THE MARITIME EDUCATION INITIATIVE:
THE CHALLENGE OF HISTORY by Walter Cronkite Americans are shockingly ignorant of their own history. When college students can't tell what century the Civil War was fought in , we've got to know that we' re losing our national self-awareness and our grip on things. And that's a price we simply can't afford to pay. How can we pretend to understand problems long simmering in our national experience, or hard-won opportunities that have taken generations to develop, if we never look at the experience that gave these things their present shape? The truth is that history can do a lot to awaken young people 's curiosity and stretch young minds to new concepts and different ways of seeing life. It can challenge people to think of their own role in the stream of time-for history goes on, and we' re all part of it. Proper! y presented and opened up to people, there simply is no substitute for the roughand-tumble, the color, contradictions and unending challenge of history. We need history with its difficulties, agonies and exultations, not to develop pat formulas, but to develop what William Wordsworth called "man 's unconquerable mind." Toward Far Horizons The state of history is a matter we can do something about. In my hometown, New York, people are working today to put across to our young people the marvellous story of the clipper ships that sailed from our waterfront only a century and a half ago, breaking records in all oceans and making our waterfront street, South Street, famous around the world. These young people are rediscovering the thrill of voyaging, and learning about the venturesome efforts that opened the ocean world in the five hundred years following Christopher Columbus's epic voyage of 1492. They are learning the difficulties of these ventures too, and the injustices done to native peoples, and the hardships and exploitation of the sailors. They are learning the essential idea of making a voyage, of sailing toward far horizons. What more can we do? Well, we can make a beginning to carry history's message further. We're proposing a new venture, the Maritime Education Initiative. The Initiative invites teachers and all who work with young people to get them involved in active, innovative pro-
grams to encounter history. We are inspired to do this by such innovators as the upstate New York teacher who had his class build a complete cardboard model of Mystic Seaport Museum a few years back-a model including ships, chandler's and cooper' s shops, all that went into the community effort to outfit and sail ship in long voyages. We are inspired by the Pilots, a citizen supporting group at Mystic Seaport, who had this whole class and teacher brought to Mystic to encounter the real thing! We may safely bet they got a lot out of this trip-they had prepared, studied and worked for it. We have made up a collection of such case histories, including a teacher who brought his Pennsylvania high school class to Baltimore to visit the Baltimore clipper Pride of Baltimore-a class which now keeps in touch with the crew members as they sail distant watersand including an Ohio professor of history who takes volunteer students to the British Isles each summer to study and analyze medieval shipping records . Going for the Real Thing We admire these efforts that get students close to the historical experience we ' re concerned with. And we're helping to support such efforts by guiding teachers and youth group leaders to suitable resources, particularly museum resources, as listed in Sea History's Guide to American and Canadian Maritime Museums. They can also join the National Council for History Education, and they can join our National Maritime Historical Society and get the magazine Sea History to keep up with a fast-developing field. And they can go out into the field to encounter some of history's realities, such as can be found in America's museums. Edward H. Able, Jr. , Executive Director of the American Association of Museums, recently wrote: "In a museum, the ' real thing ' can light a spark that will bum for a lifetime." He went on to point out that museums "can develop and test innovative program strategies that, when proven, can be utilized in the schools." In this first year we are concentrating particularly on New York harbor and its
MARITIME INITIATIVE PAC KET To try innovative approaches to history education, send in for this valuable packet including: Case Studies--direct application of history instruction in actual situations. Resource Books-Sea History' s Guide to American and Canadian Maritime Museums, and the American Sail Training Association directory Sail Training Ships & Programs (total retail value $29.50). SEA HISTORY 61, SPRING 1992
environs, with the encouragement and cooperation of the Seamen's Church Institute of New York & New Jersey , the Marine Society of New York and the South Street Seaport Museum in New York-using the museum as a base. For today's distracted and hassled school children, the museum can be benison to troubled minds and spirits, and challenging-in constructive ways. When the museum was founded just twenty-five years ago this spring, one of the founders, Norma Stanford, expressed this purpose in words that I believe make very good reading today. She wrote: "The South Street Seaport ... should be a place where children can walk on wooden decks and look up at towering masts-or peer into the engine room of a modem tug-and feel a sense of the time and human effort that built the world around them." Outreach beyond this beginning in New York will be supplied through an information packet available to all who, inquire for a modest sum. And we'll continue working with such promising initiatives as the "Wake of the Explorers" program in the Pacific Northwest, as described in this issue of Sea History. It is good to know that native people's canoes will join in this rediscovery of the channels behind Vancouver Island, which were first charted by English, Spanish and American small craft in the not-so-distant summer of 1792, just 200 years ago. Color, Authenticity, History Never underestimate the power of history to serveprogress.Iftestimonyonthisisneeded, listen to Vaclav Havel, President of Czechoslovakia, speaking of the regime that had held his nation captive for over fifty years: "It was defeated by a revolt of color, authenticity, history in all its variety and human individuality against imprisonment within a uniform ideology." Who can resist that "color, authenticity, history?" The massed tanks of the Warsaw Pact could not, and I do not feel we are stretching a point too far in saying that ignorance, prejudice, apathy, all the enemies of real progress that deprive our young people of opportunity today, will not endure against history 's challengenot if we do our job as supporters of history 's cause. D
"Breaking the Ring," a study packet (including original source materials) on efforts to improve the sailor's lot in America 's gateway harbor, New York. And more-a guidance sheet prepared by museum staff, and supplementary materials useful in different situations. Send $20 for packet or $35 for the packet and a year's subscription to Sea History: NMHS, PO Box 68, Peekskill NY 10566. 7