Chris Beneke
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| Guided tour at Lowell National Park. Photo courtesy of www.nps.gov/lowe |
If the experiences of my kids are at all representative, the
glum accounts you’ve heard or read about elementary and secondary
education in the U.S. have some basis in fact. Public school students
move in virtual lock-step with their classmates, get a meager fifteen
minutes for recess, and take tests with unsettling
regularity. Meanwhile, their hardworking teachers and principals must
manage both rigid curriculum standards and large classes.
In light of these
oft-repeated concerns, my perspective brightened last week while
chaperoning my son’s fourth-grade class trip to the
Lowell National Park,
the splendid and well-preserved site of the famous textile mills where
America’s industrial revolution took off in the 1830s and 1840s. I
didn’t come away feeling like a
Finnish parent probably feels after accompanying his or her child on
a field trip. Still, the experience left me much more optimistic about
the trajectory of early history education: the kids arrived
well-prepared and the museum’s activities were engaging,
hands-on, well-paced, and occasionally revelatory.
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