Exercise 28 Word choice Revise the following passage to streamline wordy sentences and correct problems with word choice.
It seems as though the field of museum studies has broadened its mandate in recent years. When presenting the history of a historic house or cultural site to the public, education directors now try to include the perspectives of a variety of men connected with the routine, day-to-day life of the site, not just its wealthy property owner or famous resident. An example of this inclusion of multiple perspectives can be seen in the interpretation of sites along Boston's Freedom Trail. At Paul Revere's house, an education program has been built around the life of Paul Revere's children to show what children's lives were like during colonial times. Another program gives the situation of newly arrived immigrants who lived in Revere's neighborhood in the next century in what became known as the North End, which was at the northern tip of the city. At the Old South Meeting House, school visitors are asked to presume the identities of a range of colonial Boston's inhabitants, who go beyond the usual circle of male whites of British descent who thought the world revolved around them. As the students role-play Patriots and Loyalists debating about the proper response to England's tea tax, they also consider who would never in a million years have been let in to the meeting at Old South, and why. Students hear the perspective of an African American freeman, a poor Irish immigrant, a slave, and a woman. Programs at other sites are about the lives of African American women such as the poet Phyllis Wheatley, young domestics who kept the home fires burning, and laborers who farmed the property or kept it in working order. It is now recognized by museum curators that these people's experiences are also worthy of study and interpretation. And it's about time. Not only have educators at historic sites tended to expand their programs to include the people of all ages and stations in life, no matter how humble, associated with a property, but the idea of what constitutes a historic site has also evolved at this point in time to include slave quarters, worker housing where laborers lived, and places of cultural importance such as schools and town squares. These programs attempt to address the questions What in heaven's name is history? and In service of whose history do we apply our studious mental efforts?
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