Sources of History

Using (Very) Short Primary Source Excerpts

Posted on 01 October 2009

I love these days when you set up a discussion topic and it just works – the students are engaged in the topic, using previous knowledge and discussing and debating big ideas with their peers.

The lesson that I did today with my U.S. history class was on Federalist #10.  I love using primary source documents, so I knew that I wanted to work with the original text, but I wasn’t sure which part.  I ended up using a technique today that I hadn’t tried before.  I had the students work with only a two-sentence excerpt from Federalist #10.

I wanted to discuss the issues surrounding factions in American society and this piece is the perfect discussion point.  However, it is also a complicated text.  Originally, I had tried to make a excerpted version of the text and was very unhappy with my drafts.  Finally, I settled on just using Madison’s introductory statements:

Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice.

In groups, I had the students respond to the following questions:

1. What does Madison mean by the term “faction”?
2. In this piece Madison, as a Federalist, is arguing that the Constitution should be ratified.  He believes that it would serve as a “safeguard against faction.”  What does he mean by this phrase?  How could the system detailed in Constitution “safeguard against faction”?
3. Madison wants the government to limit the power of factions.  Why?  What problems could strong factions cause in our system of government?
4. What could be an advantage of having factions?  Why do people form factions in the first place?
5. Can you think of any examples of factions in modern society?
6. Imagine Madison has time traveled to today to examine modern day American politics.  Do you think that he would like what he sees?  Why or why not?

We had a wonderful discussion around the presence of factions in American society, the strengths and weaknesses of our governmental system and imaginary responses from Madison.  Not only did this lesson allow students to discuss a new topic (factions), but we also reviewed previous lessons (structure of the U.S. government in the Constitution and the Federalist/Anti-Federalist debates) and connected this issue to modern events.  As a result, the students walked away with a better understanding of the concept of factions and the ability to discuss it in both a historical and a modern context.

It was a perfect example of how a couple of sentences can spur an engaging discussion.  Using a primary source does not always mean you need to use an entire document.  Today’s class reminded me that an in depth discussion about a concept introduced by a few words can be much more meaningful than a rushed conversation around an extensive document.  As a bonus, I also noticed that some of my students who tend to get overwhelmed by long primary source pieces and thus do not participate in the class discussion felt more comfortable with this shorter more manageable selection and shared their ideas.