Fifth-grader Ansel Turner knelt on the ground in the center of a room in the Campus School of Smith College that was transformed into a medieval banquet hall on Friday. The walls were adorned with student-painted shields and a few dozen students all wore felt tunics.
“I, squire Ansel, hereby vow,” he said, reading from a piece of paper made to look like a scroll. He proceeded to pledge to be more organized and argue with his sister less.
“In the name that is all good I dub you knight,” declared fifth-grade teacher Emily Endris.
Wearing a floor-length dress and a tall, ornate hat, she gently touched the sword to Turner’s shoulder.
One by one, students went through the ritual announcing vows like helping others, staying loyal to friends and promising to get along better with siblings.
The fifth-graders have been studying the European Middle Ages as part of the social studies curriculum.
“This is about acknowledging their effort,” fifth-grade teacher Paul Matylas said.
It’s somewhat of a tradition at the school. “This is an annual event — long-standing,” Matylas explained.
As part of the unit, students wrote research reports.
Giada Mason focused on Joan of Arc. “She was really interesting,” Mason said while standing in the hallway dressed in a black and gold sparkly dress. She explained she was impressed to learn that Arc’s bravery inspired art. “My favorite (fact) was that she wore armor, and that was illegal for women,” she said.
Hazel Neuburger wrote a report on women’s rights in the Middle Ages.
What stood out to Neuburger was how many rules there were, such as no scratching your head at the table, she said.
She remarked, “They were outrageous!”
“I’m also a big feminist,” she explained.
Nico Bonin liked learning about heraldry, the study of coats of arms, and going to the Worcester museum to see real armor.
That was one of several educational outings. Students went to the Smith College Museum of Art to see medieval-era paintings and to Helen Hills Chapel to hear from Rabbi Rhonda Shapiro-Rieser and look at two torahs, Matylas said.
The class also took a trip to the Mortimer Rare Book Collection at Smith College to look at a book from medieval ages made of parchment paper. Students talked about bookmaking and all the jobs that went into it.
“It’s amazing to see be able to see something that roughly 600 years old and it’s still completely intact,” Matylas said. It creates a reverence for book, he added.
Matylas hopes to teach students about the importance of perspective in history and to encourage them to question who is telling the story and how they are presenting it.
For example, in talking about the fall of the Roman empire, an event that marks the start of the middle ages, students looked at the word “barbarian” Matylas said.
Students examined the question: who decided barbarian meant something good or bad, and why?
“How is it the barbarians got a bad name, or Germanic tribes as we now call them … Who had control of that language?” asks Matylas.
To try to answer those questions, the class looked at history from the Germanic tribe perspective and also talked about stereotypes of the group.
Talking about gender roles and inequity during the time period can also be tricky, Matylas said. Though the students were knighted on Friday, he said he reminded them that back in medieval times, the focus of the ceremony would have been on men. “This was allowed for a very small group of people,” he said.
Students said they felt proud after their knighting. Neuburger felt “kind of like a new person.” Those feelings are probably historically accurate, since knighting meant one moved up a rank in the Middle Ages, Will Epstein chimed in.
After the students were knighted, they went back to their classroom to put on more knightly attire. Wearing colorful tunics and hat and floral crowns on their heads they processed through the hallway into the banquet hall for a celebratory feast.
Lights were dimmed and electronic candle sticks glowed atop the table. Students sat at two long tables as parents served them food.
“Would you like some meatballs, squire?” a parent dressed in a brown, hooded tunic asked students, carrying a plate of food.
Most students ate their food with utensils, but Bonin, clad in a silver tunic and blue hat, ate from his wooden plate with his hands. Admitting that his parents would not be very happy, he explained his choice, “In medieval times, no one took the care to make utensils,” he said.
That actually may have depended on the person. Some wealthy people in the Middle Ages used spoons and small forks, according to Smithsonian Magazine.
Greta Jochem can be reached at gjochem@gazettenet.com