A History Trip

Our History Club went on an awesome field trip.  Thanks to the generosity of Bridget's aunt and uncle, we were able to go down to Easton and stay in their guest house  They have a hobby farm with sheep and chickens that looks out onto the St.James River.  It is a beautiful place!  It also happens to be close to many cool museums and exhibits on the Underground Railroad in Maryland.  So we had a big pajama party while we watched a movie that follows the paths of four runaway slaves and their attempts to make it to Canada and escape slave catchers.

The next day we went to the Dorchester County Visitor Center.  They have a very nice Underground Railroad exhibit with hands-on things for the kids to touch and handle.  We also went to the Harriet Tubman museum in Cambridge.  There the kids got to see lots of pictures and read quotes from Tubman herself.  We also watched a short movie that told about Harriet Tubman's life and the Underground Railroad in general.  It was well done and kept the kids attention.  I think mostly they are just in awe of a world in which people had to go through such torture and deprivation, and for whom the desire for freedom was such that they would risk horrible deaths to seek a place to be free.  

I know it amazes my girls that in our country, right where we live, only 150 odd years ago, that was normal. I'm glad this in inconceivable to them, and I'm glad that they are interested in learning about it.  As the quote attributed to George Santayana says, "Those who do not remember history, are doomed to repeat it."  Here's my soapbox - That is why a liberal arts education is so important.  Yes we need scientists and mathematicians and programmers.  But we also need those professionals to be competent citizens, who understand the context of our history and how it is intrinsically linked to the history of others.  If we don't know the context that created our present circumstance, how can be make informed decisions in the moments we live?

Ok, back to the History trip - 

We gave the kiddos a treat and ate out at a semi-fancy restaurant in Cambridge.  I suppose no restaurant that has ketchup on the tables and crayons for the kids is really fancy, but it was pretty fancy for a bunch of kids on a school trip.  

On the way back we stopped at Adkins Arboretum in Ridgely, MD.  They have several different kinds of audio tours there, but we went for the Underground Railroad tour.  It was a 2 mile or so hike with numbered signs every so often.  We all would stop and listen to the number we got to.  It was really well done.  There were good sound effects and voice actors reading first-hand accounts of runaway slaves.  At each stop it described some kind of situation or obstacle that a runaway slave may have faced.  It was really awesome to see the kids so engrossed in it.  It really brought the stories to life for them to be out in the forest looking at a Cyprus tree or a creek bank, listening to what a slave may have done or said in a place just like where we were.  The kids didn't want to stop listening!  At the end they were choosing random numbers from other tours just to listen to the stories.  

I would love to go back to Adkins and do the other tours.  They have a lot of very cool-sounding programs held there as well.  All in all, it was a wonderful field trip.  I think the kids will remember this trip and many of the things that we all learned about the Underground Railroad - and that's what learning should be like!  Yay History!