Teach & case
Help a near-peer reason through the idea — when you explain it, you understand it best — then read the real decision it comes from.
Help Bartholomew weigh the source
In a minute you'll be the teacher. Get ready to teach Bartholomew: judging a source’s reliability by HIPP + the question.
A primary source is evidence, not automatic truth. Ask who made it, why, and for whom (HIPP) — and what your question needs.
What you've shown you can teach
A case · you decide
Bartholomew and the pamphlet that praised the factory
Bartholomew — a student historian researching what working conditions were really like in a 1800s factory town
Bartholomew's research question: what were conditions like for workers in the mill? Bartholomew finds a glowing primary-source pamphlet from the era describing clean workrooms and happy employees, and figures: "It's a primary source, written at the time — so it's reliable evidence for what conditions were like." Is that a safe conclusion?
"Primary" means firsthand, not "true." Before trusting it, run HIPP: the historical Context it was made in, its Intended audience, its Purpose, and the author's Point of view. Those decide what the source can and can't be trusted for.
This pamphlet was written by the mill OWNER to attract investors and customers. Its purpose (promotion) and point of view (the person with a stake) make it unreliable for "what conditions were like for workers" — but it's excellent evidence for a DIFFERENT question: "how did the owner want the public to see the mill?"
Bartholomew wants to cite the pamphlet as proof conditions were good, "because it's a primary source from the time." Sound?
Once Bartholomew learns the owner wrote it to lure investors, should Bartholomew throw the pamphlet out as useless?
Bartholomew's method is two questions before any citation: what does HIPP say about this source, and reliable for WHAT question? "It's a primary source" is never the end of the analysis — it's the beginning.
When two ideas meet: 2 cases with two people
A case · you decide
Bartholomew and Cosimo: three sources, three numbers
Bartholomew & Cosimo — a student who asks who wrote each source and why, and a friend who compares sources against each other
How many people marched in the 1912 mill strike? An organiser's diary says 10,000. A newspaper friendly to the mill owners says 2,000. A police report says about 3,000.
Bartholomew notes the organiser wanted the march to look huge, and the paper wanted it to look small.
Cosimo notes the police report and the paper both land in the low thousands, and they had no reason to agree with each other.
What is the best-supported claim?
Bartholomew weighed each author. Cosimo weighed them against each other.
A case · you decide
Percival and Morwenna: why the mill closed
Percival & Morwenna — a student who looks for several causes, and a friend who looks at what changed slowly and what stayed
The town's mill closed in 1958. The local story says it closed because of one bad winter.
Morwenna finds that orders had been falling for twenty years as cheaper cloth arrived from elsewhere.
Percival finds that the machines were never replaced after the war, and that the bad winter delayed deliveries for three months.
How should the essay explain the closure?
Morwenna saw the slow change. Percival fitted the sudden one on top of it.