The Teachable Moment
Expanding Children's Understanding of the California Gold Rush
by Barbara Henry
Oakland Museum Chief Curator of Education
©The Museum of California Magazine, Fall 1997, Volume 21, Number 4

Dear Anne Marie,
I wish I could write to you with tales of wealth and prosperity but although they would make for excellent reading, they wouldn't be true. California's a hard place to live. We're moving constantly to try to keep up with the latest finds but, after three months we're still emptyhanded. Warren insists that the next time we move we'll be "rolling in gold," but then, he said that the last time we moved, and the time before that, as I recall. James and Richard are working as hard as they can be expected to. James was sick a while ago, and I feared I would be ending the summer with only one son. He recovered (thank the Lord) and doesn't seem much worse for it. I'll try to write to you as often as I can, but here, even stamps are outrageously expensive! I hope you and mother are well, and send my regards to Sam.

Your sister,

Jane Booker

As this letter attests, most of the eager fortune-seekers who rushed to California in search of gold discovered little more than hardship and disappointment. It's easy to romanticize the Gold Rush 150 years after the fact, but the observations in the letters and diaries of women like Jane Booker bring us face-to-face with the reality of that important era in our state's history.

What's really notable about Jane Booker, however, is that she didn't exist. She was created by Mimi, an eighth-grader in San Diego. Mimi was one of the many students throughout California who field-tested the Oakland Museum of California's new Gold Rush teaching materials, "Myth & Reality: The California Gold Rush and Its Legacy." That Mimi was able to echo the voice of an imaginary, long-gone 49er so accurately means that our curriculum accomplished its most important goal: to make California history live and breathe for our young students.

These students will shape California's future. They will be the stewards of our cultural heritage and natural environment. One of the driving goals of education programming at the Oakland Museum of California always has been to build a sense of connection to the historical, cultural and environmental forces that molded our state. By making children aware of those forces and their legacy, we hope they'll be better prepared to make informed decisions that will shape California's future. As we prepare the three exhibitions and public programs that make up Gold Rush! California's Untold Stories, the museum's commemoration of the 150th anniversary of James Marshall's discovery of gold, we realized that the Gold Rush, an event so momentous that it shaped who Californians are today, offered a perfect "teachable moment." Sharing the resources of these exhibitions-works of art, photographic portraits, journals and artifacts from the Gold Rush-could give thousands of youngsters a more vivid understanding of the character of the Golden State.

The teaching of California history in public schools has been limited almost entirely to the fourth-grade year. That was a good start, but we also wanted to get these resources into the hands of teachers at upper grade levels. We decided to do two things: we'd look at ways to link the Gold Rush experience to social studies, science and language classes as taught in grades eight, ten and eleven, and we'd make sure that whatever materials we developed fit teachers' needs, taking into account the very different concerns of urban, suburban and rural school districts throughout the state.

In the spring of 1996, with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, we met with educators in Fresno, Los Angeles, Oakland, Redding, Sacramento and San Diego. The museum's Education Coordinator, Janet Hatano, Education Associate Margaret Kadoyama, and I listened as teachers stressed the need for primary source materials-that is, artifacts, documents, contemporary accounts, photographs and artwork-which, as they put it, "help students buy into history."

Again and again, educators told us that in order to make history relevant to students' lives, they need materials that reflect the experiences and contributions of people with whom students can identify. Such materials are invaluable in strengthening students' skills in visual literacy and critical thinking. They are especially effective in teaching a diverse student population, including students who speak English as a second language (and more than 100 different languages are spoken by California's 5-million-plus schoolchildren). When you're able to gaze into the eyes of man who survived the journey from China to the fabled "Gold Mountain," or the lined face of a woman who trekked across the country by wagon (daguerreotype portraits of both these 49ers are part of Gold Rush! ), you touch the past in a way that is beyond words.

The power of primary sources is clear. The problem is that teachers don't often have the time or the resources to obtain them. As a result, museums have become vital educational resources for the schools. "We'd developed a strong partnership with the Oakland Public School District, and we'd gained much experience introducing kids to primary source materials through our 'suitcase' exhibits that teachers borrow for their classrooms, and through the many school tours we've conducted," noted Janet Hatano. "We felt confident we could apply our experience to developing a statewide curriculum."

The other major issue was the need to extend the teaching of California history beyond the fourth grade. We're still living with the Gold Rush. That single event introduced an ethnic spectrum to California that rivals almost every state in the country. It created huge social and ethnographic shifts-entire native cultures were displaced as the world literally rushed into the region, and it wasn't unusual for a scruffy man to become wealthy, or for a wealthy man to lose an entire fortune. Gold fever built San Francisco into a prominent industrial city of the West while it irrevocably altered the natural environment.

Yet most adults don't realize the pervasive impact of that slice of time. When we conducted focus groups with the general adult public to assess their understanding of the Gold Rush, we were surprised to learn that their picture was based on textbook history they remembered from fourth grade, combined with romantic images from Hollywood movies. They tended to envision the typical 49er as a young white man who emigrated from the Eastern part of the United States. After we prompted discussion informed by our primary sources-such as first-hand accounts by Chilean and Mexican miners and women-our focus groups were eager to talk about the Gold Rush stories they didn't hear about in fourth grade.

With support from educators and staff from the California Department of Education, we decided to integrate the Gold Rush material into upper-level curriculum units that make up the California Framework, the blueprint for public school study. Just as our Gold Rush! exhibits examine the era from several perspectives-in terms of its art, objects and portraits of its people-we made the Gold Rush experience interdisciplinary, creating lessons related to math, geography and the language arts. With the help of our California Gold Curriculum Advisory Committee, a team of eight writers, and history scholars Jim Rawls, Chuck Wollenberg and Gray Brechin, we developed eight in-depth units for grades four, five, eight, ten and eleven. We ended up with the most ambitious educational endeavor ever undertaken by the museum.

Our overriding goal, however, was to answer the question students ask most: How does what I'm studying relate to me? Taking a cue from our primary source materials, we let the experiences and objects of the Gold Rush speak to students.

Our fourth grade units, for example, were designed to help students grasp the Gold Rush experience as one of hard work, determination, loneliness and unpredictability-in stark contrast to the romantic myth of daily life during this time. In the unit "A Ripping Trip," fourth grade students look at 49ers' diary accounts, news articles and old engravings to gain a feel for the arduous journeys to the gold fields. Imagining themselves as "argonauts," they create journals which document their daily experiences traveling to California. By imagining themselves in situations faced by miners, students, we felt, could begin to grasp the human experience of this great, sweeping event.

Here's a sample reading, from the real-life journal of Mrs. D.B. Bates, wife of a ship captain aboard the Nonantum., excerpted from Jo Ann Levy's book They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush:

"If possible, the nights exceeded in anxiety the days; impenetrable darkness surrounded us, relieved only by sheets of white foam dashing over the bows, as the doomed ship madly plunged into the angry waters. When one sea more powerful than another would strike her, causing her to tremble in every timber, I would grasp my chair, shut my eyes, and think we were fast being engulfed in the sea. Oh, those nights of agony! Never, through all the vicissitudes of after life, will one thought, one feeling, then endured, fade from the volume of memory."

Here are two different perspectives of Mrs. Bates' journey, written as imaginary diary entries by fourth-graders who field-tested our material:

"There is one thing very frightening that happened. There was a fierce storm and the waves were very high. The captain said it was too dangerous for any of the passengers to go above deck. It was hard to eat because the ship was rocking back and forth. I kept hitting my back on the wall. I felt as if I were going to die of all the pain in my back! After a while I hit my head and got knocked out. When I woke I was told that a man was thrown over board. ...I was also told that if I had anything in the cargo hold it was probably destroyed in the storm." (Thomas, a 4th grade Fresno student)

"I saw the most amazing thing today. I saw dolphins, whales, and pelicans flying and diving through the water. I saw sharks, schools of fish, and coral reefs everywhere. I saw turtles and all kinds of shells. The sky was full of blues, purples, and pinks and the water was so bright and clear that you could almost see the fish in the water. It was so beautiful!" (Chantiana, a 4th grade San Diego student)

In other units, we used primary sources as raw material for students to "mine" for information. In "The Diggin's: Daily Life in the Mines," students act as historians. They scrutinize images and documents for evidence of the food, clothing and housing used by the miners, and what they convey about the miners' lives. Equipped with this knowledge, they then become miners and develop a list of provisions. A specially-designed game allows students to acquire Gold Earning Cards-but they may experience a rude awakening when they discover that a single boiled egg costs 75 cents, a barrel of flour, $35. A treasure in gold didn't go very far.

In the tenth grade, students ordinarily study a unit on world issues. We created an complementary unit, "Technology and the Environment: Clashing Priorities," in which students weigh the costs as well as the benefits of mining for gold, and are encouraged to look at the issue from multiple perspectives. Eighth-grade students also explore the issue by simulating a city council meeting to weigh the need and benefits of a mining project twelve miles east of their city. Students argue from the points of view of citizens with different, often conflicting, opinions on the project.

California's growth as a multi-ethnic society is a recurring theme in the Gold Rush materials that culminate in the 11th grade unit "California's Issue in the 1840's, America's Issue in the 1990's." One teacher, Elizabeth Lay of Oakland Technical High School, integrated this unit into students' current events studies related to immigration and civil rights. Eleventh graders are asked to draw parallels between the myths that drew people to California during Gold Rush and those that continue to draw people today.

"People have always come to California in search of wealth and opportunity. This was especially true in the days of the gold rush, it is also true today, partly because California is the home of Silicon Valley," wrote Mike, an 11th grader in San Diego.

Rachel, another San Diego 11th grader, suggested: "A lot of people think that it is always sunny and warm here, but we have all kinds of weather and a lot of natural disasters, too. Exposure to Hollywood makes people think that it is easy to become rich and famous here, but it's not; we have experienced recessions in the past."

Field testing for "Myth and Reality: The California gold Rush and Its Legacy," which began in the spring of 1997, confirmed what we believed all along. As one teacher noted, the "use of primary sources increases realism for children, fosters student awareness of ethnic diversity . . . and reinforces student understanding of events and the real life impact of these experiences on people." Donna Leary, a teacher brought on as special assistant for this project, adds, "Teachers reported an improvement in students' work and credited it to the quality of primary sources they were motivated and excited about doing what they called 'real history.'"

In August of this year, we held a two-day Gold Rush Trainer of Trainers Institute, in which teachers from around the state met with scholars, museum staff and curriculum writers to learn the most effective ways to use the new materials. During the school year, these teachers will train other teachers in their regions. In this way, we can reach tens of thousands of students. We will continue to provide training for teachers throughout next year.

With this project, we have taken a major step forward in making the resources and collections of the Museum of California accessible to teachers and students throughout the state. It is incredibly exciting to know that beginning with this school year, students all over California will benefit from our museum's ability to serve as a truly educational institution, sharing a treasure trove of history to inspire children's curiosity and imagination.

For information about the Oakland Museum of California's Gold Rush Curricula, contact our Education Department: 510/238-3818. Fax: 510/238-7795.

To request a copy of this article, send a check for $2 and your address to Editor, The Museum of California Magazine, c/o Public Information Office, Oakland Museum, 1000 Oak St., Oakland, CA 94607.