By Cathy Spaulding
NORWOOD — Sixth-grader Austin Todd found something strangely familiar while studying a display of items from the Middle East.
“They’ve got a Barbie,” he said, pointing to a perky, busty fashion doll with a pink hijab and big brown eyes.
Austin and other Norwood students found all sorts of fascinating items when the Tommy Franks Traveling Road Show rolled up to their school Thursday. The tractor-trailer rig, which comes from the General Franks Leadership Institute and Museum in Hobart, showcases cultural, geographical and social items from 24 Middle East and African countries. An Oklahoma native, Franks led American and Coalition troops into Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq. Items in the museum and the traveling educational program are from Franks’ personal collection.
Carolyn Jameson, an educator with the traveling show has visited 77 school districts across Oklahoma. It spent Thursday at Norwood School and will go to Tahlequah Public Schools today.
She told Norwood sixth-graders, “We don’t have everything here, just a sampling.”
Austin looked around at Franks’ formal military uniform, a Kenyan drum, Quran, a white cotton dress from Eritrea and an Sudanese jungle pillow that looks like something found on a shoe repair shop.
The Barbie doll on display was Fulla, a fashion doll marketed to girls of Islamic tradition. The doll dresses modestly.
Students passing through the glass-encased exhibits were given a list of questions such as “Who is the king of Jordan?” and “What is the capital of Egypt? Each question had a number of the case where the answer is found.
“The main thing we go over is the culture, not so much the wars going on,” Jameson said.
She said the most surprising thing students tend to learn is the low life expectancy rate and the high rate of illiteracy in the Middle East and Africa. She said the life expectancy ranges from 42 to 64. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says life expectancy in the United States is 77.7 years.
Norwood students in different grade levels, from eighth to first, spent 50 minutes visiting the exhibit.
Louis Bohanon, who teaches sixth grade and social studies said seventh graders could especially learn from the exhibit. He said their world geography class focuses on the eastern hemisphere. Sixth graders learn about the western hemisphere, he said.
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