Keletas įžvalgų dėl istorijos dokumentų pateikimo istorijos vadovėliuose

Abstract

However, the author notices that historical documents are not always presented thoroughly. In some textbooks any source is presented as a historical document; some documents lack references to the authors; sometimes tasks for the analysis of documents are too fragmentary or the answer cannot be inferred from a presented document. Still in some other cases the task itself contains the summary of a document or it (the task) is not clearly formulated. It is advisable that the authors of history textbooks avoided such shortcomings. The article states that in the process of teaching history at secondary schools various types of history sources are employed. International teaching practice proves that in the upper forms the primary historical sources, i.e. documents, should be more widely used. Primary documents allow pupils to better understand the spirit of a concrete historical period, to investigate the past independently and to interpret it with the help of chosen arguments. This way a specific character of a historian’s work is perceived. The conducted research allows the author to assert that history textbooks contain historical documents; however, their number significantly differs in the textbooks by different publishing houses. Three 10 th form textbooks contain from 36 to 75 documents or their fragments; this makes from 9,6 % to 16,3 % out of all sources presented in history textbooks. Three 12 th form textbooks contain from 10 to 80 historical documents; this makes 13,5 % – 14,5 % out of all sources. As far as illustrations are concerned, photographs predominate: in the 10 th form textbooks their number is from 181 to 452 (this makes 45 % – 48,3 % out of all sources) while 12 th form textbooks contain from 22 to 157 (26,5 % – 31,8 % out of all sources). All in all, most of the 20 th century textbooks contain documents, relevant to this particular period.