Social Studies 30-1 · Toolkits
Reading a source
Both halves of the diploma hand you material you have never seen — a quotation, a cartoon, a photograph, a table of numbers — and ask what it is saying and from where. This is the procedure, one source type at a time.
Why source analysis is the whole course
Half the diploma is a written response to sources you have never seen, and the other half is sixty questions mostly built on sources too. You cannot revise the material, which sounds like bad news and is not: it means the exam is testing a procedure, and procedures can be practised.
What the procedure does is separate what a source says from what it assumes. A quotation, a cartoon and a graph all make an argument, and all three carry it in something other than the plain content — a loaded word, an exaggerated figure, a chosen baseline.
That is the skill worth having whether or not there is an exam at the end of it. Nearly everything you read about politics, economics or public health is a source with a position, arriving without a label.
Where it turns up
- Reading the news — which words were chosen, what was cropped out of the photograph, where the graph's axis starts.
- Advertising and campaigns — political ads are cartoons with production budgets, and they work the same way.
- Statistics in public life — unemployment, inflation and case numbers are all measured choices, and the choices are arguable.
- The exam — Assignment I is this skill, scored directly, and the task never changes between administrations.
- Why it matters
- 1. Five questions for any source
- 2. Written sources
- 3. Cartoons and images
- 4. Data and statistics
- 5. Writing the interpretation
Five questions for any source
The idea: the same five questions work on a speech, a cartoon or a graph, and they produce the sentences an interpretation is made of.
- What is it about? The topic, plainly.
- What position does it take on that topic? Supportive, critical, ambivalent.
- What in the source shows that? A phrase, a symbol, an emphasis, an omission.
- Which ideology or perspective does that place it in? Named, with the evidence attached.
- Who benefits if this view prevails, and who does not?
Answering only the first two produces a summary, which earns little. Question 3 is what turns it into interpretation.
Written sources
The idea: the argument is usually carried by a handful of loaded words, and they are findable.
- Mark the judging words. Handout and support describe the same payment; regulation and red tape the same rule.
- Notice what is assumed rather than argued — the premise a source expects you to accept without evidence is usually where its ideology lives.
- Watch for concession: of course and admittedly often set up the real claim.
- Check who is speaking, if you are told. A union leader, a minister and an economist are arguing from different places.
Worked
“Every rule we add to protect people from failure also removes a decision they were entitled to make.”
Topic: government regulation. Position: against it. Evidence: entitled to make frames the decision as a right, and protect people from failure makes protection sound condescending. Perspective: classical liberal — autonomy above security. Beneficiaries: those confident of their own choices, rather than those exposed to the consequences of a bad one.
Cartoons and images
The idea: a cartoon is an argument drawn instead of written, and every element in the frame is a word in it.
- Inventory: who and what is in the frame, and what is labelled.
- Decode the symbols: a sled for a burden, a ladder for opportunity, a fence for exclusion, Uncle Sam or a maple leaf for a country.
- Read the exaggeration. Whatever is drawn too large or too small is the point being made.
- Read the caption last, because it usually supplies the turn.
- State the claim in a sentence: this cartoon argues that…
For photographs, use the same logic with composition instead of symbols: what is central, what is cropped out, whether the camera looks up or down at the subject, and what the caption instructs you to see.
Data and statistics
The idea: numbers look neutral and are not. What was measured, over what period, and against what baseline are all choices.
- Read the axes and units before the shape of the line.
- Check the range of years. Starting a graph at a trough makes any recovery look dramatic.
- Percentages or totals? A rising share of a shrinking total is a different story.
- Ask what is not measured. Unemployment figures exclude people who stopped looking.
- Correlation is not cause, and a source implying otherwise has made an argument you can name.
Writing the interpretation
The idea: one sentence of claim, one of evidence, one of significance. Repeat for each source, then compare.
The pattern
Claim: Source I argues that…
Evidence: This is clear in the phrase… / in the image of…
Placement: This reflects [ideology], which holds that…
Significance: In this view, [who benefits / what follows].
For relationships: say whether the sources agree, disagree, or answer different parts of the same question — and then say how. Two sources can reach the same conclusion from opposite principles, and noticing that is worth more than sorting them into for and against.