Teaching American History - Boston Field Study Day 1

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

After a long flight from Sacramento through Minneapolis to Boston, I spent the day touring around Harvard University and getting myself acquainted with the T Line metro system for Boston.  Tomorrow we will be heading into the historical center of Boston for an extensive series of field studies.  Today, I want to reflect on the "free day" we had today to just get adjusted and moved into our dormitory rooms at Boston University, and to decide for ourselves what we would like to see and do before the real work begins tomorrow.  This was a greatly appreciated day, and as I sit and type out this blog entry this evening, I think about how full this coming week will of necessity be.

Starting with Harvard University was interesting and rewarding because it is, despite all of the whoopla forwarded by other universities later, the oldest institute of higher education in the United States, predating the formation of the United States by 151 years (HU founded in 1638, USA founded in 1789).  Although clearly a modern university in many ways, the history of the institution is literally chiseled on the facades of all of the major buildings, whose own date of erection is given in two ways: first in the actual year of completion, and second, in the year in which Harvard University itself existed when that building was completed.  It is remarkable to look at a recent building and see that Harvard had already been around for two or more centuries before that building was likely even conceived!

Memorial Hall was opened in 1878, and by that time Harvard University had already been a going concern for 240 years.  Memorial Hall is striking in another way, it is much akin to the architecture of Central Europe, in particular that of the cathedrals in Prague, Czech Republic and a number of imperial retreats throughout the countrysides of the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia.  It is a towering structure, and its colorful tiled roof is both beautiful and striking for its difference from all of the other buildings around it.  It is also in a way out of place, which lends it a degree of beauty and intrigue that a more conventional structure of the time would have sorely lacked.

In wandering around Harvard today, I was struck by the profound diversity of its student body, that like almost all educational institutions in the United States of America, it is a rich collection of everyone from everywhere.  The big difference, however, is that here, in this experiment called America, again and again, it is demonstrated that anyone from anywhere can get along with anyone from anywhere else, especially in the rareified pursuit of high education.  I think I need to do much more with Harvard University in the AP United States History courses, something more that will begin to impress upon my students the deep and abiding influence that this university has had and continues to have over the American academic psyche.  Although in many ways Harvard is much like many of its kin, an expansive place of brick edifice and green space shaded by a plethora of trees, but illuminated by the persistent fire of human curiosity about...well, everything!  I think I need to do more to bring forward what is both unique and ubiquitous about this first of American universities, both then and now.