After a millennium or so in the world of ed policy, I nearly always think of education as stuff schools do that produces results on various metrics that (one hopes) enables education leaders and policymakers to make better decisions about what schools should do tomorrow. And I admit pooh-poohing “experiential education” in its various manifestations as soft stuff that doesn’t do much for those metrics.
Well, a late July weekend proved a bit of a comeuppance as it reminded me of how much one can learn by going somewhere and learning from being there, learning important and valuable things that may never show up on our usual metrics, either for me or for my college-age companion (granddaughter). I was also reminded that some of that learning may arise in unexpected ways.
Our destination was Springfield, Illinois, where we had never been and which I knew mainly as the state capital whence a bunch of governors went to prison and the place that figures in Lincoln biographies during what’s always felt like the unimportant parts before he became president.
But we went to see—the expected part—what more we could learn about Lincoln and that turned out to be quite a lot. And then it turned out there was even more to learn.
It was hot as blazes.
Springfield is a sprawled but not very big city in the flat middle of the state, within which we found a core that can fairly be described as obsessed with Abraham Lincoln.
At the core of the core, the National Park Service operates a closed-off, several-block area called the Lincoln Home National Historic Site. This starts with an information-filled (and blissfully air-conditioned) visitor center and moves on to guided tours of the house that Abe and Mary and their boys occupied for the seventeen years before they departed for the White House. (There was a partial interruption during his single term in the House of Representatives, then back to Springfield and their home there.)
The house tour is fast but fascinating, both for insights into how they lived and for evidence of Lincoln’s mounting success and prominence in that community, gradually extending to district, state, and nation. (For example, they twice could afford to expand the house and pave the muddy street out front.) And because much of the immediate vicinity is preserved or restored, one can see a bit of what pre–Civil War Springfield was like.
Scattered around town were the homes, some still standing, of Lincoln’s friends, law partners, Mary’s several sisters, and others who played roles in their lives. In the city’s heart, around the Old State Capital, site of his “house divided” speech, we encountered a trove of Lincoln lore and memorabilia—a recreation of his law office, the dry goods store (owned by a brother-in-law) in a spare room above which he drafted his first inaugural address—and a few blocks away, the railroad depot from which he departed for D.C. and delivered a memorable impromptu “farewell address,” which our local guide took pleasure in delivering for us with (one must assume) suitable Lincolnian intonation.
The depot and that long train trip to Washington of course marked the launch of his presidency, but as we know from tragic history, he would never return to Springfield alive.
Which brought us to the most solemn of Springfield’s Lincoln sites, the vast and carefully landscaped Oak Ridge Cemetery and his grand tomb—his, his wife’s, and three of his four sons—which is awesome on the outside and deeply moving within.
One especially moving bit for me and my granddaughter: embracing the actual seven-ton red marble cenotaph below which he lies are seven flags, including the “Presidential Flag,” which by custom flies only for a living president, but in this case was contributed by Ronald Reagan during a visit to the sixteenth president’s final resting place.
There’s so much more Lincoln throughout Springfield, signs everywhere explaining places that mattered to him or recounting aspects of his life, a sizable museum-cum-presidential library (operated by the state, not the National Archives). We benefited from a local guide, to be sure, but could have learned most of it on our own.
One unexpected bit of experiential learning, however, was a site that our guide steered us to and that concluded our Springfield visit: In that city, we were surprised to discover, is the largest and possibly finest “prairie-style” home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the famed architect whose work we both admire. It’s not just the house, it’s also Wright-designed furniture and fascinating objects, some of them showing his love of Japanese design.
Though we hadn’t known of its existence, we lucked into the last house tour of the day, and despite A.C. that struggled in the heat that afternoon, we learned a great deal there, as well.
None of which would have happened had we not journeyed to Springfield for the weekend.
Experiential learning it truly was. I have more respect for it now than a few weeks back. It won’t show up in any metrics, but I’m a better-informed person—and perhaps better citizen—as a result of it, and I’m pretty sure my young travel partner will be a more knowledgeable and wiser adult.
