(Yeah, this took me a while to get up...sorry...plus, I'm warning you now, this is pretty long)
So overall, I really liked the whole day, and actually THINKING about the different historic interpretation styles was an interesting idea. I think they were both good, each with their strong and weak points. With a tour guide, like at Stan Hywet, you learn a little less about more, but with a person acting as though they're from the 1830s, you get to learn more about less, you know? Like with Stan Hywet, you learn kind of an overview about the house and the servants and such, but with Hale Farm, you learn everything there is to know about candle making. Personally, I enjoyed the interpretation at Hale Farm better because it seems like they can really get into it and enjoy what they're doing (and, I'm not gonna lie, the costumes look fun! haha), but with Stan Hywet, one would think the tour would get boring after a while...just saying the same thing over and over and over for ten years or however long the guy had been doing it.
I also liked Hale Farm better in that we could go wherever we wanted and just explore...that sense of freedom is nice. Stan Hywet was nice as a tour, but if you wanted to stay longer in one place or shorter in another, you couldn't really do that.
I also liked the fact that Hale Farm was totally 21st-century item free. We would go into the offices and whatnot of the mansion, and the guy would be like, "Here's where the head maid" (or whatever she was) "would stay and she kept thus and such in these cabinets," and you didn't really get the real feel of the room due to the computer sitting on the desk. I know the Seiberlings were ahead of their times and everything, but come on..!
Overall, I definitely would've been more comfortable to live on a farm. As much as I love old houses, I wouldn't want to manage one. I like the cozy down-home feel of a farm. Though perhaps I would like being a servant in a huge mansion, because although you have to work hard every single day, you'd probably get to gossip about the owners and their friends quite a bit (wow, that sounds pretty shallow, doesn't it? But come on! You can bet the lifestyles were pretty interesting and talk-about-able!).
I think that people back then were probably a bit more down-to-earth than people now because they didn't have internet and such, so they had to rely on each other for entertainment. Things that are worse would probably include hygiene, medical care, and obviously transportation.
Feelings for First Semester
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Five months have passed so quickly as we are moving on to the last week of
first semester in a period of seven days. We have had great times being
busy, la...
10 years ago
3 comments:
I like the "less about more, more about less" concept. I had never thought about that before. Very interesting.
It would be interesting to use that in class, especially in my history class at Nordonia. Perhaps a novel idea for textbook authors to think about. But then again, maybe history is too full of side trips and anecdotal stories to begin with to even bother... But I'm glad you had a great time. Look for more to come!
This idea of many shallow topics or a few deep topics in our study of history is one that is debated quite often. Is the Civil War buff who knows everything about that one topic but nothing about the rest of American or World history better prepared than the guy who has read bits and pieces of many things and has gone to many places for quick anecdotes? Something to ponder. If we focused on less in a classes would students actually learn more?
If we learned less in class, that would give us more to think for and gather on our own. However, your idea about less is more would only work for students willing to study independently.
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