I will now examine the provenance of Source B. Provenance means who either who wrote the source and where it originated from. I believe that Source B was used as propaganda for the government to help persuade people that evacuation was a positive thing. Many parents were extremely worried about sending their children away to a place where they did not know, and to people that they had never met or spoke to. The government had to try and persuade the parents to evacuate their children and they thought that by showing a picture of children looking happy about being evacuated, the parents would come round to thinking that evacuation was a positive thing. This use of propaganda makes Source B a very unreliable source because it is trying to show the parents of the children who were about to be evacuated that evacuation was a positive action. This means that Source B is biased and that will also be taken into account when I reach a conclusion about which source is most useful. Therefore Source B is useful to see how the government encouraged parents to evacuate their children by using the start of the children’s evacuation journey. However due to the Sources provenance it would not be useful as an accurate portrayal of the children’s emotions during this period of time.
Next I will examine the audience, which means who the source was, or is aimed at. The producers motive was to try and make the parents of the prospective evacuees see that evacuation was positive rather than negative. Therefore, Source B is aimed at the parents of children who were trying to be evacuated. This is once again unreliable because it is biased, as it is an obvious use of propaganda, this will once again be taken into account when I decide which source is useful.
Next I will describe the tone of Source B. The tone of a source means how it is presented, so it could be positive, negative or even humorous. Source B is a positive source because it shows the children smiling and waving to the camera. This is used to try and change the opinions of the parents who were about to send there children away to be evacuated. The tone of the source is unreliable because it’s tried to make out that evacuation is a positive thing and that the children were happy about it. I know from my own knowledge that this was not the case because evacuation was a very stressful and unhappy time for most children and parents. Therefore, this Source is not very useful because it is biased and unreliable.
I will now examine the provenance, audience, content and tone of Source C. This will then help me reach a conclusion about which source is more useful as evidence about the start of the children’s evacuation journey.
Firstly I will talk about the content of Source C. Source C is the start of an interview with a teacher in 1988. It tells us that evacuation was a very frightening experience. The teacher is quoted as saying, ‘All you could hear was the feet of the children and a kind of murmur, because the children were too afraid to talk.’ This source backs up my own knowledge because I know that most children were to terrified to even talk because they were going somewhere where they did not know and they were going without their parents. It also contradicts what Source B says which will help me find a conclusion about whether Source B or Source C is more useful.
Next I will examine Source C’s provenance. Source C is an eyewitness account from a teacher which means they would be unbiased and they were actually at the event so that would mean they saw what happened and they would know how the children felt. The source explains how the children were terrified of even talking, this therefore backs up my own knowledge. This means that Source C is an accurate interpretation of the children’s evacuation journey. However, because the interview occurred along time after the event, the teachers memories could have been changed or influenced over time due to forgotten facts or opinions of other people which could make it either inaccurate or biased. However, because it backs up my own knowledge I would deem at it as being reliable and therefore useful for someone wanting to know about evacuation during the Second World War.
I will now examine the audience. The source is an interview with a teacher in 1988. As it was produced quite a while after the event, there would be no ulterior motive and therefore this would make it unbiased and therefore useful. The motive of the teacher is to tell the general public about evacuation. As he or she was with the children at the time of the event, it is an eyewitness account and therefore reliable. Source C also backs up my own knowledge which also makes it reliable. Therefore because of those things, this Source is extremely useful.
Lastly I will examine the tone of the source. The source is has a negative tone because it is saying that the children were frightened, so obviously it has no sense of humour either. The tone of this source is useful because it has the same sort of feeling as evacuation itself. I know from my own knowledge that evacuation was an extremely unhappy event for the children because they were leaving the comfort of their parents to go to a strange place, as well as the children’ s parents. This source therefore is extremely useful because it matches the tone of the event.
I believe that both sources are not truly reliable Source B was used as propaganda and the other was a memory of an event that happened over fifty years ago. However I believe that Source C is the more useful of the two because it is an eye witness account of the start of the children’s evacuation journey. Source B is not very useful at all because it is propaganda used by the government to make evacuation seem more appealing when it was actually a very upsetting experience for most children. Source C tells the story of evacuation according to my own knowledge, so therefore it is an accurate interpretation of evacuation because it supports my own knowledge.
To reach this conclusion I examined the provenance, audience, content and tone of the two sources. Overall, Source C was the most useful because it backed up my own knowledge, wheras Source B contradicted it. Source C was an interview with a school teacher. It was an eyewitness account of the start of the children’s evacuation journey. It said how evacuation was a terrifying experience for the children which again backs up my own knowledge. However an interview with someone fifty years after the event is not always useful because memories can be changed, usually to how people want to remember something. Therefore fifty years is along time to change your mind, forget, over exaggerate or be influenced by something or someone, or by things that happened after the event.
Source B was a photograph showing the start of the children’s evacuation journey. It showed the children waving and smiling which contradicted my own knowledge and the other source. Source B is an example of propaganda and it was used to show evacuation in a good light, therefore it is biased.
After examining each source carefully, I have come to the conclusion that Source C is more useful than Source B because it backs up my own knowledge and it seems to be reliable and unbiased.
Rory Barham