Introducing Freeman Tilden [Guest Post!]

This month I will be doing something different. I decided to reach out to my community of friends who also blog about things historical and try to tap into resources that are not always available to me. Besides, it is always neighborly to ask friends to mutually enhance our respective audiences and appeal. Classic win-win. This post is written by Hilary Grabowska, who I met working at Harpers Ferry NHP and writes about history on her blog at History with Hilary. She will be introducing Freeman Tilden and I will be getting into his landmark book "Interpreting Our Heritage" in a later post this year but I have some other things to cook up before I get there. But until then please enjoy her post...

"The chief aim is not instruction but provocation.” –Freeman Tilden

The National Park Service was established in 1916, 99 years ago. Initially, the Army sent troops out to protect and manage the 14 parks and 21 monuments, and it was these men who developed the roads and buildings in the parks. The Army was in charge until Stephen T. Mather became the first director of the National Park Service and he developed the park system to conserve as well as attract tourists. Mather’s program was charged “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” (http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/hisnps/npshistory/npshisto.htm)

From nps.gov

Over the course of the National Park Service history, education about the parks became a critical function but, as a 1929 Education Division guideline stated, “Our function lies rather in the inspirational enthusiasm which we can develop among our visitors. Beware of merely giving names or introducing a great number of irrelevant observations. ”

Freeman Tilden was born in Massachusetts and was brought up in a writing family; his first job was writing book reviews for his father’s newspaper. As an adult, he was a novelist and a playwright until he tired of fiction. At the suggestion of NPS Director Newton B. Drury, Tilden began to write about the parks.

From nps.gov

From amazon.com

His extensive travel in the parks as well as his book, The National Parks: What They Mean to You and Me, qualified him to be selected to conduct a study of Park Service interpretation by Director Conrad L. Wirth. “Freeman Tilden was chosen for this unusual assignment because of his perceptive understanding of the purposes of the National Park System. We expect him to re-examine every phase of our interpretive work and its objectives; to analyze the many interpretive methods used; and to formulate recommendations directed toward improvement.” (History News, 10, No. 9  July 1955, 33-34)

After completing his study, Tilden wrote Interpreting Our Heritage, the first work to define interpretation as a profession. Tilden examined methods of interpretation and set down a guide of Six Principles:

1.       Interpretation should be personal to the audience. 

2.       Information, as such, is not interpretation. 

3.       Interpretation is an art and any art is in some degree teachable.

From Npshistory.com

4.       The chief aim of interpretation Is not instruction, but provocation.

5.       Interpretation should aim to present a whole rather than a part.

6.       Interpretation addressed to children should not be a dilution of the presentation to adults.

Tilden’s book is a “Park Service Bible” that every interpreter needs to read. Too much information and an endless list of facts can be tiresome to the visitor. Children learn very differently than do adults. And every visitor wants their experience at the park to be special, meaningful and memorable.