Primary sources are way above the level of most college mathematics students, much less high school or younger students. Almost anything written in the last 50 years requires very advanced mathematical ideas, while anything written before that uses outdated notation which is very difficult to understand. Moreover, the primary sources for common ideas are often spread out over huge periods of refinements - going from a small idea to a general notion over the course of years, perhaps involving dozens of papers by multiple authors. One notable exception to this: Euler's papers. These might be readable by some students, yet when I see them presented in college courses, they are often presented by a secondary source for clarification.
The other thing I don't agree with is your use of the word "interpret." I don't think that it is common to find a mathematician who believes that mathematics is open to interpretation.
Lastly, original research in mathematics is hard. It's not the interpretation of previous ideas (although it is occasionally relating concepts previously thought to be unrelated - some consider this the most important type of mathematical result, but it is much harder to do than you might think), but the formulation of new ideas. Even to know if an idea is new requires a great deal of mathematical training.
Perhaps I'm wrong about this, but I think that for young mathematics students your ideas are unfeasible. Remember that the original sources for a lot of basic mathematics are hundreds of years old. Even Euler's famous writings on geometry (the exception that I said might be workable) were largely a rewriting of previous ideas into a coherent whole - basically a textbook - and could not really be considered an original source.
Edit: my apologies, I misunderstood. I did not realize that we were talking about teaching history, in which case I defer to someone of greater experience.
Primary sources are way above the level of most college mathematics students, much less high school or younger students. Almost anything written in the last 50 years requires very advanced mathematical ideas, while anything written before that uses outdated notation which is very difficult to understand. Moreover, the primary sources for common ideas are often spread out over huge periods of refinements - going from a small idea to a general notion over the course of years, perhaps involving dozens of papers by multiple authors. One notable exception to this: Euler's papers. These might be readable by some students, yet when I see them presented in college courses, they are often presented by a secondary source for clarification.
The other thing I don't agree with is your use of the word "interpret." I don't think that it is common to find a mathematician who believes that mathematics is open to interpretation.
Lastly, original research in mathematics is hard. It's not the interpretation of previous ideas (although it is occasionally relating concepts previously thought to be unrelated - some consider this the most important type of mathematical result, but it is much harder to do than you might think), but the formulation of new ideas. Even to know if an idea is new requires a great deal of mathematical training.
Perhaps I'm wrong about this, but I think that for young mathematics students your ideas are unfeasible. Remember that the original sources for a lot of basic mathematics are hundreds of years old. Even Euler's famous writings on geometry (the exception that I said might be workable) were largely a rewriting of previous ideas into a coherent whole - basically a textbook - and could not really be considered an original source.
Edit: my apologies, I misunderstood. I did not realize that we were talking about teaching history, in which case I defer to someone of greater experience.