Headed to uptown NYC this morning to the New York Historical Society located at Central Park West and 71st Street. We jumped right in with a visit to the Luce Center where we were given a short tour and some brief information about five objects in their visible storage section.
I am becoming quite a fan of this “object-based learning” that has been presented to us throughout our trip. While the concept seems rather simplistic and I’m sure each of us does it to a certain extent, I like the idea of making kids guess and decided what the objects / items were actually used for, how it relates to a particular time period in history or if it is a painting or sculpture, giving their interpretation based on prior knowledge, of what they are seeing. Why do we always feel that we need to tell the kids what things are? It would be so much more meaningful to have them come to the conclusions on their own.
When we were in the Luce center we were given the task of finding an item in the collection that related to slavery. I chose a set of silver (381 pieces to be exact) that was given to Commodore Perry for creating a successful treaty with Japan. Upon looking at the set you see a very ornate, elaborate combination of flatware, bowls, tureens, cups, etc.
Silver set
So how does this relate to slavery? Because the items are made from actual silver, it would require many, many hours of polishing. And who do you think would keep those items polished? The lady of the house? Commodore Perry? It would of course be the job of the servants who worked in their household. The ultimate question I would want the kids to decide would be whether or not the servants were as excited and honored by the gift as the Commodore and his family undoubtedly were.
In my class I often have students take virtual field trips to art museums around the country. With the online access to the historical society (nyhistory.org) and their emuseum feature, this activity would be very easy to incorporate into the classroom without having to take the kids anywhere or supply them with a limited number of artifacts chosen by the teacher.
The second half of our morning was spent delving into “New York Divided” talking about the differing opinions of New Yorkers when it came to slavery. Our first reaction would be that since NY is in the north they would naturally be antislavery, but this is not true. We have to look at how dependent the north was on the cotton trade. NY was the major harbor at the time. Almost all of the cotton grown in the south was shipped to NYC, loaded onto cargo ships and sent to England. The merchants in NY made $0.38 on every dollar which seems like a huge amount of money for being the middleman. I am ever so grateful for the wonderful binder and resources that they gave us (despite the size!) The activity that they had us walk through, dividing us up into groups and having each of us read a separate article relating to the same event, was very useful and can easily be replicated in the classroom. I was also very pleased to get the video clips that they used. It is so hard to find shorter, useful clips for particular assignments.
Went on to spend the afternoon perusing the exhibits at the Museum of Natural History. Unfortunately a lot of the space exhibits were shut down for technical difficulties and the rest of the areas were overrun with school children on the verge of summer vacation. I was able to walk through the hall of African animals among several others.
On to Yankee Stadium to see the Yankees and Astros play a little baseball. Beautiful weather, great game, awesome group of fellow history buffs to watch the game with! Watched Andy Pettitte get his 200th career win as a Yankee!
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