Helping Students Connect to History: The Newseum and The Holocaust Museum
The Queen of Jordan once said that she wants to raise her children to understand that they are global citizens. "Because once you feel that others are like you, you start wanting for others what you want for yourself, and that way you start helping others. When you solve somebody else’s problem," she said, "You’re solving a problem for yourself, because our world today is so interconnected."
Do any of us want any less for our children? Certainly this is the cry of every educator for their students – that they would be this aware of the world and how its events affect each of them.
Two museums in washington d.c. are dedicated to this desire for human connection – through the capturing of humanity’s most important events. The first is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the second is called simply the Newseum.
Most of the Holocaust museums around the nation have similar goals – to honor those who were victimized by that terrible era and to awaken us all to the prejudices that could lead to similar atrocities today. This national holocaust museum in Washington D.C. was chartered in 1980 by a unanimous vote of Congress. It leads the way in our nation for a better understanding of that horrific genocide and the challenge to avoid any like it today and in the future.
The museum is divided beautifully for educational tours. The first part is separated into the three main phases of World War II: The Nazi Assault, Final Solution, and Last Chapter. This way students become familiar with the historical timeline behind the tragic personal stories. One of these is shared in great detail in the second part of the museum, called "Daniel’s Story". Here students are led through the events of the war through the eyes of a boy who lived them in Nazi Germany. They can read his own journal entries, making the events deeply personal and painfully real. Any educator will find this museum an excellent way to connect students to the events of World War II and the Nazi assault.
The Newseum, also in Washington D.C., is another great museum for student travel, also showcasing our need to capture the human experience and somehow understand it. When describing the Newseum, ask your students to imagine being responsible to explain world tragedies and celebrations – to the rest of the world – armed only with a camera and a pen. As the Newseum will show them, this is the task of journalists every day, and sometimes they have done it so magnificently that their artistic explanation becomes an event of its own (an example being the amazing World War I photograph at Iwo Jima).
One of the first exhibits available to visitors upon entering the Newseum is Today’s Front Pages in which the front page of over 500 newspapers from around the country are gathered and transmitted on screens. Students will love to find papers from or near their hometowns showcased before them in the nation’s capital.
Inside the museum, perhaps one of the most poignant exhibits is that dedicated to the headlines surrounding the worst tragedy in recent US history, the events of 9/11. Many of our students won’t remember clinging to the television in those days so that we could see just one more story that might help us make sense somehow or find some sort of comfort from this horrible event; but as educators, we do.
Besides the other headline-making events showcased in the Newseum, the Pullman Family Great Books Gallery is another great exhibit in the Newseum. Here students can zoom in on some of history’s most important documents. Students should leave the Newseum with a greater interest in current events around the world as well as a greater appreciation for the words and photographs that have captured them.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Newseum: Two museums dedicated to remembrance and to the human connection, both excellent choices for Washington D.C. educational tours.
Tags: Holocaust Memorial Museum | educational tours | educational tours | washington d.c. | student travel | student travel | museums | museums | Newseum