Mar 30, 2015
If you are a parent, or have kids you like, the President has started a new thingy. “The Obama Administration will provide all 4th grade students and their families’ free admission to all National Parks and other federal lands and waters for a full year, starting with the 2015-2016 school year.” Other parks and areas and thingies are trying to build on this by getting donations to help getting kids from urban areas transportation to visit national parks, cultural artifacts and historic structures.
I know living this close to historic Philadelphia and places like Gettysburg and Valley Forge, it’s easy to assume all families and children have access to sites like this. They don’t.
When I was a wee lass, we visited, you know, some museum so the teachers could let parents handle us. I ended up talking to the security guard for like an hour because I made some comment about how the teacher always pointed out how I couldn't spell but these old guys put “f” in everything.
He told me that it was not an “f” but a “long s” (ſ) which is not used today (well, it’s used in math). This spawned some of my interest in typography because until that point, I knew of 24 (I was a dumb kid. Kidding, 26) letters in the English language – I had no idea there were ever more or less.
I had mentioned how cool it was he knew this and he said he was really getting into the 1300s and just got to reading about the black plague and how it changed the face of the world. Up until THAT point, the concept of anything that could change the world in such a manner didn’t exist to me.
He said if I ever had any questions about history, I could always contact him and he gave me his card. Then some teacher was like, “come on, we have to make wigs out of jelly worms to make history come alive” and I had to leave.
I wrote him a thank you note and he replied, sending me a copy of The Black Death by Philip Ziegler which I read cover-to-cover with an atlas – which suddenly opened the doors to Europe to me.
Oddly enough, the National Geographic had a two-page spread of Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s “The Triumph of Death” which totally got me into Hieronymus Bosch and Michael Wolgemut and the evolution of renaissance art and music.
Then I was telling my piano teacher about this and she played Saint-Saens “Danse Macabre” on her grand piano (it was a big deal) and suddenly I needed to hear this being played by an orchestra. She said she would find some local places if I learned about symphonic poem and perfected a part of Bagatelle sans tonalitè by Franz Liszt.
My Dad told me that Silly Symphony’s The Skeleton Dance was based on “Danse Macabre” (it was not, by the way) and then I wanted to learn amount animation.
The point of that rambling story – and sorry about all the death references – is because I had the opportunity to visit a historic place and ask a question. If I had not lived in an area with access to this place and not the means to go – maybe I would have been an entirely different person. This single visit changed my view of learning from something owned by adults to something that belonged to me and had endless possibilities.
The passion of one person actually gave me the confidence to share my own discoveries and listen to the passions of others. It became my conversation currency,
Giving a kid the opportunity to see, touch and/or immerse in something totally different than a textbook or in a classroom doesn't ensure any type of success . . . like, I'm still a really dumb kid. . .but it could change the world. I would encourage anyone to take advantage of this program, take some time to take kids to parks, museums and historical places and expose them to people who have passion for something.
And donate to local establishments to help fund these programs.
Visit Nationalparks.org for more information.
I know living this close to historic Philadelphia and places like Gettysburg and Valley Forge, it’s easy to assume all families and children have access to sites like this. They don’t.
When I was a wee lass, we visited, you know, some museum so the teachers could let parents handle us. I ended up talking to the security guard for like an hour because I made some comment about how the teacher always pointed out how I couldn't spell but these old guys put “f” in everything.
He told me that it was not an “f” but a “long s” (ſ) which is not used today (well, it’s used in math). This spawned some of my interest in typography because until that point, I knew of 24 (I was a dumb kid. Kidding, 26) letters in the English language – I had no idea there were ever more or less.
I had mentioned how cool it was he knew this and he said he was really getting into the 1300s and just got to reading about the black plague and how it changed the face of the world. Up until THAT point, the concept of anything that could change the world in such a manner didn’t exist to me.
He said if I ever had any questions about history, I could always contact him and he gave me his card. Then some teacher was like, “come on, we have to make wigs out of jelly worms to make history come alive” and I had to leave.
I wrote him a thank you note and he replied, sending me a copy of The Black Death by Philip Ziegler which I read cover-to-cover with an atlas – which suddenly opened the doors to Europe to me.Oddly enough, the National Geographic had a two-page spread of Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s “The Triumph of Death” which totally got me into Hieronymus Bosch and Michael Wolgemut and the evolution of renaissance art and music.
Then I was telling my piano teacher about this and she played Saint-Saens “Danse Macabre” on her grand piano (it was a big deal) and suddenly I needed to hear this being played by an orchestra. She said she would find some local places if I learned about symphonic poem and perfected a part of Bagatelle sans tonalitè by Franz Liszt.
My Dad told me that Silly Symphony’s The Skeleton Dance was based on “Danse Macabre” (it was not, by the way) and then I wanted to learn amount animation.
The point of that rambling story – and sorry about all the death references – is because I had the opportunity to visit a historic place and ask a question. If I had not lived in an area with access to this place and not the means to go – maybe I would have been an entirely different person. This single visit changed my view of learning from something owned by adults to something that belonged to me and had endless possibilities.
The passion of one person actually gave me the confidence to share my own discoveries and listen to the passions of others. It became my conversation currency,
Giving a kid the opportunity to see, touch and/or immerse in something totally different than a textbook or in a classroom doesn't ensure any type of success . . . like, I'm still a really dumb kid. . .but it could change the world. I would encourage anyone to take advantage of this program, take some time to take kids to parks, museums and historical places and expose them to people who have passion for something.
And donate to local establishments to help fund these programs.
Visit Nationalparks.org for more information.
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