History Beyond the Classroom

Every year I travel with a group of high school juniors and seniors from Los Angeles to the east coast. Our mission: learn about public history and commemoration at sites of historical significance, in our case – focusing on the Civil War. The trip used to center on and almost exclusively investigate the Gettysburg battlefield. But recently, I have expanded the trip to include Washington D.C., Harper’s Ferry, the Antietam battlefield, and Richmond. In 2024, I’m going to work Appomattox in somehow.

I remove them from the usual rigors of coursework in the classroom because I feel that it is vitally important to experience these sites in person. There is just something different about seeing and feeling a place. Physically standing in a spot where people struggled for their lives and where the great conflicts of the era culminated on the battlefield reorients one’s perspective in ways far beyond what a book or classroom lesson plan can accomplish. Seeing what soldiers saw, sensing the ground over which they walked, even smelling the smells…all of this has a way of humanizing an event that is often more abstract than not. In other words, lines on a map only offer so much.  

Something as simple as learning how a cannon works not only creates a foundation for engaging conversation, but students can start to better understand how technology intersects with the human experience in a tangible way. I have had some of the most interesting conversations on the battlefield by first having students feel the inside of a cannon tube – checking for the rifling (the ridges) inside a Parrot gun or the smooth surface of a Napoleon. We look at breech-loading Whitworth guns and discuss range by noting the distances of recognizable landmarks on the field. What all of this means in terms of accuracy and destructive power helps explain how the battle unfolded. Noting the types of ordinance, from solid shot to canister, helps explain casualty rates and battle formations. And…the students love it. It broadens their learning experience and helps them recreate the past in ways that just don’t really work in class.    

I am fortunate that I have the available resources to do something like this on such a grand scale, but if you don’t – my guess is that there are probably spots close by where you live that are worthy of a visit. A little research in this area will most likely yield all sorts of unexpected spots of interest. So happy hunting – and if you need any ideas about lesson plans in the field, shoot me a note. I have all sorts of fun ways to engage students in the field.

With compliments,

Keith