Education Programs

PROGRAMS
PreservationWorks! is an interdisciplinary program that improves verbal and quantitative basic skills, while promoting active learning with primary sources in American History, principles and development of industrial and civil engineering, and the science of historic preservation. The program reinforces the lessons of historical process by promoting active preservation efforts by students within the community.

The Here and Now, There and Then Institute is being designed to involve teachers in the same way that they will be expected to engage their students.
The focus will be: how to learn as on absorbing core knowledge in American History. It is an active model based upon the method and rigor that would be expected in science teaching. Beginning with what for history is counter-intuitive, the first step will be observation of the here (local) and now. For example, a quick glance at and question about the dam, the canals and the architecture of Lawrence would elicit the response that the city was designed for textile manufacture to be powered by water. This is often the end point of inquiry in history classes. Teachers will become accustomed to adding the essential tag question: How do you know that? This will lead to further discovery of then using local primary sources, including old photographs, atlases, city directories, plans, journals and many other types of documents available at Immigrant City Archives and among permanent City records. This component of the program is designed to encourage teachers to teach students historical process as well as the facts. Statements such as, “Slavery was the cause of the Civil War,” or, “The ideal of freedom was the impetus for the American Revolution” are frequently asserted and accepted without further exploration. At best they become memorized phrases with lost meanings; at worst they oversimplify or even misrepresent. On the other hand, if “How do you know that?” becomes a habit of mind to any assertion of principle or of cause, examination of primary sources such as atlases, journals, official records, photographs and other documents can lead to something closer to the ability to directly observe history.

The context is broadened: Connect to themes in American History (there and then). Technology permits access to facsimiles of national primary documents, but without the more tangible experience of actual primary sources at the local level, the impact of those facsimiles is lessened. Among the many themes that can be explored through initial reference to Lawrence’s local and regional history are: the Jefferson/Hamilton debate over an agricultural or manufacturing economy for America and the consequences of either for freedom and opportunity for all people; the relative quality of life of the northern factory worker and southern slave; control of natural resources such as water to produce power for industry.

The final step: History Is What You Are Doing Now
The discovery process will:
*Students participate in a preservation activity that in itself makes a permanent positive difference to the community
-Grant students a level of cultural ownership.
-Suggested activities include:
*conducting oral histories
*preserving old photographs that have been researched
*cleaning up a property that has been studied, or even painting over graffiti.

The mantra of History Is What You Are Doing Now conveys:
*History is still happening and students are a part of it.
*Tie it to action that helps to preserve that history& the lesson is retained. *Significance of students’ choices and actions inside and outside of the classroom will be more apparent to them.

Paraphrasing from the late Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill’s principle of politics, we can say, “All history is local.”