were malnourished. The working conditions were very poor and unsafe especially in the coal mines. During this time women were still looked down on by men and made less money. However the employment of men and women was fairly equal. During this time the government didn’t interfere much in the affaires of the businesses. However to cut costs businesses made very unsafe work environments and hired anyone of the street do the jobs at ridiculously low prices. Also they employed children and treated them very inhumanely. Many didn’t even get an education. Because of the wrongs among others the government stepped in and began regulating thing like how long someone could work and at what age children could be hired. Also the government set out to improve living conditions in the cities by making sewage and drainage systems.
I have looked at history differently. This assignment showed me that history isn’t just dates of battles and major events. It is about individual’s experiences and hardships. These documents showed what many people would have just glossed over and what people had to deal with. They showed that one doesn’t have to be a famous general to make history. Look at the factories. Enough ordinary people complained about the atrocities that were taking place and brought sweeping change to the entire industry through reforms. Also it taught me history is about ideas. For example when a businessman got the idea that he could make more money having his workers in a factory than in cottage businesses he made his employees work in a factory. He made set times they had to be at work and taught strict discipline. This idea caused other people to follow in his footsteps and eventually changed the entire lifestyle of almost everyone in Europe.
A few questions I had that were unanswered were how did the wealthy factory owners live during this time? Did they live like nobles or more like today’s wealthy company owners? Also were there any positive points about culture or standard of living in this time? All we learned about were the hardships.
I think that using primary source documents, including pictures, graphs and written documents, to draw conclusions about the Industrial Revolution was a great way for us to get a first hand view of what life was like during this time. I felt like I was getting a better sense of this time period from this exercise than I would have from a textbook. This type of exercise let us draw our own conclusions about history, rather than reading another author’s views of life during this time period. This type of exercise also showed us how historians can form judgements about the past by using primary source documents. From this exercise, I also realized that history can be interpreted in so many different ways.
I think that I have looked at history slightly differently through this exercise. Instead of just reading the “facts” about the events and occurrences during this time, I taught myself about the conditions of this time period. I have also learned to be more aware of the primary sources that exist because they do provide valuable information for understanding a time period.
From looking at these documents, we were able to determine many of the major events that occurred during this time. For example, we concluded that child labor existed during this time. We also concluded that there were very poor working conditions in general, and many advances in transportation were occurring, such as railroads and canals. We were even able to draw conclusions about the economic situation. Knowing these things tells me a little about the Industrial Revolution. However, I am still left with many questions. I will have to rely on my textbook to supplement this information. I would like to learn more about the events that occurred to cause these changes in society, and the action taken by the government to improve and change these conditions.
I do think that primary sources are a pivotal tool for determining the history of a time and place. However, I do not think that they should be the only tool that we use for learning history. I think that secondary sources are also necessary for a complete understanding of history. Authors send considerable time researching and we can benefit from the connections and conclusions they make. There are always gaps that only secondary sources can fill. This was a useful exercise for learning new ways to view history.
This type of exercise teaches students to use their own abilities of observation and attribute them to the Industrial Revolution and its economic, social, and political effects among others. Based on the topic and time frame given by the documents, the center of focus was the Industrial Revolution and primarily social inequalities with new technology. According to the provided documents, “The Girl of the Period” was inferred to be a distasteful social development as well as the growth in child labor. This method of observation teaches students to work in various perspectives to paint a picture of the time period. Since history is always biased to an extent, as minute as it may be, students must learn to look at their documents that include reports, pictorials, and graphs in different ways to achieve different meanings for the significance of the document.
Before history had seemed to be a one way street where the interpretation given was assumed to be the only interpretation of a source, but this exercise’s need for attention to detail made history appear differently. Most obviously in the pictorial documents, more attention has been paid to each individual object in the picture that could stand for something as simple as the main center of focus in the piece, or a clue as to the time period. Since this was not only a group assignment, but an assignment that started as an individual and would then be presented within their group whom would then present to the entire class, willingness to be open to ideas was prevalent. The information gathered is drawn not only from an individual’s own documents, but their group’s documents as well. This allows trends to become apparent where history may repeat itself or a document explained the effects or causes of various things.
A personal question that I had mostly wondered about throughout the ordeal is what is necessary to know and what isn’t. My group had been the first to go and due to a time restraint, we did not present a document that was mine that spoke of a political group that had failed in an uprising. In the end, we never went back to it and since this is linked directly to our midterm, I’m honestly wondering what’s necessary to know and what not to. Notes were taken during class, but it seems too much to ask for the personal memorization of each individual document rather than several main ones that had the core topics.
In the end, I believe that this exercise was extremely helpful to the class as a whole. Looking at individual things, I realized that this exercise has made me more alert to small details and allows me to pick up on things much faster with many inferences. This is a skill that is essential to being a historian and because of such , I think this exercise does a good job of teaching everyone how to analyze their documents in time for DBQ’s in the future. On top of just teaching us how to analyze, it also is teaching us about the Industrial Revolution in particular, so this period is known inside and out.
After completing this exercise on the Industrial Revolution I have come to realize that history is a process, one that isn’t and cannot be rushed. In analyzing documents, photographs, and other primary sources, one must spend much time looking at every aspect and detail so as to gather as much information as possible. From there, you can infer and develop questions to further your conclusions. These questions you have come up with can then possibly be found in other sources. This exercise can also teach you that history can be interpreted in many ways and that there is no “right” way. By coming up with different interpretations, our group was able to logically make sense of various possibilities for what may have truly went on during the Industrial Revolution. If everyone were to come up with the same conclusions, there’d be no one to challenge.
There were many primary sources in our group investigation that contained photos. The saying, “A picture paints a thousand words,” was quite evident in our group attempt to interpret history because from each painting and photograph, we were able to infer, find out, and confirm just as much information as we would from a normal written source document. Photographs, still life captured in time, are so significant in the study of history. Each photo represents something that has meaning or is conveying a message. When people look back on the past, they take out photos because photos are the key. They are the key to moments, events, feeling, and emotions.
I have found that after completing each document analysis, I saw history in a different light. I developed a more appreciative understanding for what we have discovered about the past throughout the ages because it’s not easy to recover events and moments lost in time, especially when you only have photographs, poems, or journal entries. I also looked at history in a different way, the kind regarding ourselves. We as people are history in the making… every action that we make and every word that we say. I began to wonder, how are future historians going to look back on 2006 and what are we going to be known for. This also lead me to questions such as, what kind of documents would future historians be using to come up with conclusions to how society was, or significant events such as 9/11 or the “war on terrorism.”
Analyzing the Industrial Revolution primary documents was an extremely helpful exercise in learning about European history during this time period and about history in general. First of all, it showed that history is subjective. When my group was looking at the documents, we each analyzed them a little differently and obtained varied interpretations. So, history depends on who is looking at it. And since different people don’t look the same thing the same way, this exercise gave me a more reliable understanding of the Industrial Revolution than our textbook did. The textbook and other secondary sources provide us with someone else’s analysis. While this, at times, is helpful in providing different viewpoints on a subject, it may not be as reliable as primary sources because in a secondary source, evidence can be manipulated by the author to prove a certain point. The primary documents allowed us to create our own analysis of the time period. They also have a closer narrative proximity, so they are as reliable sources as we can obtain, short of going back in time and experiencing it for ourselves.
In addition, firsthand accounts make history seem more concrete. The primary documents gave concrete examples of life during the Industrial Revolution, instead of the general descriptions that the textbooks might offer. This makes it seem more personal and more realistic and tangible, so to speak.
However, this exercise showed me how difficult the job of a historian’s can be. Some of the documents were somewhat difficult to analyze because we didn’t always know exactly what a photo was depicting, or the photo might be unclear, or we didn’t know who the author of an article was, and in these cases, we had to speculate; I imagine historians often go through the same process. This activity also showed me that historians must pay very close attention to detail. A photograph may contain more than meets the eye, and one must “dig” to find it. For example, the photograph of the two children changing the bobbins of a machine shows more than just two children and a machine. It showed the lack of government laws about child labor and safety in the workplace, the detrimental conditions of the workplace, the low wages that the workers earned, and the use of new technology.
Moreover, historians’ jobs might also be made more difficult by the fact that documents might not give a complete picture because of the viewpoint of the author or his bias. For example, in this activity, the documents were mostly from middle class and working class points of view. Thus, this made me wonder how the nobility and royalty felt about industrialization.
Additionally, this exercise was also helpful for me because I feel that I know the information better since we ourselves put forth the effort to analyze the documents instead of just studying someone else’s analysis, and so I will be able to better remember the things we studied. All in all, this exercise contributed greatly to our study of the Industrial Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution primary documents exercise was a different approach to learning about what was going on during this time period. By analyzing documents that directly came from the time period of the Industrial Revolution, I was able to see first-hand accounts of what was really occurring, instead of a summarization from a textbook. I was able to analyze the language used by the people during the time period, and I was able to identify what form of documents were used during the time period; whether it be a photograph or a report. By reading and analyzing various documents, one is able to draw conclusions about how events throughout history directly affected various groups of people, whether it was for the better or for the worse. The exercise showed me how one event in history can affect all levels of society, and people’s different interpretation/opinions on a single event.
This exercise also affects the way people study history. One can look at the documents and identify possible solutions people were proposing to different problems, and can see if these solutions were ever successful. Also, by reading certain documents, one may begin to have a biased opinion, and instead of looking at the whole picture, they have a skewed perception of what really happened. Just the opposite can occur too, which can only benefit history. By having first-hand accounts of events throughout history, and a variety of documents, the study of history can be more accurately summarized. Historians can also identify new facts and have varying opinions, which can only benefit the study of history.
This exercise did allow for me to look at history in a different way. I have just read textbook summaries on the Industrial Revolution, and have drawn my conclusions from that. Textbooks are less specific and talk about the main ideas, whereas these documents expressed specific opinions from varying social classes. It was also fun to look at these documents that talked about struggles or success people were going through, and know that things either turned out for the better or worse for them.
Some questions left unanswered were what happened to the people who were distressed during this time period. Throughout the documents, complaints were being made, and issues were being discussed. The only questions I have are if these problems were solved or even addressed, and what after-affects they had on these people. I also wonder if these documents had any impact on the people. Were they were published and broadly distributed, or were they were banned and hated for the revelations they had made about the Industrial Revolution?
This exercise was very valuable to me and I think I now have a greater understanding of much of an impact the Industrial Revolution had throughout Europe. I was able to read and analyze various thoughts and opinions, which I would not have gotten through a textbook. It was a different way to approach learning about a huge event in history, while still practicing analyzing primary documents.
This exercise was definitely an eye-opening experience on the study of history. Students rarely experience the primary documents before reading or examining some secondary sources beforehand. In 6th grade, our social studies teacher had us do something similar by bringing in random objects and having us examine them and shape a culture (we were learning about early man) out of the objects and their supposed uses. It was even more meaningful this time around, in which the documents and pictures we examined were from an actual period in time.
First off, history is a hard subject to class, define, and teach. The information available on an area is constantly being updated and our views shifted. Furthermore, history is a subjective art. The viewer’s take on a subject is actually being seen through many different lenses—all the different biases and POV’s an object went through before it reached the current ‘historian’. For example, the documents seen in class could have been censored by the government of different eras, the paintings rendered with the specific artist’s tone on the era. Therefore, history is a tricky thing to study in all its diverse facets. It’s important to eliminate bias that can come from under-coverage of the population or culture one is studying, but it is also important to not suffer from bias that can come from individual ‘artifacts’ from the time period. How does a historian tell objective from subjective if there aren’t enough ‘pieces’ of evidence to complete the whole picture puzzle?
And yet, raw primary sources also add some spice to learning history. The textbooks we read are more or less objective. But in achieving that objectivity and trying to cover many viewpoints, readers often miss out on the subjectivity of the different aspects of the people and events of the time. Bias is an interesting thing to read and study, and it is also a crucial part of defining history. By sucking out that bias and subjectivity, what conclusions can students take from textbooks besides hard facts that we have not much evidence to support?
It was amusing, piecing together the documents our group got, and then puzzling over what each meant and what part it played in the big picture. Some documents, such as legislation, were easier than others. Dates and other definitive markings allowed us to bring in prior knowledge of the Industrial Revolution and make things click that way (although bringing in prior knowledge really defeats the purpose, since historians with no prior knowledge on an era could not have done so). Although more challenging, the art pieces were a lot more rewarding to study, since art is a very subjective medium. I was happy to incorporate some of the skills on evaluating artwork that I took from my high school art classes. The tone of the piece, the colors, and the strokes incorporating the ability to analyze art was something I’ve never really done before in history class. It made me appreciate historians a lot more. They’re not just dried up old individuals who examine dried up old antiques and try to establish objective, cold, and lifeless facts with equally boring methods that had nothing to do with any other subject. Rather, the study of history encompasses all other subjects learned in and out of school, since history is what runs parallel to the achievements created through time.
Since this is getting rather lengthy, I’ll wrap it up. One question left unanswered by this activity was… well, all the holes left through studying the documents our group was given. While the documents were informative and interesting, they were a sort of ‘icing on the cake’. It would take lots more of those documents to piece together the brunt of the information on the Industrial Revolution. I have to ask: “What year were these pictures taken? Where were they taken? When was this act passed? Who passed it? What was the environment like when these were made? What were people’s reactions to these at the time?” The document we had held none of those answers, even if they were informative by themselves. Reading the textbook helped a lot, though (I would never have gotten the Crystal Palace without reading Chapter 20). It’s nice that there are compilations of information out there that give an overall briefing of a subject. However, the fact that the documents raised many questions also leads me to realize another aspect of history, and knowledge in general. The more you know, the more questions arise. It’s a never-ending cycle, really. I’m sure even the author of the textbook has questions left unanswered about the Industrial Revolution. Since Spielvogel knows so much already, he probably has a lot more questions than I do.
In spending the last couple of class periods looking at the Industrial Revolution primary source documents, I gained a more thorough understanding of the time period and the effect that it had on the countries and their people. Being able to look a photos of life in the factories, and hear through poems and journal entries about the hardships faced by children and women, gave me a better appreciation of the difficulties that they faced. It made me realize how much this introduction of new industrial technology, really was a revolution and that it impacted European life socially and economically. While paragraphs in our textbook may be able to relay this information to us, it doesn’t have the same effect as a first hand document. First hand accounts allow the reader to interpret what was going on, and how people felt about it at that time. Thus this exercise showed me that history is meant to be interpreted by those who study it and that everybody may look at it in a different way.
By studying a primary source document the beholder is given a different angle in which to absorb the information that is being given. So often do we rely on what our textbook says that we miss what the real point of studying some event or time period was. I think that these documents force the viewer to think outside the box and open their minds to new possibilities. In some cases it may expose an idea or thought that could be valuable to our understanding of a certain situation or problem. Primary sources allow us to see the thoughts and actions of certain people during a certain time period, and therefore we are allowed to put ourselves in their position and think about what we would have done.
On the other hand, while primary source documents help us to better understand a time period in history, they also create more questions for those who view them. If anything, they make the reader curious to know more about what happened and consequently they begin to research more about the topic. For instance, one of the pictures I looked at contained a bridge over a river in a heavily forested area. There appeared to be a house in the background, and my guess was that it was center of some industry that was powered by the river. I was somewhat unsure why this was relevant to the time period and my question was answered in the textbook reading. I learned that river water was used to power machinery and that it also was used to transport goods. Mostly, the primary sources just made me more curious about why this time period was considered such a revolution in industry.
Overall, I feel that this was a valuable exercise to do in class and it made me more appreciative of the time period and the effect that it had on the nations and their people.
This type of exercise can teach us many things about history. It can help inspire new types of thinking, motivate new ideas, and help the people of present day to try and not make the same mistakes of those in the past. It allows people to see the trial and error of things that have occurred in the past. It offers new ideas for government, leadership, rights, and laws. It opens the doors for new ideas and inventions to be explored. These primary source documents can help to understand the true experiences that people went through and saw. Reading them from another source could prove them to possibly be not as accurate as when it is heard from the people who lived it.
I didn’t learn anything drastically new from this exercise. I spent a good majority of sophmore and junior year studying the Industrial Revolution in history. One thing that did surprise me though was when a girl said when she worked, many of the men around her worked naked. I thought that was a little peculiar that the men would work, or even be allowed to work naked. Another thing that I was surprised about was how many paintings there were of this time. I never would have expected there to be so many paintings, because sometimes when a change as big as the Industrial Revolution occur, the people living in it don’t even notice that it is going on.
I think the biggest question left unanswered was how all of these bad conditions were allowed to take. People were noticably being harmed in the production of new goods, as many children as adults. I understand it is important to make a dollar and be to be able to provide for your family, but it isn’t worth the risk of humanity.
When we started this exercise, I knew we were going to have to use our own knowledge of the Industrial Revolution to depict every picture or document to understand what they were saying. In my group particularly, there 3 pictures that we had no idea what was going on. There was one picture of a bridge, one of a river by a factory, and one of a homeless man on the street. Some of my group members mentioned that the Industrial Revolution was all about new ways of building and using machines to build new things, such as bridges. The other picture with the river was low and looked murky by the factory, so we thought it represented the new pollution during the Revolution. Lastly, we thought that the homeless man represented the men and women left without jobs and suffering the low salaries during this era.
From looking at these pictures, as well as reading the documents, this exercise taught me that you don’t have to know everything about history to understand what’s going on. Most of us had little background information about the Revolution, but that didn’t stop us from interpreting the pictures to understand the thoughts of others. History deals with people and the effects of their feeling and actions. Seeing the pictures and reading the documents was just like seeing into someone else’s mind and showing me what their experience was like and their feelings on the time period. I didn’t need so much knowledge on the Industrial Revolution to comprehend what people’s opinions are and what’s going on.
Using our knowledge of what we knew helped us understand a different side to the Revolution that we never really thought about. When I thought about the Revolution in England during the 18th century, I thought it was a good time full of prosperity and profit. This activity showed me the opposite viewpoint of this era. Most of our documents dealt with the problems with pollution, the population growth, and the terrible working conditions with child labor and low wages. I now realize that this was a time of goodness, but was also a time of hardship and despair for many people and the environment.
From seeing a new side to the Revolution, I just want to know more about the positive side of the Revolution. Was there more bad than good during this period? Did most people have the negative outlook on it as most of our documents presented? Overall, I really enjoyed this activity. I liked having the ability to not need knowledge on the subject to understand what people were writing about or what photographers wanted people to see in their pictures. I hope we do more of these!
During the past few classes we have been analyzing a set of primary source documents in groups. All we knew about these documents was that they were from the Industrial Revolution. After examining them we were able to deduce a great amount about the Industrial Revolution. I feel that analyzing primary documents is an excellent way to learn about the past. When you learn history simply by reading a textbook, you will only be learning the history from the author’s point of view. It is much more effective to analyze documents that were written during the Industrial Revolution before reading the textbook. It is also much more entertaining. As much as I love history, I find that the textbooks often present the material in a dull way. They don’t let you form your own opinion, or come up with your own inferences.
I have definitely looked at history differently after performing this exercise. From now on, I will not simply look at a picture, or read a poem, and decide what they are expressing. I will examine them scrupulously until I am able to make a fairly thorough conclusion. While analyzing a picture, Mr. Kirby suggested splitting the picture into four quadrants and analyzing each part separately. This helped me become conscious that small details in a picture may not be very noticeable but can portray a lot about the time period. It is easy to look at a picture and come up with an overall mood of the picture. However, unless you analyze the document meticulously, you might miss a lot of useful information. For example, one of the documents that I was analyzing was a picture of a city. When I first looked at this picture I was able to see a line of brick buildings packed close together with a canal running between the buildings. I was able to infer that there was urbanization occurring during this time period. I was able to tell that buildings are growing taller rather than wider, so they can cram them close together. They also started building with bricks. Since we had two pictures with canals in them, I was able to infer that there was an increase in canals being created. Despite these inferences that I was able to make I had completely missed the most important part of this picture at first sight. Until I split the picture into four quadrants, I did not see the smokestacks on top of one of the buildings. This is exceedingly important because this is possibly the earliest picture in history I have seen with a smokestack in it. This tells me that factories are starting to be created.
I have learned that you have to be careful who you are learning from because history can be told from a very biased perspective. This is why I feel that it was important that we worked in groups rather than alone. I believe that if history is told from secondary sources time after time, then eventually much of it will be lost. This is why it is important to look at primary sources, and piece together parts of history. I have learned that when analyzing a primary source document it is important to recognize your assumptions, since they might be false. For example, one of my group’s documents was a graph which showed the population growth in Britain during the Industrial Revolution. One of my group members assumed that the population growth was a result of families having more children. Although this is a possibility, I understood that there are other explanations. For example, death rates could have rapidly decreased, or maybe increases in health care could have led to this population growth. Other explanations could be a rise in immigration or possibly an end to epidemics.
This exercise helped us understand the terrible conditions of the lower class. However, we did not learn whether or not the upper class was satisfied with their position in society. Did they want further reform? Were they unhappy with the government at the time? I did not learn much about the attitudes of people belonging to the upper class of society. Because of this, we have to refer to secondary sources like our textbook to fill the gaps. I feel that this exercise is very effective, and should be performed more often throughout the year. It is a great supplement of learning to our textbook.
After hearing some of the primary sources being analyzed, there is a lot one can learn about history by reading these sources. One thing is for sure that there really isn’t any “experts” in history. Unfortunately I had to learn that the hard way when Mr. Kirby made fun of me in front of the class asking me what I had thought these expert historians were. History can be analyzed and broken down in many different ways. Especially in unclear photos and records. To one person an object can appear to be a trash bag and to another person the same object maybe nothing more than a shadow. The important thing to learn about this exercise and about the study of history is that there really right and wrong answers when analyzing history. Sometimes things are just too unclear to say that one object or point of view is correct and others are wrong. It is all about the way you view these items. The thing is it is also very important to understand the time period too. That is the difference between some of us and those that have a large scale amount of knowledge about the time period. This background knowledge allows you to make more accurate interpretations on what your seeing or reading. That is why these people claim to be experts, because they have spent their whole lives devoted to a certain era so they can understand the events that unfolded during that time.
You definitely look at history differently through this exercise. While looking at a picture or analyzing a document your basically going on what background information you have on the topic. That is the way I went about analyzing what was going on the photos and documents based on what little knowledge I knew or thought I knew about the Industrial Revolution. Too often do people form opinions on what they were told in a text book or by a teacher. By looking at these documents without already reading the section, you are able to form your own opinions and draw your own conclusions from the sources that were given. Sometimes a textbook analysis may be no better or even worse than your own analysis. Being able to form your own observations and compare and contrast it to additional informational and what has already been said about the sources is the best thing to do when analyzing sources. (even though you may not be able to on a DBQ).
I still had a few questions on my mind after doing this exercise. One main question is especially with the source I read on water and pollution, What year was this being written? I assume that the document was during the time period, but the document seemed more reflective than present. Another question that really wasn’t answered was what was going on with the upper class during this time period? We really didn’t have many sources vividly describe how the upper class lived during this time period. I think that knowing more about the upperclass can really show you the differences and similarities in terms of living environments and health conditions between the two.
All in all this proved to be a very important exercise. It gave us a chance to be able to see what actually was going on during the Industrial Revolution, and made people think about what was going on during the time period without actually learning about it through a textbook.
This exercise teaches us how to gather information about history from different documents, articles, and pictures. In order to gain information you must analiyze the document and show your general understanding of the subject.This document also teaches us about how different people interpreted history. While one person will paint a painting to express how they feel about a certain event,, another might write an editorial to a newspaper. There is no limitation to finding historical facts. They are not just in books and newspapers, but in photos, paintings, poems, etc.
After doing this exercise I have realized how much our country has changed since the industrial revolution. So many laws have been made that if they were around back then, millions of people would be put in jail. I have realized the hardships many people faced and the pressure to support their families.
Questions that were left unaswered would be what happened to all the people who were affected badly by the revolution? Many wrote letters or gave their opinions, but was anything done about them?
After reading these articles I have gotten a better understanding of the people affected by the industrial revolution because of their thoughts and opinions. In a regular text book I would not be able to find whata young kid thought of his working conditions, or a what a mother thought about leaving her young kids at home so she can work and put food on the table.
This exercise provided a great insight into what life was like in the Industrial Revolution. This exercise proves studying history does not just come from reading a text book. In order to really study history you have to spend time analyzing documents so that you can make you own interpretations. It was also beneficial to be working in a group so that some thought processes could be shared. It is important to have several people analyzing documents so that you can compare your results.
This exercise has made me look at history very differently. I always thought history was just about certain dates and people. This project showed history is composed of different eras that are made up of these dates and people. That is not the important part. The important part is to be able to analyze these different time periods through documents like letters and pictures. Everybody has to interpret history in their own way. Some of the photographs we got represented several different aspects of the Industrial Revolution. This is why it is okay for two people to come up with different responses to one photo.
There are still a couple questions left unanswered from this exercise. First of all, how did people get away with abusing what are common human rights to us today? It seems ridiculous that children were forced to work in such bad conditions for such long hours. How were children denied their own childhoods? Also, the Industrial Revolution had to happen for us to be where we are today. However, what was the final push that really motivated the revolution to take place?
This exercise really changed my beliefs on history. It really made a difference in my understanding of the revolution because it taught me things I could never learn in a book. It showed the real emotions people involved in the revolution were feeling.
The analysis of primary documents was a new and unique way that I was able to learn about the Industrial Revolution. This type of exercise is extremely valuable because we are able to learn different things about history than through other means, such as a textbook or another secondary source. For example, through this exercise, we are able to gain an understanding of not only the main themes of the Industrial Revolution, but the connections between different aspects of these themes. It would be difficult, for example, to connect social, economic, and political aspects of the Revolution through a textbook that outlined the major events and people. Through this activity, however, we were able to make numerous connections between the various themes of the Revolution.
We are also able to gain an understanding about the study of history through this exercise. Studying history shouldn’t just be a memorization of important dates, events, and people, but a true understanding of the underlying concepts of these events. This deep comprehension is what we can gain by looking at history in different ways, just like the primary source analysis we performed in class. Analysis of primary sources gives the historian a true account of what the time period was like, which can be much more important than a secondary account of the period.
Through this exercise, I definitely have a different view on the Industrial Revolution. When we began this unit, I thought of the Industrial Revolution in fairly basic terms. I viewed it as a growth in manufacturing and other industries, and saw it as the framework for today’s world economy. However, I had no idea of the extent of the poor working conditions, and the horrific quality of labor for women and children. Upon hearing the analysis of the girl’s account of her daily routine at work, one of the primary documents, I was appalled by the fact that this was being allowed to occur within factories across Europe.
In the end, I am left with a few questions regarding the Industrial Revolution dealing with the thoughts of factory owners. I realize that these men were doing whatever it took to maximize profit, but I imagine that the owner or managers conscience would limit the horrors that occurred in the factories. The answer to these questions can really only be found through the further analysis of primary documents dealing with statements or thoughts made by these owners or managers.
Overall, this exercise has certainly provided a deeper understanding of the Industrial Revolution, especially its themes and the connections between them. The exercise provided a view of history that could not have been received form any other source, such as a textbook.
The primary source document exercise done in class this week proved to be a helpful activity when it came to analyzing primary source documents. In the duration of this exercise we learned how to apply our previous experiences with primary source documents and tie them into a simple fill-in sheet. We were asked to examine the purpose, the tone, and to ask questions of the documents.
An exercise such as this asks us as the students to look at a picture, or a chart, or a poem, and see it through the eyes of the photographer, the statistician, and the writer. For example, when asked why a photographer would photograph a suspension bridge, I not only answered, "to depict industrial advancements in engineering," but I explained how the surrounding area was most likely rich in trade, and why the trains were so important.
This taught us that when studying history we can not merely log on to a website or open a book on our topics. We must find primary sources, pieces of history recorded with an undisputed reputation for accuracy, because only by looking at these primary sources can we see the world through the author's eyes. And while gazing through this window in time, we are more apt when writing papers or having discussions in class.
Through this exercise I believe the class has looked at history differently than before. We witnessed the exploitation of children in the factory, marvels of engineering, and and increase in the standard of living right when it happened. Instead of having a book tell you what happened during this date with these people we are allowed to look at it from our own perspectives and interpret it any which way.
Although this exercise provided an in-depth look at life during the revolution, I still have some unanswered questions. I can't seem to comprehend why parents would let their children work in these dangerous factories and mines, for hours on end, with a pay that scarce. After reading a sad recollection from an eight-year old girl who "never say the light" it made me wonder how heartless the owners of these mines really were and if they realized what they were doing. I also do not understand why these workers, who were working more than ten hours a day, getting injured in the workplace, and were being payed so little, decided not to strike or revolt in any fashion. Poems and stories were written. Laws were set into place, but little changed. The workers stood idly by, doing backbreaking work for meager pay, and did absolutely nothing.
All in all I think that this exercise was very helpful in teaching us how to examine primary sources and provided a wider understanding of the Industrial Revolution.
Over the past week we have divided into groups to analyze primary sources. The only thing we knew was that all the sources were related to the Industrial Revolution, and we had to make our own opinions based on analyzing the documents like a historian would. The activity was similar to solving a puzzle with some pieces missing, because each group had different documents, so they had to formulate their own opinions about the Industrial Revolution based just on prior knowledge and the information they were provided with.
Participating in an activity like this is effective, because it gives students a hands-on experience. Plus, by having a limited amount of prior knowledge, we can make our own opinions about the topic instead of taking the opinions of that of a textbook. Textbooks aren't always the most reliable sources either, because they give a "watered down" account of history, and not everything is brutally honest based on censorship and depending on whose perspective it's coming from. By reading primary sources, we get a more realistic version of what actually happened. Instead of just repeating facts after facts, the author gets more personal, sometimes describing his/her own experiences. When you read something that has happened to another person and put yourselves in their shoes, I think that's when you really understand the depth of something. Personally, after reading so many first hand accounts about child labor, I felt for the children, because I realized how atrocious working conditions really were.
Since we didn't get to finish presenting the documents, I would just like to hear about what types of sources other groups had. One major question I have though is, what did factory owners think? Aren't they humans too? I wish I got a chance to read/hear about a document written from the perspective of a factory owner who forced children to work in such horrible conditions.
By studying the primary documents we have been reviewing over the past few classes on the Industrial Revolution, there is much to gain. When we are taught about history, many times we learn from just the textbook or by watching a movie that we are never able to absorb much information or opinion from. In the textbooks, many times opinions are not expressed by either side in any situation due to the authors need to remain unbiased about certain historical topics. We always end up learning the surface of a subject or event in history. By reviewing, reading, and analyzing primary documents such as photos, paintings, poems, interviews, or articles, we are able to hear what the people of the era had to say. It is a much more interesting and in depth way to learn about a historical topic. I feel that after doing such an activity, I come away with more knowledge about the topic than I would have if I was only learning by lecture, text, or video. As for what studying primary documents can do for the study of history, it can create it into, as I stated before, much more interesting. Many times the primary documents were either controversial or stating an understudied opinion.
Throughout this activity, it has opened my eyes to different views or conditions during the Industrial Revolution. This being said, I would not consider it to have altered how I view history. In the past I have studied primary documents so this was not an unusual way to look or study history for me.
Due to the fact we have not finished reviewing all the documents, I have many questions left unanswered. I have not been yet introduced to any of the political views during the Industrial Revolution for instance. After reviewing a few, I do not have any questions about the child labor or working hours we discussed but it does leave me wondering about the rest of the conditions of this time period as a whole.
The recent exercise done on the various documents on the Industrial Revolution discloses many things about history in itself. Primarily it demonstrates how history is very ambiguous. The viewpoint of an author or painter will not necessarily be the same to one person as it is to another. A person’s perception, judgment, background, and other influences are all filters by which one’s conclusions and inferences are based about certain historical documents or works of art. It is therefore this ambiguity that makes history less lucid then other subjects, because in order to study it one must maintain somewhat of an open-mind taking into account the various sentiments about a historical topic.
History is also not just words compiled to form documents, books, or articles, but also consists of works of art composed not eloquently by the pen, but by simple strokes of a paintbrush. It is a simple picture that reveals much about history. But with pictures, one must look upon them dually, in that a historian should perceive a picture as a whole or as a body, yet at the same time study the parts that constitute the whole. Any minute detail can contribute to the meaning and theme of the entire picture or painting.
This exercise has made me look at history differently, and as a result I will strive to look deeper and less superficially at certain historical documents. I must ask myself questions such as what were the circumstances and influences at that time period that could have shaped the author’s perception on a historical happening or event? Were there constraints in society at the time that would explain his or her sentiment? These questions will continually be in back of my mind while I analyze various primary and secondary source documents.
I learned so much more studying the primary source documents in class then any document could have taught me. Instead of being taught by some else, you actually had to delve into the past and decipher what everything meant. Although due to many snow delays we only got to listen to two documents from another group. I learned that history can not be divided into neat little sections. One document can be either a social and economic issue or even just a social issue but under that, you have child labor, adult labor and so much more.
When I first heard that we were going to be doing this project, I was a little afraid because I had never actually done anything like it before. It has always been primary source documents dumbed up by history books. But I found this easier to learn about history because you actually have to put some sort of effort into.
So overall I can’t cite specific connections between the different groups documents because we never actually got to it, I can say that reading our documents helped me learn a lot about the Industrial Revolution.
After doing the primary resource exercise, I feel I have a better understanding of the Industrial Revolution. By studying the primary resources, we had to interpret what we thought was going on in the documents. Usually, we are just told what happened during a certain event or time period, so all we have to do is memorize the facts. By studying the primary source documents, we had to teach ourselves what was going on. And what we were teaching ourselves may not have been exactly what really did happen, but we were trying to use the documents to piece together what the Industrial Revolution was. Also, by studying these documents, we were able to understand how the people that had lived during the Industrial Revolution felt about what was happening. When we use a textbook to learn about a certain topic, the information is very non-biased, but the documents were very opinionated and biased. Some of the documents we were able to analyze were photographs, paintings, maps, and graphs. These types of documents help to better one’s understanding about history because they are a different form of studying history. A very famous saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words. And I think that this is very true. Depending on how you look at the picture, it may seem as one thing is going on, when to another person, they might think something completely different is being portrayed.
I don’t think I will look at history completely differently than before because of these documents. I have used and analyzed primary source documents before, so I am used to using this method of learning. However, by analyzing these documents, I feel that I have attained some valuable analytical skills.
I do have many questions left answered. One of the main reasons for this is that we haven’t finished going over all the documents in class. I have a feeling that the questions I have can be easily answered from gaining information that someone else had in their documents. I don’t have many questions about child labor or working conditions during the Industrial Revolution, but I do have questions about the political views and the economy during the Industrial Revolution.
This primary source exercise can teach several different things on how to interpret history. One is that it taught others and me that when looking at history one must not just look at what happened but how it affected others and what those people had to say or feel about that situation. For example, one of the documents we had to examine was of a series of interviews of mineworkers and owners. To understand the conditions in which the workers had to work in one must look at what the workers said but also what the owners say about it. The reason is that by looking at both sides of the views one can understand not just how the workers were treated but why they were. By gaining this knowledge then we can truly understand the situation and make a better decision of whether the actions following those articles were correct. However, even though this exercise has greatly helped me to have a broader view of history it still leaves some issues unanswered. For instance where does one start to look for those information and what other information do we need to know before we analysis the current one.
Analyzing primary source documents as we did in our recent exercise concerning the Industrial Revolution can teach one some things that one cannot learn properly through a third party. For instance, in Document 14, a photo of child laborers, one can truly feel their exhaustion and misery, in a way that one could not through a simple recounting of the events from an entirely detached historian. In document 36, a an excerpt from record of parliamentary debates, the speaker recounts that in one town, more than eighty children were quickly assembled when he wished to see all who were deformed from factory work. This example provides the reader with a more poignant sense of the plight of working children in the industrial revolution than reading that children were deformed through their work would.
Looking at history through primary sources allows one to view history through the view point of those who lived it. This can be helpful in some ways and detrimental in others. Eyewitnesses of an event often have a much clearer idea of what occurred then someone born generations later. However, the bias of the time is present, and can obscure the reality of the documents. Politicians who were unpopular at the time may be made to seem downright evil, while they may not have been much different from his colleagues.
The largest question left unanswered by these documents is why the people of Industrial Europe seemed unwilling to do anything about the horrible conditions faced by the working class. It seems odd that the working class, who had much larger numbers than the wealthier industrial elites, would simply accept their fate. It also seems strange that the upper class would remain indifferent to the plight of those that often made them their wealth.
I think that when one is examining a collection of primary source documents to help develop a picture of the time period, one should realize that it is much more difficult to remain emotionally detached from the subject matter, than when one is studying from a textbook. Some may not view this as negative, but I feel that the most accurate image of an era is developed when one does their best to detach themselves emotionally.
During the past week, our class has split up into groups to analyze a series of primary documents, both individually and as a team. These documents took a variety of forms, including photographs, paintings, interviews, poetry, and many more. Through this activity, much can be learned about history and how it is studied. This learning was enhanced through the variety of the documents (in both topic and type) and through sharing the different ways people viewed the documents. This exercise demonstrated just how intricate history is- many pieces are interdependent and connected. As we sorted out the documents into three categories (economic, social, and political), there was debate over several of the documents. Depending on which aspect of the document was focused on and how it was interpreted, some of these documents could be placed in more than one category. The multi-category documents helped to connected all three categories into a more solid, detailed image of the industrial revolution. In studying history, this detailed image is the goal. However, such an image of any given time period cannot be formed by not looking all the relationships between the many aspects of history. This activity helped me to look at the industrial revolution, not in separate pieces, but pieces that are connected to make a greater whole.
The primary source exercise was interesting and very educational. Primary sources are better to learn from because they teach more about the time period than other works written afterwards. Other documents can be biased and important details can be lost in history if they are not recorded during the time in which they happen. When using primary sources, people learn what life was really like during the time period because the authors of the works experienced what they wrote about. This allows for a more detailed account. Primary sources are better to use in a lot of instances when doing resesarch. For this topic, the primary documents expressed how hard life was for the common people during the Industrial Revolution. The parliament records described what life was like in the factories as told by workers. The pictures depicted harsh working conditions and the difficulty of life.
I did start to look at the Industrial Revolution differently after this exercise. I previously knew that living conditions were unsanitary and the work was long and difficult, but hearing what people looked like and the actual experiences they went through changed my views on how harsh life actually was at the time. I also thought it was interesting to learn the solutions that some people were coming up with to solve harsh working conditions. One man came up of an idea of a utopia, but the people still did the same type of tasks that they were doing, just only an hour per task. This seemed to create a lot of the same kinds of problems that the world already had. One of the things I wonder is if people actually tried to employ these ideas of utopias to society and how they worked out.
The Industrail Revolution Primary Documents Exercise
By William Si
Over these last few days, we have been going over primary source documents to try to produce an image of what the Industrial Revolution was like. From stories to pictures to graphs, a lot of different sources were put in front of us to analyze. Even if the image is incomplete, this type of exercise can teach a lot about our history. Not only is different stories preserved in different mediums but each one tells about a specific example of life during the time. Comparing it to a text book, this provides us a much more depth of knowledge as we are coming up with ideas ourselves. Even if the text is easy to read, all it does is present analyzed information to us for us to memorize. Without our own views on history, we could never really truly understand its importance in our life today.
After going through this exercise, even the study of history has changed for me. Instead of just reading a book full of information, I could try to use that information and piece everything together to form an idea of the life instead of just memorizing what is written. For primary source documents, I know more on how to analyze them and to extract the information for my own opinion. Even the smallest details such as if the man wore a hat or not can show me part of the life during the time. From the widest of views such as urbanization to the meticulous details such as brick, I can understand further than what I can extract out of a plain text.
From this now, history appears in a different light. Not to say that what I learned was wrong but it was only one view on how to see things. Also with this, text books become unbiased sometimes as it is just like they are saying that events just happen. Instead of just one street through history, side roads now spread out with different opinions and other ways of viewing everything. By realizing the issues / topics ourselves, we can find connections too between events in history that we may have missed while reading a book.
But even after going through an exercise like this, questions still arise. If we are given a bunch of documents to analyze ourselves, what are we supposed to take out of it? How through should we go through them and when is enough. It is possible to go and over analyze an document to the point of seeing radically different views throughout different articles. Another question that comes up is how we are sure that the views are all of the ones during the time. There is no guaranties that everything is like what is presented but how do we know that it is all of it. Even for my own documentation of my sports team, I tend to not record the sad parts and other times, I just missed out of the opportunity. Parts of the history are missed and the true image of the time cannot be completed.
Getting lengthy and almost one page in Word, it is nice to have a different approach to history. Even though right after we completed it, we got swamped with more of the regular reading, it complements the knowledge of what we already have and learned. It was not a waste of time and it has affected the way many think about history.
I think that the main thing that you can get out of an exercise like this is how seemingly unrelated topics in history are really very close. Had I just seen these documents laying around, I would never have thought that a poem called "The Cyclops" and a picture of an iron forge had anything to do with each other, but when you go deeper into it, it is clear that they are about the same thing.
I think that this did change my view of history a little. We had always been taught how poor the working conditions were in the factories and how much the people who were put into these conditions suffered. Before, it had always seemed like the "evil" factory owners fault. The more that we went over the documents, however, the more it was clear that it was more the politicians faults, because they were the ones who actually had the power to change things in society.
I am still very curious about there could have been a time in history with such sheer and utter disregard for human life. Today, aborting an unborn child is a big issue and causes an uproar with human rights groups. It really puzzles me how in the decades following the enlightenment, where the ideas of natural rights first came about, they would use children in factories because "they were smaller and could fit into smaller spaces."
I think that this assignment was really helpful in teaching how to analyze primary source documents. Though we had all used them before, it helps to do an excercise like this because now you really know what to look for when going over a document.
The act of looking upon a primary source document in complete ignorance of all other opinions--of, indeed, looking upon such a document as the people of that time must have seen it--can only be described an historical revelation. This type of excerise has us live the history rather than merely learn it; has us realize that history, while it is about the big picture, is also about putting the pieces together. So often, in school and in life, we look at history as one big event, throwing a blanket definition and description over ever-changing eras. We come at the study of history from above, as impartial viewers, while, in reality, when this history was being made, it was seen from below, in bits and parts; in a poem and a painting; a photograph of a metal bridge; in the testimonies of workers. How can one truly understand history without seeing it from both above and below? This exercise also showed me that history is subjective. The truth differs from person to person; a child laborer might speak of the exhaustion they feel, the long hours spent standing; an architect might talk about the new advancements, the bridges and buildings and materials that now lie at their fingertips; and the owner of a factory would probably mention the new prosperity, the dawning of a better age. We were presented with all these voices in our primary documents, all speaking different truths. It is up to the person listening to decide what is true to them, and in that way, yet another version of the same history is written. As, while performing this exercise, I came to understand this, I came to look at history differently. It is hard, sometimes, to remember, while flipping through the dry pages of our textbooks, that all this was real; that real people laughed and suffered during the Industrial Revolution. One can become so consumed in that analytical aspect of history, that you forget there is a living side too. It seems to make history more important to look at it this way. It is true, many of my questions were left unanswered. I cannot completely accustom myself to so brief and scattered a look at the Industrial Revolution. Despite all my fine talk about looking at history in parts, I still feel as though I am trying to put together a puzzle with too many pieces missing. I think, in some ways, no matter how much I learn, there always will be questions unanswered and empty spaces. Even if I spent the rest of my life studying a single day during the Industrial Revolution, I could never learn all of the histories that were formed during that day, in an hour, a minute, a second. I think that this is the greatest lesson I took away from this exercise--that in history, there is always more to discover.
Looking at primary sources teaches not only a more direct view of history, it can completely change the way we view it altogether. By reading about horrid working conditions in textbooks and narratives of the time, we can get a good idea as to the terrible things that the working class had to survive through. But by seeing pictures and reading first-hand accounts of men with “trenchfoot”, women who are forced to work on mechanized loons for twelve hours a day, and children who are sticking their hands into constantly moving machines, the reader experiences a substantial metamorphosis in their ideas. By viewing pictures and reading first-hand narratives, the impact of the words read from the textbook are exemplified and the emotions that can be induced from simple photos is almost scary. It gives the reader the ability to not only learn history, but to sympathize and empathize with those who had to go through the torments of it, such as the British industrial revolution working conditions. Primary and first-hand sources do not leave me with many questions; however, the main one would be whether those who had to suffer through some of these unsafe conditions believe that it was worth it because of the reforms and good that came from it in the end. This question, though, is essentially unanswerable and fairly impossible to decide a stand-point on. Personally, I like reading things such as this. Baradat can teach our class quite a bit about political policy and terminology, but by reading something from the Greek philosophers who first enacted a true democratic society, it would take it to a whole new level. I think with every chapter or area we study, there should be more first-hand accounts to read. Text book tests are fine, and the chapters are well-written, but nothing would prove to us the significance of some of these things as a quotation from Plato would.
The primary source exercise we did in class provided more information concerning the attitudes and ideals of the people from that time period. A textbook can only give facts but some details are always left out. One important thing that this exercise taught me is that there is not clear line or black and white when studying historical events. After reading some of the testimonials and first-hand reports I discovered that certain types of people had different views and values than I thought they would on the key issues (such as child labor and labor laws).
Another important thing that I took away from this exercise is that variation in interpretation is essential to understanding different historical event. It was really helpful to hear the different interpretations of my classmates. It made the ideals of the Industrial Revolution a lot easier to understand. For example, one of the documents was written by a factory owner. When I read this document myself I was unable to pick up on this important information until it was discussed in class. The unveiling of this crucial information added a new (and accurate) meaning to the document which I otherwise would not have noticed.
The one question that I had left unanswered was what the repercussion were for factory owners who did not follow the labor laws set in place? Were they fined or were their factories shut down completely? Also were there any rebellions or riots that took place concerning labor rights? It seems that horrid conditions that the laborers were forced to work and reside in would have fostered some sort of ill-feelings and hatred that would have surely lead to rebellion.
I felt that this was a very effective exercise. For me it was very helpful to see different picture and read different documents from the time period. It helped me really get into what life as like during this time and I was able to connect and understand the time better. This exercise is great because it can teach you that anything and everything is history. A picture of a river with train tracks running over, or of a steam tug pulling away an old ship into the distance. History isnt just studying and memorizing facts that happened before. It is the understanding of what happened in the past and how it worked back then and how it is in effect now.
This exercise has definitely shown me a new way of studying history. At first I thought that it was just going to be boring reading and notes. But it showed me that observations and thinking can better your knowledge of the past without memorizing one fact. After this exercise I definitely feel that this is a productive activity and is well worth the time put in to it.
This type of exercise can teach us a whole lot about history, as well as the study of history. This type of exercise teaches us that there is more than one way to interpret history. It teaches us that there is not one right way to look at something, and therefore the book is not always right. However, it also teaches us that we are never 100% right in our observations. We see this because we do not get the full picture ever. Yes, they are primary sources, but you weren’t actually there observing, Therefore, you don’t REALLY know what was going on. You can make educated observations, but you will not know the truth ever.
I think that I somewhat look at history differently through this exercise. I think that in the back of my mind I realized that history was in the hands of the victors, and that what’s written in the books is what does not offend, not necessarily what happened. This has proven to me that there is always more to learn, and that you can never stop asking questions, and trying to find the answers. That’s what I love about history. You don’t KNOW…but you know.
The questions that are always left unanswered when looking at primary source documents are why the author/photographer wrote the piece/took the picture, what was going through their minds, and what they hoped people would get out of it. And honestly, these questions will never be answered unless we talk to that person. That’s OK though. We come up with our own answers to these questions through careful observation and research. And we learn so much more about whatever we are studying because we do not only have that one point of view of the author.
This industrial revolution exercise can teach people a lot about history. The primary source documents allowed us to guess the main topics of the revolution before we read about them. We were able to get a first hand view about the conditions during the revolution. It teaches us through history that there are so many interconnecting topics and ideas that make up a general topic such as the industrial revolution. Since we were all split up into groups, we were able to make assumptions based on our set of documents. However once we went as a class to talk about the industrial revolution, all the ideas and topics came together to form the broader picture. This exercise also teaches us about the study of history. The study of history requires a lot of critical analysis and close reading. You may be able to get an overview of the topic by casually glancing through documents and pictures, but the more important details take a closer look. By reading through a primary source document you can get an idea of a topic without reading any background on it. However you do realize when doing this exercise, that to comprehend the documents it takes some time and careful reading/
I have looked at history differently with this exercise. I know now that history is not just something you can read about in a textbook, but that you can get facts through primary sources. I was able to get an idea about the actual people in this time period and their views on the industrial revolution. It wasn’t just background reading, it was a more complete description of the time period from people who actually lived back then. Instead of an unbiased vague description of a history topic, I was able to understand people’s tones and what they were really saying about what they thought. Usually I looked at history as facts, but when we analyzed the different pictures, I was able to get another idea of the industrial revolution, a visual aspect of it. That was a lot different then what a normally viewed history as.
I had some questions that were left unanswered. We didn’t really have a chance to finish all the documents, so there are definitely some aspects of the industrial revolution that I don’t know too much about except for a general description. Also we didn’t go into too much depth with the interconnecting topics of the industrial revolution, such as politics, economics, and social. The big picture is there, but the details that all interconnect is not that clear. Overall I thought that this exercise was good to get a description and idea of the industrial revolution.
I think that this exercise was one of the most informative that we have done all year. Being an abstract random learner I always prefer the hands on approach to just simply reading a textbook. By doing this exercise we were able to delve deeper into the roots of the problems that plagued people in American during the industrial revolution. If we had read just the textbook we would have just learned the names of important people and we would have dates burned into our memories. With this exercise we were able to see what the whole time period looked like from the p.o.v of the people who were really experiencing it. What I found to be most moving was the document I had to read, I belive it was number 28 that described the working conditions of children my age. They worked 12 hour workdays and rarely saw light except fro Sunday. My views were changed because I used to think that only certain people had it bad during this time but the documents that I reviewed helped me to see how widespread the trouble really was.
The only thing that I would have liked to have seen was statistics on the life expectancy and death rates of the workers, because although they alluded to how bad the working conditions were there was no description of deaths actually taking
The Industrial Revolution Primary Documents Exercise was a helpful and different way to increase understanding of the important changes during that time period. The documents and pictures gave us a closer look into the events that took place. By viewing photographs, and reading first hand accounts, the student has the ability to truly see the experiences of the people who were there.
Because I am a visual person, looking at pictures really helped my understanding. Rather than just reading what our text books and other second – hand accounts tell us, it is really helpful to have first hand accounts to refer to. Also, it helps to see all of the different sides of history. It gives us the ability to see opinions that were formed, and all of the people who were affected.
Because these documents mostly only showed the negative side of the Industrial Revolution, we only got to see and read about the bad effects. I found that there were a lot of unanswered question, I wanted to know some of the benefits, and I wanted to see who was benefiting. I wanted to see not just the working class, but also the people who were higher up in society, and how their families benefited.
I enjoyed this exercise because I find it easier to learn through photographs, and other visual components. Also, working in groups was good too, because it made things a little bit more interesting. In addition, we didn’t have to do all of the work ourselves, because at the end, all of the groups shared their findings.
This exercise that we have done in class can teach us a lot about history. First and foremost, it can give us a rare glimpse at the past seen through the eyes of people that were living it. It is easy to read facts from a textbook, but it's fascinating to see the reactions of contemporaries of the time period. Furthermore, textbooks generally tend to be very objective towards many events like wars and when a continent experiences a revolution of some sort. These primary sources give us emotions and reactions people had, varying from the business owners who were prospering to the working class who were suffering greatly. This exercise therefore greatly changed the way I view history because I didn't just read to memorize facts, but rather to comprehend the emotions of the people living at the era and thus trying to understand how they lived their life. My only unanswered questions are, during this time, how influential was the government and the Catholic church. Also, where was Eastern Europe in this industrialization movement?
This type of exercise is extremely different than learning from textbooks, and can teach us a variety of different things. It showed us how many aspects of a society are all interconnected and relate to one another. By using primary documents we learned more about the actual feelings of the people of the time period and their thoughts on life. Through this exercise we looked at many different points of view, which showed us how different classes viewed society. Another thing that this exercise allowed us to do was that it let us come up with our own interpretations of the documents and then compare our ideas with one another. This exercise teaches us that in the study of history there is not always a right and wrong answer. By viewing primary documents there is always room for interpretation.
This exercise did make me view history differently because slthough I learned about the hardships of the time period, I never actually completely grasped what had happened. Through looking at pictures and at actual people's accounts it helped me understand the time period more.
After doing this exercise I just wonder why the politicians allowed human lives to be completely disregarded. It's really hard to understand how these hardships existed among humans. It would also be interesting to find out more about the upper class during this time period and how they were effected by the Industrial Revolution.
The Primary purpose of this exercise was for us to examine and look at documents from the 1860s. By studying the pictures and first accounts of the 1860s we learn many things about the industrial revolution. We see the life and hardship of lower class workers and the workers stand point of the revolution
I have looked at the study aof history more differently. before this exercise i thought the study of history was mostly about reading and papers. From this Exercise i learned that history is not limited to papers or documents but also papers,pictures, interviews, and graphs. From these things we can also learn about history.
My Article was on the Fourier world of New Harmony. I thought it was really bizarre and i did not see how that fitted into the Industrial revolution. I see how Fourier wanted to improve efficiency of the factories but the ideas for New Harmony were just ridiculous.
This type of exercise can teach about history in more depth than a standard textbook. It shows history from all different viewpoints, opinions, and levels. While a book can give an event a step by step explanation, this type of exercise makes it possible to see the time period or event through the eyes of people living through it. People with both positive and negative reactions, those so influenced that they created artwork on it
This has helped me to look at history differently in the fact that I was able to really look into primary sources of the industrial revolution in a way I probably would not have otherwise. I was able to see the negative ways it influenced individuals, families, children, and morale. And at the same time I was able to see the positive ways it boosted the economy, production, and affected our world today as we know it. Through the activity it really helped to make history not so much as dates in a book, but personal notes of people that lived through it. Even most of the official documents were made in a way that affected the people, and which I was able to see through the other pieces that they wrote or reflected on through art how those documents were really lived.
One thing that really and truly shocked me was how poor the conditions were for children and how young they actually began to work. Some children as young as five years old could be seen working with equipment before some laws (although they probably weren’t well enforced) were put into place. These young kids really missed out on childhood. This has a lasting impression on me that I don’t know I would have received through anything other than this activity. The photos taken and endless reports on them were simply amazing.
The only thing that it really left out was a few of the facts. Based on opinions and views of people of the time, one can get a feel for what was going on, but not without bias. It would be crucial for someone to read a background to go along with this project. Between the two, I don’t have any questions on it. Together they greatly added to my understanding of the Industrial Revolution.
This exercise can help to teach you many things about history. The primary sources give a mix of both visual and text documents. These allow the user to get a better and more complete picture of that time, because it was it was for the most part with out bias. The primary source documents are a good change from the book text, which provides more of a simple factual view on the time period. In combination with the pictures of a particular time the reader gets to see the entire picture of the period, both what it was like from pictures and what from a written text such as journals, books, and other sources. They show a new and easier way to grasp the depiction of the period in time. The accounts of factory life were also very useful because they were told through different views depending on each document. After reading all the documents you had a pretty good picture of what most groups of people were doing at the time and how they were treated in society. It also gave a far more visual view. These documents were also first hand accounts and haven’t been changed by people writing them years later, looking back and intercepting these sources. These sources showed a view of a very hard life for the working class of Europe. Everyone who could work was forced to work a long ten to twelve hour work day six days a week, in order to pay for the cost of living. In addition these working conditions were often poor and unsafe, especially in the coal mines. Companies also employed children and treated them very inhumanely. Many of these children did not even receive a chance to get an education. These views were portrayed better than through our books. Rather than just reading what our text books tell us, it is really helpful to have first hand accounts to refer to.
Through this exercise, I have come to appreciate the study of history differently. I found that finding the real truth is much more difficult than it’s believed. This means that perhaps the parts of history that are taken as fact could actually be distorted from either incomplete information or biased interpretations. This is unstoppable in the study of history, but has given me a new insight into history. Interpretations of primary sources will eventually warp the fact, and that piece of history would be lost in that persons view. The continual study of primary sources allows for new analysis and interpretation, without losing the real and original significance of an event.
One of my questions I had that were unanswered was how did the wealthy factory owners live during this time? Did they live comfortably or did they struggle a bit as well. Also how was rural life at this time? The sources told primarily of suburban life but not that of rural. In addition what was the culture like?
This type of learning not only teaches students specific events and documents of history, it also stimulated the senses, and allowed the students to create a big picture from the many documents, like completing a jigsaw puzzle. This kind of exercise also exposes the students to more type of resources such as graphs, pictures, and observations, which differ greatly from our previous form of study; analyzing the analysis of history by Spievegel. This exercise additionally exposes the students to the type of work and analysis done by historians, whom did not have a textbook to learn from, and instead understood history by piecing documents such as these together, and coming to a valid theory on what happened, and why it happened.
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I have literally looked at history differently through this exercise. I was able to examine pictures, and graphs which were indeed at times more meaning full and exciting to examine than a handful of words. These pictures and stats related what words could never have told me, a sensual understanding of the age. By examining where they lived, how much they earned, their mudded and worn out faces, I can related personally and thus understand deeply how they lived, what they faced. This was a truly eye opening experience.
The only question that was unanswered happened to be the political spectrum of the age. I understood that this would spark reforms in the future; however, I do not recall any information on the internal politics in Britain during the revolution or any information on international politics during the industrial revolution. Has this spur in economic progress lead to increased dependency on each countries, and thus established unwavering alliances? Or has this economic competition sparked rivalries among enemy nations?
One thing that took me by shock was, however, the extensive canals and water transportation used in Britain. As it was discussed in class, there must have been miles upon miles of canal systems. How did this affect the ecosystem, and society? With all the waste being disposed into the water ways, could it not have lead to another diabolic plague outburst?
Over the past week we studied documents containing much information about the Industrial Revolution in England. The documents consisted of photos, graphs, articles, and poems and they each taught/represented some form of information about the revolution.
This type of exercise is a very good way of teaching because it is different from the traditional handouts and textbook form of learning. The documents were more hands on and we were able to use our imaginations more because we were given the chance to analyze the document before we were told what it was actually portraying. Concerning the study of history, this exercise can show how history can be more thoroughly understood if it is more hands on and up close with the person studying it.
This exercise has definitely caused me to look at history differently. I have realized that history can be interpreted rather than dictated and one can use his imagination to understand and make assumptions. Prior to this exercise I had thought that history was always fact and there was very little to know other than what you are taught and shown. Upon reflecting on the exercise I have realized that history is not always exactly what you’re taught. There is always more to learn.
Prior to the exercise and the readings, I had viewed the Industrial Revolution as any naïve, middle class child would. I thought of it as a time when many industries were created. I had no idea the extent to which people suffered through poor working conditions and poverty. I did not know that children worked in awful factories from sun up to sundown without even a decent pair of shoes on their feet.
Some of my questions left unanswered are “what were the rest of the documents like?” (because our class did not finish) and “how could people tolerate living that way without major uprisings?” I assume there were uprisings and I would like to look into this further.
Overall I believe the assignment was not only fun and relaxing, but also a great learning experience. I learned about using my imagination rather than knowing facts word for word. In the future I would like to do more activities like this because of their help in analytical thinking and because they are a nice break from lectures/discussions.
This type of exercise helps us to learn how to study history from the point of view of a historian. This exersise helped me to realize how hard it is for a historian to interpret documents, especially because I have previous knowledge on the topic, and they are the ones searching for the “previous knowledge” others can use. It also helps us to form our own opinions and interpretations of documents, particularly pictures, rather than being told what something means and being forced to memorize it. This was a new and different way for me to learn from history, by doing the interpreting and understanding on our own.
This project did not really change how I look at history, but it did give me a greater respect for historians who spend all their time doing this tedious task. This also gave history a new and different spin, as we needed to rely on other people within our group as well as other groups of people to understand the documents because we did not each get all of them.
One this I did not understand when project was completed was a question I had after we looked at the resources vs. population group graph. It was how the resources did continue to group as exponentially as the people. As humans I realize we do have the power to change our environment, but I did not realize that we could have such a great impact as to change the amount of resources available merely because the population grew so exponentially.
The exercise was very interesting and it gave a more detailed perspective of the industrial revolution. Examining primary source documents can really complete one’s knowledge of a certain aspect of history. Instead of reading someone else’s analysis of the time period, you can actually read documents, look at picture, and examine charts and graphs from that period and interpret history through your own thought process. Each picture or documents adds a small amount of knowledge which through the course of 50-60 documents gives you a pretty detailed picture of the past. Now with these smalls bits of history captured on paper or on film, you have to put together the puzzle of history. A picture or a document can be interpreted differently by every single person, yet each person’s analysis must be supported by these primary sources. What this shows me is that history is not an exact science, there is no one answers that is correct. As stated before, because history can be interpreted differently by different people the challenge lay in defending the theories and primary source documents are the most dependable evidence to support one’s theory. Though word of mouth and verbal stories have passed down much of history, documents and pictures are the most valid and acceptable form of the capturing of history. Without these items, much of history would have been lost.
Though this exercise was unique and interesting, it did not change my views on history. In 8th grade, my teacher had once told me to challenge the accepted theories on history using primary source documents. This exercise has only strengthened that claim and gave it substance. Primary source documents are the greatest weapon in a historian arsenal to paint the most accurate and unbiased portrait of history. The only unanswered question that remains is, with all this information regarding the ill treatment of the working-class and the struggles they encountered to reach acceptable treatment, do workers today realize the true history of how they have such a comfortable environment and how much blood, sweet, and toil was put into making it a possibility?
This primary document exercise teaches us that the study of history is a matter of opinion and interpretation. Facts may be facts, but a written account of an event or situation will always contain some amount of bias or slant on perspective. The best a comprehensive historian can do is collect a variety of such accounts from as many perspectives as possible and then come to a consensus as to how something actually was or existed.
Many of the primary documents we studied were written with the purpose of getting something accomplished or getting a message across. For example, a report on pollution and its effects, laws about child labor, or commentary on the status of women. Since these were written with a certain purpose in mind, the author could have chose to include or exclude any kind of details or perspective concerning the situation at hand. It can never be assumed that a document reflects a completely objective view on how something existed in history. The same of course is true for a photograph—the picture shows what the photographer wants to be shown.
Analysis of the primary documents adds another level to the subjectivity. Interpreting the evidence involves choosing what aspects to highlight or determining what is important about it. So having one person in modern times pick out what is important from what a person in a given time period thought was important may provide us with a limited picture. Basically two people can look at the same thing and have different thoughts. Therefore, the point of a variety and balance of perspectives comes up again. Many times history is not the solid reality of everything that occurred during a time period, but the details and events that people have deemed to be of importance.
I have known this to be true of history for a while, and this exercise reinforces my idea of it. I know that history is not all indisputable fact or unchanging reality. There are dates to be remembered and events of importance but the piecing together of opinions and interpretations provides us with an increased understanding of how the world was.
I have questions as to what the situation was like outside of England—was the rest of Europe and/or the industrialized world experiencing the same conditions or would it come for them later? Did this shift the focus of livelihood for the people from mainly rural and agricultural to urban and industrious? Do I have better things to do on Christmas Eve? :P
The primary source documents reviewed in class over the past few days provided an interesting technique to analyze history. This exercise showed us how to study history in a different manner. Being a student I have always studied and interpreted history through words / extensive readings, however viewing history through reading journals and unbiased material, I learned how to create a vivid picture of the topic studied in class which related to various aspects of the industrial revolution. One may have heard the famous proverb “a picture is worth a thousands words”, I believe that this exercise proved this proverb due to the examination of various photographs from the industrial revolution. This exercise provided a different learning experience to students studying European history. Exercises like these not only teach students events through historical documents, however allow students to stimulate their mind and visualize the bigger picture which the exercise is trying to get across. This exercise taught me European history through the use of a different technique, a technique which allowed me to understand and draw conclusions from primary source documents given to me. In addition I believe that this technique gave me a better understanding of historical events and allowed me to view the bigger picture that such historical documents are trying to get across towards historians as apposed to studying the interpretations of other historians through extensive readings. As far as questions being left unanswered I always pondered upon the reason why eastern Europe wasn’t studied during the industrial revolution and why was the focal point of this exercise centering on the impact the industrial revolution had on Great Britain when the course taken is supposed to focus on the entire continent of Europe and how it was impacted in various eras such as the industrial revolution.
Nick A said...
I thought this exercise was a fun and clever way to help us understand what life was truly like during the industrial revolution. Through the pictures of factories, charts, and reports such as the Chadwick report I feel that I have learned more through this type of exercise than I would if the assignment was to read a couple packets about it. It gives a visual to what we are learning which is always a good supplement to teaching a certain subject. If we were to do more things like this I think more people would understand what is really happening, and have found that learning is not always through reading information but having supplements such as pictures and then discussing them and getting everyone’s thoughts on what we thought each thing was trying to say.
I think I look at history the same way I have looked at it even after this exercise. I have always been interested in it and this has not changed my viewing of history for the worse at all and if anything it has made me even more interested in it.
I of course have some unanswered questions because like everyone else in my class because we didn’t finish discussing all the documents and pictures so I was left wondering what some of the documents meant.
Some additional comments would be that I hope you do some more exercises like this because it was a good learning experience
This type of exercise was much different than a usual history exercise. I usually expect lextures and textbooks, but documents from the period were acceptable too. They taught from a different perspective. The view was not that of a teacher trying to portray all sides but from a person living in or around the time that had their own opinion. They were records of thoughts and ideas.
This definetly made me look at history differently. It kind of hit home. The view of the children expecially from the mines made me look at the sitations present from the eyes of someone closer to my age rather than an over the hill history teacher. I would have much rather though had full documents.
I don't feel that any unanswered questions are left in my mind and I hope that we do some more exercises with first hand accout documents this year
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