Jim:

        I remember when I was a kid.  I wanted to do what everyone else was
doing.  I wouldnot have been comfortable saying I don't want to when most
of the class is doing something.

        Re: privacy.  What adults do, they do knowingly.  But we can and
often do lead kids into things that they really haven't the experience to
evaluate for themselves.

        My point has really been that those who do genealogy are to be
commended and that family history is very important to the individual and
as material for our historical societies and for historians.  I have great
respect for genealogy.

        The goal of a local history project should be to give kids the
opporunity to learn about the community, to make a research plan, to amass
and then evaluate material, to organize an end project, possibly to work
with others, to write or speak or create using the material gathered, and
to bring the project to a final conclusion.

        There are a great many very important and useful local and regional
history topics around which these skills can be mustered.

        Carol Kammen