PGCE Historians Marie Bennett and Ethan Dent report on a recent session with Andrew Payne from the National Archives
I think I always understood the immense value of archives for historians and record keeping, but had never much considered the use of them in the classroom. We are told as History teachers to integrate sources frequently into our lessons and we do, but often this takes the form of WW1 propaganda or PowerPoint slides with sources embedded within; I’m as guilty of this as anyone! Maybe we use an ‘original’ map or newspaper piece and think that is good enough, but in reality, we probably just ‘mined’ it from the internet with pretty poor definition and little thought about finding a better alternative. We seem to shy away from archives, deeming the original documents to be illegible or in poor condition, assuming that students might struggle with challenging primary source material.
Andrew Payne of the National Archives made us directly challenge this by providing us with a document written entirely in German. Impossible to use with KS3 Historians, right? Wrong. Through collaboration and progressively more focused analysis and hypothesising, what initially appeared as a German document created on a typewriter revealed itself to be a British intelligence record of intercepted messages from Nazi Germany, detailing the deportation of Jews into Polish concentration camps during the Holocaust. This we were able to do, knowing not a scrap of German. We relished the opportunity to engage with original source material and attempt to work out what it was and what it meant. We became detectives trying to find clues to gain meaning and context, not focusing solely on the ‘content’ as we are so prone to doing. This exercise highlighted the immense value of archives and original documents in the development of historical thinking and investigative skills, but also the joy of learning history and uncovering ‘hidden’ histories and alternate interpretations that conflict with the ‘dominant narrative’.
Andrew closed the session with a statement that really resonated with us all: “History is a verb, not a noun”. It is an active investigation of past events but remains about the present and the future. This struck a chord with me, so much so that I wrote it down on a post-it note and stuck it to my desk. History is something that we should be doing, and I intend to encourage more ‘doing’ in future lessons. Archives hold a wealth of knowledge and fascination to be explored, and we, both teachers and students alike, should be engaging with it at every opportunity. I can’t recommend working with the National Archives more strongly; there were so many great ‘takeaways’ from the session and we’ve now added to our course ‘source bank’ with a range of diverse and unique sources that will form the basis of future enquiry planning.
University of Manchester History PGCE 