For some schools, assigned textbook chapters, PowerPoint presentations and historical films are not enough to educate students about the slavery that existed in the U.S. during the 1800s. School field trips to a Massachusetts-based company called Nature’s Classroom allow students to not only learn about slavery but experience it firsthand.
A four-day trip to Nature’s Classroom includes special-interest classes, campfires, night hikes and the possibility of an “Underground Railroad Activity,” according to their website.
Seventh graders from Connecticut’s Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy who went on a trip to Nature’s Classroom were unaware of the details of that last activity, according to Headline News.
On the third night of the trip, the students were crammed into a dark room and told to imagine they had witnessed their parents being killed. The students could not address the instructors–who had become their “masters”–and were told to pretend they were picking cotton.
According to Sandra Baker, a mother whose daughter was one of the students on the trip, they were threatened and chased through the dark woods. The students said that the N-word was shouted at them, among other phrases referring to them as “animals” and “property.”
John G. Santos, executive director of Nature’s Classroom, denies that the N-word was used, but that “dumb, dark-skinned negro person” was a definite possibility. In Nature’s Classroom’s statement on the incident, Santos added that the program was first offered 20 years ago.
It shocks me that this “learning” experience has gone on for the last 20 years and this is only the first time it’s ever been majorly publicized in the media.
A child as young as 11 or 12 isn’t going to process this kind of experience as well as a 16 or 18-year-old would, and I find it disturbingly unnecessary as a whole.
Yes, we need to educate our children about the past so that history will not repeat itself in the future. Yes, we need to do more than just talk about what occurred. Visuals need to be used and even trips to historic sites.
However, a child does not need to be chased through the woods and called the N-word in order to understand what slaves were forced to go through.
I can understand that the point is to make a big impact, to burn this into their brains and ensure they never forget. The trauma that could result from a reenactment like this, however, is something that needs to be considered.
Things such as frightening visuals, loud noises and violent movements can shatter a child’s sense of safety, according to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. From the organization’s website, “Young children are less able to anticipate danger or to know how to keep themselves safe, and so are particularly vulnerable to the effects of exposure to trauma.”
The New York Daily News reported that Baker pulled her child out of the Hartford academy and the school district, saying that her 12-year-old daughter was indeed traumatized by the experience.
In response, Santos said, “These are real feelings we’re eliciting,” and that the goal is to “introduce students to some of the complexities and difficulties surrounding slavery, understand the courage it took to run, the courage it took to assist those running and to draw connections between discrimination and prejudice then and discrimination and prejudice today.”
If the program does continue, the intensity of Nature’s Classroom’s Underground Railroad Experience should be geared more towards high school upperclassmen or even college students, and the use of racial slurs should be omitted.
If it was up to me, I would pull the funding from this program completely and use it towards counseling for any child who may have suffered trauma as a result.
Even if it is believed that history might repeat itself, putting this responsibility on the shoulders of our youths by means of fear helps nothing and no one; it takes us a step back.
In the future, I hope that Nature’s Classroom decides to focus on the historical purposes of their program and less on the psychological aspect.
Lauren Milici can be reached atLauren.Milici@spartans.ut.edu
