After going to the McLean County Museum I learned a few things. I learned that McLean was more eclectic than i gave it credit. I didn't realize that there were so many different groups of people collected in the heart of Illinois such as German, Irish, African, Yankees, and upland southerners. it also made me laugh when i read about how the German's thought that alcohol was essential makes me proud to be a pure German!

Things like that little tid bit of information is important to know about the area in which you live. i think its important because the more educated you are the more connected to your location. I think that after visiting something like this it made me appreciate my heritage and where i have essentially grown up my whole life a little more. then you ask, why haven't i visited something like this before. and my answer is blunt, because its not that crucial for my every day life, and when i was younger it was boring. I think of something like that now through the eyes of a future educator. i see it as an opportunity to get students within my classroom active in their histories, and interacting with history. But when i was younger and still today that isn't how i was taught therefore that kind of stuff wasn't familiar to me.

Politics and history of anything connect, not only politics and McLean county. the root of our nations development and McLean counties development is based on the struggles of past politicians, and government to get it to the place that its at now. And learning about the smaller areas of politics/government that occurred in McLean county make the larger scheme of things make sense.

My additional thought about the museum is that its overall layout was very cool. i can see myself wanting to bring student that will one day be in my classroom to something similar to that. it didn't sugar coat things (KKK outfit, ew!) and it was a real eye opener.