Fair Plunges Students Into the Middle Ages

Sparks flying from their clashing swords, their brows furrowed in furious concentration, the knights faced each other in a fight to the death on the tournament field under the noontime sun.

Again and again they swung and parried, each move drawing lusty cheers and noisy jeers until at last the Green Knight lay mortally wounded at the feet of the knight Nathaniel.

Sounds violent? Perhaps, but judging by the crowd’s reaction it was a welcome way to end an educational unit on medieval culture at the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies on Tuesday.

“This is much bigger than we’ve ever done before,” explained social studies teacher Susan Hostler, who created the program at the Reseda campus seven years ago with colleague Judy Plouff. On Tuesday, the school’s 250 seventh-graders wrapped up a yearlong study of the Middle Ages with a medieval-themed fair, feast and pageant.

“I really think when you experience something you learn it,” Hostler said. “They’re beginning to get an understanding of deep culture, as opposed to superficial culture.”

Helping to bring the Dark Ages alive were performers from Buena Park’s Medieval Times Restaurant such as David Hilliard and Nathan Eakins, who demonstrated period weapons such as the sword, lance, ax and mace in their carefully choreographed duel.

“They’re a lot of fun,” Hilliard, 20, said of the mock battles. “It’s like dancing.”

For the students, the day was an opportunity to show off the customs of the eight cultures they’d been studying at a fair featuring the arts, crafts and cuisine of Europe, Japan, China, Africa and Persia as well as the Incas, Aztecs and Mayans.

“It’s fun because we get to play someone else,” said 12-year-old Brooke Abbott, who portrayed a geisha in a kimono her father purchased in Japan.

Her friend, Emily Altschuler, who dressed as a citizen of medieval Europe with several classmates, said the exercise helped spark their imaginations.

Their characters? “We’re nobility,” she said. “We’re not peasants.”