History Day, History Day

The national competition for National History was held the week of June 14. I was privileged to be a judge, and I am pleased to say that the future of historical research and interpretation looks outstanding. It was exciting to see hundreds of kids and their parents engaged in historical interpretation and to hear their sophisticated analyses of historical movements and figures.

Even at this age, it was notable that many fell into the same traps that  professionals are subject to.  It was interesting to see how they dug themselves out.

Common Traps

1.  You cannot drop a museum into a kiosk.

• What is the one point that you want to convey? There can only be one main idea, and it has to be of the right size for the interpretive vehicle. If you have limited time and spaces to make your point, then you cannot give the entire history of anything.   

2.  Answer the question, "and then what?". 

• It isn't enough to know that something happened. What happened next? What was the result? Who was affected? Was I affected?   
• The story has to have an ending. It has to draw conclusions, and the conclusions need to be believable.  If the program has a week ending, then it feels unsatisfying. Conversely, if it overstates a conclusion, it feels overblown and not believable.

3.  Beware of being too subtle.

• If an exhibit is too subtle, few people will spend enough time with it to get the point. Whether it is a quote or an interview, someone has to tell us something personal that makes us care. If the subject doesn't have anything to say about herself, then others need to say it for her. 

4.  Flashy does not compensate for lack of content

• How many times have you been wowed by something and later could not describe the content? The vehicle has to support the message not mask it. 

What's the lesson to learn from this? Everything requires very careful planning. Ask yourself:

1.  What is my take away message? 
2.  What impact did this have on people? 
3.  Why should anyone care? 
4.   Is the packaging helping or hurting my content? 

When you answer these questions and apply the answers to the museum product, you give the audience/visitors/viewer something profoundly valuable. You give them an experience that they can take away and think about. Something that they can apply to other situations. And you get them coming back for more.