"Cornwallis and the Winter Campaign..." Topic

Your inference was quite clear, as was your error in 'observation.' Perhaps you could actually contribute to the historical discussions on the forum instead of making disingenuous 'observations' which are nothing more than personal comments?

Your inference was quite clear, as was your error in 'observation.' Perhaps you could actually contribute to the historical discussions on the forum instead of making disingenuous 'observations' which are nothing more than personal comments?

That, of course, is a matter of opinion; as are my observations on your comments and on the logical fallacies I detect in your debating style. By 'personal,' I am not sure what you mean. My comments of course would not apply to any one else. If you mean you detect a note of criticism, well, that is the rough and tumble of historical debate in which, on occasion, you also engage with your own brand of catechism.

Ideally a secondary source should be ENTIRELY based on primary material. There are exceptions. I mentioned one in an earlier post. When studying the Virginia militia system I drew on Ward and Boatner and so forth for the broader context. But the new stuff was necessarily based on primary sources.

A critical essay might consider multiple secondary works on the same subject, critiquing and comparing/contrasting. In that case the secondary works would in effect BE the primary sources for the critical essay.

And the very finest works of history, in my experience, are short distillations of everything really important about a subject, done by someone who has written LONG and detailed works previously. A short book is far harder to write than a long one. VD Hanson's WARS OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS is an example. He doesn't give long citations because he's already done that in his previous works

Boorstin's LOST WORLD OF THOMAS JEFFERSON is another example. We have thousand page tomes on TJ; here someone who has read EVERYTHING boils it down to essentials.

Then why do you use and reference Wikipedia as it is a tertiary source?

Convenience, and I have found it reliable multiple times on topics of which I already have expert knowledge. As I have said, it is NOT reliable for topics that are currently in dispute. I have found that students -- high school and college -- can understand that caveat when it is explained to them.

My students were not allowed to use it for their term papers or anything else that they wrote for class.

There are too many mistakes, too many authors, and low historical standards.

We just teach differently then. It DOES require judgement to use Wiki effectively. You have to pay attention to how recently it was changed, for example. But an article that has been there for a year without anyone fiddling with it is likely to be the consensus of what people who care about the topic think. I think the way to develop responsibility in students is to let them make mistakes and show them how to correct them -- which no doubt you do, as well, in other parts of a course. Really, teaching is an art and we all practice it differently, and should.

Using Wikipedia to teach and/or to do research is not a good historical practice and it teaches the students an easy, inaccurate road.

I have no doubt that you and I teach differently. But using Wikipedia, and recommending it be used, is encouraging students to use a suspect 'source.'

Ideally a secondary source should be ENTIRELY based on primary material.

That is opinion and not fact. Good secondary sources use primary material liberally, but that is not a requirement and using a sweeping statement on any historical subject usually, if not most of the time, inaccurate.

"using a sweeping statement on any historical subject usually, if not most of the time, inaccurate."

- which might, of course, be seen, by some at least, as a statement as sweeping as the views from Mount Olympus.

And…?

42fllanker, yes, "What I am most proud of is my humility."

Kevin, didn't you just make a sweeping statement about sweeping statements?

The purpose of secondary works -- which are necessary and even essential -- is to put into useful order and interpret and synthesize primary sources that may well be contradictory, incomplete, and/or hard to understand. A reader who is not expert, not knowledgeable of all the OTHER relevant primary sources, will not understand the primary sources without good secondary assistance. However, a secondary account cut loose from the primary data is really just opinion. it is called "primary" for a reason.

A secondary account 'cut loose' from the primary data is not a secondary account-it is a tertiary one, such as an encyclopedia.