The National Archives has created a new educational exhibition. While searching, children come into contact with all kinds of real archive documents and learn to put themselves in the shoes of people from another time.
An archive can be a true Valhalla for those who love history. All those original documents from bygone days in which you can read what people did, considered important or punished then, brings the past closer. Children often see less fun in it and mainly think of shelving units full of dusty folders. That is also understandable, but the National Archives (NA) did not leave it at that and brings the archive closer to the child's experience.
Chat with historical person
The NA has created the educational exhibition 'Who am I, who was you?' for classes from the upper primary and lower secondary schools. The makers have set out an interactive treasure hunt in a dark room in which you make full use of historical sources. Using old letters, maps and official documents you will find the right answers to the chat questions on your tablet. During the treasure hunt you 'chat' with a real historical person.
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The NA has selected twenty people from all over the world and from different times who have a connection with the Netherlands. The makers have been able to reconstruct their life stories on the basis of the archives and classified them in four themes:Trade and Slavery, From home and hearth (about migration), Right and Wrong in the Second World War and Fighting for your right (about democratic fundamental rights and emancipation movements). ). Five historical persons belong to each theme.
School classes first choose a theme and then you follow the life story of one of the five historical persons with a small group. With a flashlight (it's dark!) and a tablet you follow the route that is indicated by colored lights, between reconstructed shelving units full of archive boxes. Each historical figure has its own color and as soon as you have answered a question correctly, a lamp in that color will light up somewhere else in the room. On to the next question! And so everyone is crisscrossing each other. To make it extra exciting, there is a time component where the fastest group wins.
The creators
Arjan Poelwijk is an archive specialist at the NA and one of the makers of the exhibition. He tells us more about the story behind it:“The reason for this educational exhibition was the great interest from education in our previous exhibition about the VOC. However, it was only temporary and we now wanted to create something permanent in its place, especially for school classes. That has become 'Who am I, who were you?' and this exhibition will remain on display for at least the next five years.”
With the assignments within the exhibition, the makers want to teach the students to put themselves in another time and in other people. Poelwijk:“The unlimited options and freedom we now have are not self-evident. They have not always existed and people have fought to acquire certain rights and freedoms. We want children to realize how special that is. The starting point of the exhibition is therefore:how do time, place and circumstances in which you are born determine the choices you can make?”
Visitors follow the life story of an existing person on the basis of exhibited archival documents. Poelwijk and colleagues conducted research into the historical characters that appear in this exhibition. From many interesting life stories, he eventually had to choose the twenty most appealing:“We wanted people whose life stories could be fully told on the basis of archival documents from our own collection. By eventually reconstructing twenty stories, we wanted to make clear how many stories we have in-house. It was also important to show that you can view history from multiple perspectives.”
Follow Ghanaian prince
I also ran the scavenger hunt myself, choosing the historical figure Aquasie Boachie. Gradually, every visitor learns what problems the historical figure encountered in his time. In the case of this Ghanaian prince from the nineteenth century, this is mainly discrimination. His father gave it as a kind of gift to the Dutch when they concluded an agreement for the recruitment of soldiers for the army of the Dutch East Indies. Aquasie was about ten years old when he had to come to the Netherlands. There he received an education and eventually went to study in Delft. Once an engineer, Aquasie ended up in the Dutch East Indies.
Aquasie didn't have it easy, as he was not considered full because of his dark complexion. Even his job description, extraordinary engineer, referred to his being "different". The questions, where you have to decipher sources in old manuscripts, were sometimes quite difficult. But I understood afterwards that the children only read the highlighted text to find their answer, while I tried to read the entire document. Slimpies.
The quest starts with an introductory story on a big screen, after which your first colored light comes on. On your tablet you get extra background information from your historical person in the form of a chat conversation, such as where and when he or she lived and who he / she was. You can't actually chat, but you can choose from several options about what you want to know about the person. The historical person also asks back, for example about how you would react to a certain situation. Again, you can choose from a few pre-programmed answers.
Continue discussion together
The exhibition was created in collaboration with several sounding board groups, which included not only teachers but also students. The four themes from which teachers can choose are also part of the curriculum in schools. The children therefore do not start the exhibition blank. Not all themes are suitable for all children:the exhibition was made for groups 7 and 8 of primary and lower secondary schools, but only the havo and vwo classes can follow the theme Fighting for your rights.
The other themes in the exhibition are also not light-hearted and an important conclusion to the visit to the archive is the discussion. Here the whole class discusses the historical figures she has followed and what they have not experienced in the past. This floor does not stop when you leave the archive:the makers hope that the teachers will continue to discuss the topics with their students after the visit.
In addition to the scavenger hunt and discussion, the school children also get a look at the archive itself, where they are told more about the importance of the archive, what it should keep and why. This option is not available for the ordinary visitor, who can visit the exhibition during school holidays and at weekends.
The higher classes of pre-university education learn more about the importance of archival research for history science at the NA, but that is still a bit too ambitious for the younger students. Poelwijk:“It's not so much about teaching these students how to do archival research themselves. But we do want to show how important documents are for storytelling and reconstruction. Through the appearance of the exhibition, which gives you the feeling that you are in the archive, we want to make it clear to children that searching for an archive means. You really have to do something for it yourself.”