Chapter | Teaching yourself to teach with objects | John Hennigar SHUH | 1982

Shuh introduces a very practical approach with the example of 50 ways to look at a Big Mac Box, which is accessible and can easily be implemented, adapted, and combined with other activities. Specifically, this activity consists of a list of 50 questions ranging from “What are this object’s measurements? Height, weight, diameter?” to “What does this object tell us about the people who use it, the people who pass it out, and our society in general?”.

Shuh’s article is especially interesting because he highlights the value of using contemporary objects in one's teaching: not as a make-do (for example in the cases where you have no access to historical or scientific collections). Shuh presents contemporary objects as necessary to gain experience with objects and trust them as a legitimate source of knowledge.

One question that I had after reading Shuh's article was: what makes an object an object? Sounds a bit silly maybe, but when Shuh mentions living turtles as actors in his object-based teaching and learning (OBTL) practice, I just wondered. Are living species objects?