Eyeballing the 18th-century carding machine at Slater Mill in downtown Pawtucket Wednesday are Jenks students (front to back) Alan Benoit, Charles Correa and Andre Bland, At rear, city educator Michael Connolly answers questions. Times Photo/Butch Adams 

By DONNA KENNY KIRWAN

PAWTUCKET — It’s one thing to read about the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in a history book.

It’s quite another to see the handwritten documents that lead to it, hear the loud clacking of early textile machinery and stand near the same river where ships carrying cotton and fabric came and went centuries ago.
With the Slater Mill museum and new Jencks Education Center nearby, a group of history teachers at the city’s three junior high schools thought it would make sense to weave these facilities into a comprehensive lesson for eighth grade students.
Michael Connolly, coordinator of applied learning for the city School Department, said that to better prepare the students for the “common tasks” and new curriculum standards at the high school level, the junior high school teachers developed a new history course called “America in the Industrial Revolution.”
As part of that course, all of the eighth grade classes at the city’s three junior high schools, including special education and English as a second language (ESL) students, have been scheduled to visit Slater Mill’s Fiber Arts Education Center, where they will get an up close and personal view of how the textile industry began.
On Tuesday, Allen McGillivray, a senior interpreter at Slater Mill, led a group of students from Jenks Junior High through the various exhibits, explaining the significance of the mill and the city itself to America’s Industrial Revolution.
Speaking in an animated style, McGillivray, a former Johnston High School social studies teacher, brought the students from the very beginning —  when the wealthy Moses Brown first contacted Samuel Slater about building a textile mill in Rhode Island —- through completion: the nation’s first textile mill with machinery that could mass-produce a product formerly made by hand.
McGillivray showed the students 250-year-old letters from Brown and Slater discussing plans for the textile mill, as well as early drawings of what the building would look like.
He demonstrated some of the early tools, such as the fine wire paddles known as “cards” that were used for hand-combing wool. At the same time, he explained how this concept was enlarged onto wire rollers in the mill’s first “carding” machine.
In a similar fashion, McGillivray pointed to a spinning wheel, then showed how its basic function was built into a powerful loom, capable of producing in minutes a piece of woven fabric that would have taken hours to make by hand.
He switched on the loom, which also produced a loud clattering, and told the students to imagine what it would have sounded like to the mill workers with 100 of the same machines operating simultaneously.
McGillivray also pointed out the dark side of the Industrial Revolution, noting its links with slavery, the dangerous conditions and long hours experienced by mill workers, and the prevalence of child labor.
To show why Brown and Slater chose the site, McGillivray took the students outside to point out how boats could sail up the river from the south to a point just beyond the mill’s falls to deliver loads of cotton. From about the same spot, other vessels could pick up finished cloth for export to Europe and places beyond.
He then took them into the wheel room to show how the rushing river water was used to power the machinery.
When it was over, it was clear that the hour-long lesson had left a lasting impression on the students, in a way that went well beyond what a textbook can offer.
“This gets me more interested,” said Carlos Rojas.
Canaya McDonald agreed, saying, “Seeing everything in person like this is better than just reading about it.”
 “The images help you figure it out more,” said Kendall Brown after viewing some of the mill’s textile machinery.
Alan Benoit also enjoyed the visit, adding that he had found the water wheel and the letter from Moses Brown to Samuel Slater the most interesting parts of the tour.
Teacher JoAnne Pontifice was one of the educators who developed the course. On Wednesday, she cited the boon of having an important historical site at the students’ disposal. “Pawtucket is famous as being the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution,” she said. “The kids don’t realize what they have right here in their backyard.”
Pontifice thought it was important to show the students artifacts that help them “recognize how our ancestors toiled to make our country great -- and how they overcame obstacles and used ingenuity to create machinery that in turn made products that benefited the entire country.”