Gathered beneath the shade of a stand of trees at Winnetka’s Crow Island Park on a recent morning, a crew of seventh graders from Carleton Washburne School cringed in unison at the sight of a mock amputation, minus the blood.
“You fold over the flaps of skin around the stump, and then you take the needle and thread and begin to suture the patient,” explained Civil War re-enactor Phil Lauricella, who worked his medical magic on a dummy, warning: “If you keep the chloroform on too long, the patient never wakes up.”
Any squeamishness among the adolescent crowd was soon replaced with shock, as a thunderous burst of “cannon fire” pierced the air at Crow Island Woods, where students celebrated the culmination of their seventh grade social studies class with a tradition that has spanned more than two decades.
“We hope that a day like today will help them understand the Civil War beyond the fiction and non-fiction literature we are reading in class,” Washburne social studies teacher David Hovis said.
The recent display of Progressive Education unfolded a century after the Winnetka School District 36 Board of Education in May of 1919 hired Carleton W. Washburne as the superintendent of schools.
Washburne, a 29-year-old educator, was “the architect” of The Winnetka Plan, which promoted his philosophy of progressive education, featuring individualized instruction, hands-on learning, attention to the development of the whole child, a focus on research and development of curriculum materials and a thoughtful and comprehensive program of staff development, according to the District 36 website.
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For Washburne’s roughly 200 seventh graders, the recent day of outdoor, experiential learning featured everything from a soldier losing a leg in a mock amputation and a re-enactor on horseback conducting a military cavalry drill, to Civil War-era music and photography.
“Part of Progressive Education is experiential learning, which we do every day in District 36, but an event like this brings it to a new level for the students, beyond just reading texts and knowing the important dates,” Washburne social studies teacher David Senechal said.
In addition to the recent Civil War re-enactment event, Washburne seventh graders also wrote their own legislative bills and participated in a mock Congress event earlier this year, Senechal said.
For seventh grader Michael Dolan, 13, studying a chapter of American history at the Civil War reenactment taught him, “it was an interesting time, and so different from our lives today.”
“It brings history to life in a way you can’t experience by just reading a book,” Michael said, adding: “You kind of get to live in it, which really helps you absorb the information.”
kcullotta@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @kcullotta