Unit 2

Worldviews in Conflict

Targets
Skill Builders

Activity




Document: Reading/Study Guide Unit 2: Chapter 7, Lesson 2

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  1. Download the document, Reading/Study Guide Unit 2: Chapter 7, Lesson 2.
    Please save your work to a file on your desktop so you will have a copy to refer back to.

  2. Click on one of the links provided to download the document.


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  3. Read page 156 in your textbook.
      • Answer the following questions in your Reading/Study Guide.

        • What is the difference between primary and secondary sources?
        • When would you use these sources?
        • How can you evaluate primary sources?

  4. View the images on pages 160 and 161 of your textbook.
      • Answer the following questions in your Reading/Study Guide.

        • Are the images on these pages primary or secondary sources?
        • What can we learn from them?

  5. Think about the differences between information gained from primary and secondary sources as you work through Unit 2.
      • Answer the following question in your Reading/Study Guide.

        • Does one type of source give us more accurate information than the other does? Explain.

  6. When you are finished, proceed to the next page.

Many people believe that a primary source always supplies the best information about the past because it is recorded by someone who was actually there, but be aware that culture and worldview influence what we think is important to remember and retell. 

Two people with very different outlooks on life will talk or write about the same situation in very different ways.

Compare the following two accounts of Cortez’s conquest.


© Public Domain
We are engaging in a just and good war which will bring us fame. Almighty God, in whose name and faith it will be waged, will give us victory. Here I offer you great rewards although they will be wrapped about with great hardships. And if you do not abandon me, as I shall not abandon you, I shall make you in a very short time the richest of all men who have crossed the seas and of all the armies that have here made war. You are few, I see, but such is your spirit that no effort or force of Indians will prevail against you. For we have seen by experience how God has favoured the Spanish nation in the Americas and how we have never lacked courage or strength, and never shall.

- Speech made by Cortez to his men recalled years later by Cortez in a conversation

- excerpted from the website The Cave Online

© Public Domain
One time the Indians came to meet us and received us with food and good cheer! Instead, the devil, which had put himself in the Spaniards, put them all to the edge of the sword in my presence, without any cause whatsoever, more than three thousand souls. I saw there such great cruelties that never any man living either have or shall see the like. In three or four months (myself being present) there died more than six thousand children, which the Spanish had sent into the Gold mines.

- This account is from Bartolome de Las Casas.  He was a missionary and conquistador.

- excerpted from the website openendedsocialstudies.org

Remember that our beliefs, values, and worldview make us see things differently, and influence what we think is important.