Edutopia - October/November 2008 - (Page 18)

HeadofClassJTravel Witchin’ Ways: The Salem Witch Museum was once the town church. Many upstanding members of the community were accused of Satanic doings, and church membership was no protection. Stay for a and scholarship when dealing with Spell Salem blends schmaltz its infamous witchcraft trials. By James Daly I t’s amazing, the craziness that overwrought teenage girls can cause. It was more than forty years ago today that shrieking tweens sent America into orbit about the Beatles. (One writer famously observed that the caterwauling sounded like a jet plane taking off.) Before that, there was a similar fuss about a skinny guy from Jersey named Sinatra. But the most notorious episode of pubescent female hysterics occurred more than 300 years ago in the rolling farmlands north of Boston, when a handful of girls, ages 9–20, launched an infamous chapter in American history: the Salem witch trials. And there is no better time to explore those events than during October, when the weeks leading up to the Halloween season send this seaport city into a full-ﬂight autumnal reverie. (Check out the Web site Salem Haunted Happenings, at hauntedhappenings.org, for a comprehensive list of events.) The story of the trials began in early 1692 at the home of Samuel Parris, pastor of Salem Village, when Betty Parris, 9, and her cousin Abigail Williams, 12, began to have inexplicable and cataclysmic ﬁts. The girls screamed, slipped into trances, crawled on all fours, contorted their faces and bodies, and shrieked that they were being pricked by unseen pins. Some historians attribute the behavior to the Parris’s slave, Tituba, who read tea leaves, practiced voodoo, and told spectacular tales that mesmerized the girls. Before long, other young women in the village demonstrated similar behavior. When the Reverend Parris proclaimed the children victims of witchcraft, he set off an outbreak of panic and hysteria, and the arrests and trials began with a fury. By summer, more than 160 people had been accused and most were imprisoned. Before the madness subsided later that year, 19 women and men had been hanged at Gallows Hill, several others had died in prison, and an 80-year-old man was crushed to death under heavy stones for refusing to stand trial. Though the iconic story of the Salem witch trials may be well known, the realities are far more interesting: Frances Hill’s A Delusion of Satan is essential reading for those who want to know more. When completely described, the trials are a tale of land disputes, social prejudice, bitter family rivalries, intimidation, sexual repression, and the Reverend Parris’s attempts to hold onto his job. In fact, many of the things you think you know about the trials may be dead wrong. None of the accused witches were burned. (That was a European twist.) Some of the accusers later admitted they were wrong and made public apologies. The fear of witches was not ubiquitous; in nearby Boston, the townspeople thought the folks around Salem 18 EDUTOPIA OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2008 GETTY IMAGES http://www.hauntedhappenings.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Edutopia - October/November 2008

Edutopia - October/November 2008 Contents UpFront Feedback Dispatches Sage Advice Ask Ellen Head of Class Cool Schools Design: Lessons from the Mall The Bucks Start Here Go Global: Virgil Rocks Big Ideas: Powerful Learning Mapping Their Futures Heart & Soul Pop Quiz: Suze Orman

Edutopia - October/November 2008

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