The Methods of Internal Criticism of Written Sources in the Works of Ukrainian Historians: On the Example of Scientific Narratives of the History of Education (1840s-1930s)
The Methods of Internal Criticism of Written Sources in the Works of Ukrainian Historians: On the Example of Scientific Narratives of the History of Education (1840s-1930s)

Summary/Abstract: The article presents the results of the study of the methodology of internal critique of written sources used by Ukrainian historians in the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century who worked on the history of education. The authors state that in Ukrainian historical science there is no synthesised study of the methodology of internal critique of written sources that was used by the researchers of the history of education.It is investigated that during the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, Ukrainian scholars gradually improved the internal critique of the sources. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Ukrainian historians had mostly used documents rather uncritically, “extracting” from them information about the past without proper verification. It was often made without regard to the author’s position of the source, the explanatory and rhetorical layer of the document. But since the 1850s, the understanding of the need to delve into the text of the source and comprehend the position of the author of the historical document has been established in Ukrainian historical science critically.It was found that Ukrainian historians of education barely applied internal criticism to the so-called “official” sources on the history of education (legislation, statutes of educational institutions, reporting documentation of educational authorities, minutes of meetings of pedagogical or academic councils, etc.). These documents were not in doubt, especially if they concerned the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. On the other hand, Ukrainian scholars have shown the ability to prove the authenticity of the evidence of a written historical document both by analysing only its content and by comparing the content of this source with other sources. The article proves that in the second half of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, Ukrainian historians most often used the following procedures among the methods of internal criticism of the written source to determine the authenticity of a historical document: by indicating the specifics of the document; by analysing the author’s ability to reflect reality adequately; by analysing the motives of the author by confirming the information from one source related to the previous location, chronologically, thematically and ideologically; and through the use of logical and epistemological procedures.

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