Another great venue for teaching students American history are graveyards. We have so many here in North Carolina and the history there is rich!
Things you can discuss: the move from church yard grave sites to rural grave sites. Why did this happen? This history touches on industrialization, the Enlightenment and ideas of church authority, as well as the development of medicine as a field that impacts public policy. In addition different religious traditions conceive of the afterlife in different ways, and these are all reflected in tombstones and funerary iconography.
Interesting stuff! And, free and local.
Best books that discuss American history and death and funeral rituals: "The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death" by Professor Gary Laderman. "Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America" by Professor Stephen Prothero. Each offers an insight into traditional American history through funerary observances.
See you soon!
5 comments:
Cemeteries are a unique teaching resource, every one is a kind of open-air museum of a community's history and beliefs.
For some ideas on how to teach with historic cemeteries see CSI: Cemetery Scene Investigations, a website by some Kansas teachers at http://connections.smsd.org/csi . For younger grades you could make a classroom cemetery by printing pictures of headstones and laminating them on foam cores. And a high school teacher I knew in Missouri had her class do a "talking tombstones" presentation where her students researched some of the people in the local graveyard and then did an onsite interpretive program one Saturday where they took on the characters of the people.
A fun blog if you like colonial headstones (and who doesn't!) is Vast Public Indifference, particularly her "101 Ways to Die" series of posts: http://vastpublicindifference.blogspot.com.
Thank you for the great ideas Larry!
There is a wonderful cemetery here in Wilmington called Oakdale Cemetery. You can download a self guided tour and take your students on a field trip. It is very rich in history, here is the link to Oakdale's website:
http://www.oakdalecemetery.org/photo_gallery.asp
When I was an intern at New hanover High School, we would take our U.S History students for a tour of Oakdale when the weather was nice. I believe since then, the caretakers at Oakdale have asked the teachers at New hanover High School to no longer bring students to the cemetery, unfortunately. They were worried about having teenagers there due to previous instances of vandalism.
Yes, when I was interning, we too took our students to Oakdale. They were the best kids in the school and I have not had a class like them since. The day we were there, we were approached by a man on a golf cart that told us to never bring students there again due to vandalism. We were insulted at first, but I CAN see where they are coming from. Regardless, my students had a very unique experience and it got them some exercise!
I took a Chris Fonville-led tour of Oakdale last spring and found it very interesting.
The concerns about vandalism saddened me. I assume they are well founded. I wonder if the African American cemetary adjacent to Oakdale has similar issues with vandalism.
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