- What is the science relevant to understanding the creation of the churn?
- What can the churn teach us about traditional pottery making?
- As an artifact of Reconstruction, what can the churn teach us about building an economy out of the rubble of the Civil War?
- What can we learn about Kline and Brown?
- What can we learn from the Kline and Brown family geneologies? Many of the major pottery-making families operated for generations (some are still continuing a tradition going back well into the 19th Century). Such a study would reveal how these families moved in order to support themselves, and like the Kline and Brown partnership. Members of the Brown family, for instance, helped bring techniques of making pottery with them from North Carolina when they moved into North Georgia after the war.
- What glimpse can the churn provide us of life before electricity?
- What forces in the twentieth century doomed (or perhaps better, marginalized) the way of life represented by the churn?
- Working outside the confines of any single academic department.
- Seeking the expertise of people outside our school community. [In the case of the course about the churn, we would need to see exactly how these potters worked using kick-wheels and locally dug clay.]
- Careful research in libraries and archives.
- Extended time. It would be challenging and likely impossible to do this well in the confines of traditional fifty minute a day classes, particularly when our ability to be flexible and leverage off-campus resources would be so significant.
I am not proposing that everything in our curriculum be taught this way; however, I do believe there is a significant role for this type of course to play. This approach promises deeply engaging, as well as highly relevant, learning.
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