Who Deserves a Memorial? A Classroom Project From the National Mall

What stories remain untold on the National Mall? In the summer of 2023, a temporary outdoor exhibition asked artists that question. It works just as well in a classroom — it is another way of asking who, or what, deserves a memorial — and the National Mall's education rangers offer a project built around it.

Beyond Granite: Pulling Together

From August to September 2023, Beyond Granite: Pulling Together placed six works of art across the National Mall, with performances and programs alongside. It was presented by the Trust for the National Mall with the National Capital Planning Commission and the National Park Service, and each artist answered the same question.

Two of the works, and how they used their places:

Where a work stands is part of what it says, and on the Mall — among the country's most prominent memorials — that is especially true. The exhibition's site, beyondgranite.org, shows all six.

A classroom project: design a memorial

The question fits any grade. One way to run it, from a local school the rangers worked with (middle school, and also done with elementary students):

1. Ask what people or events should be memorialized.
2. Choose a subject from the history curriculum.
3. Persuade: write a piece convincing people to visit the new memorial.
4. Design and build it, against a rubric listing the required elements — which makes it work across subjects: history, writing, art, design.
5. Present: rangers visited the school to see the displays and talk with the students about their choices.

Past student designs honoured, among others, Central High School, Queen Liliʻuokalani, and Rosie the Riveter.

Monument Lab, a partner in Beyond Granite, publishes a guide for students exploring monuments — useful for national memorials and for the ones in your own town.

Get the rangers involved

The National Mall's education team will help: an introductory lesson on memorials to get students thinking about ideas and symbolism, and they would like to see what the students create. Contact them through National Mall and Memorial Parks.

Sources

Written from "NAMA Notebook: Beyond Granite," National Mall and Memorial Parks, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.