Abstract
How should pupils use the internet to learn? This essay sets up two modes of using online sources, reading for information and reading for evidence, and evaluates their value for schools. The former is well known; pupils decide whether the source is telling the truth or not. The latter is more familiar in advanced historical investigation, namely deciding what this source’s utterance means for the question in hand. One of these simply hands pupils information. The other requires them to understand what they are reading. It is argued that an education that only involves one of these cultivates passive pupils who are unable to adjust their own attention or listen to minority reports in science. Only when pupils also investigate primary sources will they experience developing their own knowledge, and believe in education.
Highlights
In recent years a small cottage industry has emerged amongst educationalists, journalists and politicians eager to teach children how to read the internet critically
I engage in a kind of Socratic reverse snowball research, holding firm to my belief that original thought is another word for insufficient reading: I looked for people likely to refute my claim that primary source criticism is absent from all education
If 75% of pupils can be persuaded to break the law on account of this impression, everyone is hearing it
Summary
In recent years a small cottage industry has emerged amongst educationalists, journalists and politicians eager to teach children how to read the internet critically. Differing grammars of source criticism imply that pupils learning to read for evidence need to be skilled in using logical functions such as ‘all’; ‘at least one’; and ‘only’, as well as subjectspecific skills, in this case exemplified by the interpretation of religious artefacts online. Each time I found an intelligent teacher or librarian keen to the problems of source criticism and navigating digital information, I ask them where they would look for a diverse toolkit suited to pupil investigation.
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