One of the mainstays of history survey courses are collections of primary source excerpts that profs assign to supplement the textbook. The excerpts are invariably short, since the only practical way to expose students to a wide array of important primary documents is to cut them up into tiny little bits.
I’ve secretly wondered much students really benefit by reading these little snippets. When it comes to shorter works like the Declaration of Independence, the excerpt system works pretty well. But some longer sources don’t take to dismemberment. How much insight can you really get from a few out-of-context paragraphs of Ben Franklin’s autobiography or the Lincoln-Douglas debates? It’s like driving a golf cart through an art gallery at top speed while trying to catch glimpses of the paintings along the way. You can assign longer selections of fewer works, of course, but that’s a trade-off.
That’s the thing about teaching a survey course. It’s all about trade-offs.
Past in the Present 