Using newspaper archives in school history

Although they can seem dull, long and devoid of images, newspapers often contain high quality pieces from some of the world’s greatest writers (and historians). Introducing pupils to quality writing from the broadsheet newspapers, and getting pupils to read some of these articles can be an important step in moving from the ‘bite-size’ and ‘picture’ mentality which prevails in many text books, to being able to sustain concentration and persevere with longer and more challenging sections of extended writing. If they are going to go on to university, which some of them will, they need to get into the idea of reading extended text which has no pictures in it. (In fact, shouldn’t we be trying to get all our pupils into extended reading?)

 Whenever anything historically controversial happens (introduction of Holocaust Commemoration day, debates about ‘Britishness’ and ‘The Empire, statues arguments, our relations with Europe etc.), it   is easy to get a range of newspaper opinion on the controversy, invoking historical perspectives, and sometimes calling on professional historians, to discuss the issue in question. This can often include what I have sometimes termed ‘bad history’ (see Haydn, 2021 for an explanation of this phrase). As I have argued elsewhere (Haydn, 2017), given that we are not able to shield pupils from the ‘bad history’ that is out there on social media, TV and newspapers, it is important to educate them about the differences between good and bad history, and to discern between the two. 

The weekend ‘Review’ sections of the broadsheet newspapers are a very useful source of short (generally one page) reviews of newly published history books. This is a very helpful and time effective way of keeping up to date with historical scholarship (as with popular history magazines such as History Today and BBC History Magazine). The Times, Sunday Times, Telegraph, Independent and Observer all have regular reviews of new books by the world’s leading historians. 

You can get to most British newspapers by just typing their name into an ordinary internet search. Many sites now have a quite sophisticated archiving system so that you can get articles published over the past few years. Some also provide animations, special reports, cartoons etc.

Some examples (tabloid press also have sites, some better than others, can be particularly good for headlines and sensational stories- ‘London bus found on the moon’ etc. You can use the snipping tool (see chapter on ICT) to capture sensationalist and controversial headlines, images and comments to insert into a PowerPoint presentation.

It is, of course, a pity that digital access to The Times, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, The Independent and others is now subject to subscription, and my worry is that if Murdoch can make this pay, other newspapers will follow suit, but until then, online newspaper  and online magazine archives (The Slate, Politico etc) are a useful source of high quality resources for history teachers. Twitter history feeds now often contain screenshots of particular extracts from new and older history texts. The examples I have provided (see below) have a preponderance of articles from publications which are open access, as I am not sure how helpful if is linking to articles that are behind paywalls, but I should stress that all broadsheet newspapers have high quality reviews. Also, it can be helpful to look across the newspapers when you get the chance, as the choice of reviewers can be influenced by the political position of the newspapers. Sometimes, ‘right leaning’ newspapers will go for more ‘right leaning’ historians’ and those on the more liberal-left leaning newspapers’ invite ‘liberal-left leaning historians’ to review new titles. 

The following examples give some ideas about the sort of materials which can be accessed by these sites. Many of the articles are long and dense, and may not be appropriate for younger or low ability pupils, but they can be used in a variety of ways:

1. The teacher can simply talk the pupils through the article, explaining it and referring to key points. They can be simply summarised in class, and left for any pupils who may be interested in reading the full article.
2. Articles can serve as extension work for more able pupils. Reviews of new history books from the weekend issues of broadsheet newspapers are particularly helpful for A level pupils.
3. Articles can be used to be read for homework, simply giving pupils the URL (or you can access and print the article and give pupils copies if you prefer). I have always thought that it can be difficult to set consistently worthwhile and engaging homeworks, and having a supply of URLs for high quality newspaper articles about history/current affairs can be a way of avoiding dull, off-putting low-value homeworks.
4. Pairs of pupils can be asked to precis different articles and feedback to the rest of the class.
5. They can simply be helpful for developing your subject knowledge of a topic, to improve the quality and depth of your exposition on the topic. Reviews from the weekend sections of the broadsheet newspapers are particularly helpful in this respect. There are not enough hours in the day for you to read every new history book that is written, but a high quality review of new books can often give you ‘the gist’ of a new book in a matter of minutes. You will find that a lot of the articles come from The Guardian.  Many other newspaper archives are equally good sources of pertinent articles but some of them are behind paywalls. Political and current affairs journals and periodicals are also a good source of high quality journalism about history.
6. Some articles can be good for teaching ‘interpretations’: for instance, different historians’ views on particular events (see below), or different reviews of the same book for A level students.
7. The teacher can ‘subcontract’ going through an article to the class with several groups of pupils being asked to read and then summarise the bit of the article that they have been asked to address and feedback to the class as a whole.

References:

Haydn, T. (2017) ‘Truth in history education’, in I. Davies (Ed.) Debates in history teaching, London, Routledge: 169-79.

Some articles are simply ‘updates’ on historical issues or problems, some are polemics, revisionist views on historical controversies, or reviews of new history books from the broadsheet press. Newspaper sites are particularly helpful for getting hold of a range of resources on things like 9/11, debates on British Identity, The Holocaust, ‘Great Britons’ and the place of history in society.

Some newspaper articles about Empire