Wednesday's lesson plan! Pay attention we will have a quiz on this!

Wednesday's lesson plan! Pay attention we will have a quiz on this!

by Mrs. Gonzalez

​Today we will be learning about P.T. Barnum

• Barnum, in full Phineas Taylor Barnum, (born July 5, 1810, Bethel, Connecticut, U.S.—died April 7, 1891, Bridgeport, Connecticut), American showman who employed sensational forms of presentation and publicity to popularize such amusements as the public museum, the musical concert, and the three-ring circus.​

​.......

​"There's a sucker born every minute" is a phrase closely associated with P. T. Barnum, an American showman of the mid-19th century, although there is no evidence that he actually said it.

​P.T. Barnum

• ​P.T. Barnum was known for the so called "Feak show"/"Freak circus" P.T barnum made millions off of showing off these "Exotic" Or "Abnormal" People just for random strangers to stare at them in awe like a flock of sheep.

​The "Freaks"

• ​P.T. Barnum was around in a rough time where society was way more judgemental then nowdays, Some people were even scared of these so called "freaks" but they were just different, Plenty of people made fun or or mocked these "Freaks" because of how they looked.

​Sad backstory about the "freaks" Read the next 4 slides to hear about the sad backstory about the "freaks" and about the P.T barnum circus.

• ​

  Some five decades into his life, Phineas Taylor Barnum from Bethel, Connecticut, had remade himself from his humble beginnings as an impoverished country boy into a showman—indeed the “greatest showman,” as the new musical about his life would say—of his generation.

  Thanks to a combination of brilliant marketing tactics and less-than-upstanding business practices, Barnum had truly arrived, and with his book Humbugs of the World, in 1865, Barnum wanted to inform you, his audience, that he hadn’t achieved his rags-to-riches success story by scamming the public.

​

Some five decades into his life, Phineas Taylor Barnum from Bethel, Connecticut, had remade himself from his humble beginnings as an impoverished country boy into a showman—indeed the “greatest showman,” as the new musical about his life would say—of his generation.

Thanks to a combination of brilliant marketing tactics and less-than-upstanding business practices, Barnum had truly arrived, and with his book Humbugs of the World, in 1865, Barnum wanted to inform you, his audience, that he hadn’t achieved his rags-to-riches success story by scamming the public.

• ​

​

​

As it was “generally understood,” Barnum wrote in the book, the term humbug “consists in putting on glittering appearances—outside show—novel expedients, by which to suddenly arrest public attention, and attract the public eye and ear.” And Barnum wanted to make it clear such a practice was justified. “[T]here are various trades and occupations which need only notoriety to insure success,” he claimed, concluding no harm, no foul, so long as at the end of the day customers felt like they got their money’s worth.

Growing up in the antebellum North, Barnum took his first real dip into showmanship at age 25 when he purchased the right to “rent” an aged black woman by the name of Joice Heth, whom an acquaintance was trumpeting around Philadelphia as the 161-year-old former nurse of George Washington.

By this time, Barnum had tried working as a lottery manager, a shopkeeper and newspaper editor. He was living in New York City, employed at a boarding home and in a grocery store, and was hungry for a money-making gimmick.

sale.

​....

​

​Barnum's career trafficked in curiosities, which he served up to a public hungry for such entertainment, regardless of how factual or ethical such displays were. His legacy in show business stretched from the American Museum to "P. T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome" (the predecessor of “Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey” circus) near the end of his life. Each were full of bigger-than-life ideas marketed to an audience interested in mass, and often crass, entertainment.

"freaks" of nature—were among the most popular traveling entertainments of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,” Reiss explains in his book, but by the time Barnum went on tour with Heth, there was a shift. “[B]y the 1830s the display of grotesquely embodied human forms was for some populist carnivalesque entertainment and for others an offense to genteel sensibilities,” Reiss writes. So while the Jacksonian press in New York, “the vanguard of mass culture,” covered Heth’s shows breathlessly, he found while following Barnum’s paper trail that the more old-fashioned New England press bristled at the display. 

• ​

​Now that we are all done....

• ​I want you to watch this video and make a short summary of what you learned throughout the video once you are done i want you to tell me about what you learned through our lesson today after that you need to put your name and date and the bottom of the sheet and write 4 paragraphs on what you learned all together.

​Copy the link and watch the video all the way through!

​ https://youtu.be/8_4fljgEp_c

​SMALL REMINDER!!

​Girls cheer sighn-up sheets are in the office if you want to register you must get a physical and turn in the form to the office and fill out the form they give you and read all the way through the information sheet office hours are from 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM! If you have any questions or complaints please contact the front desk office at "575-742-6942"

​Have a great day Gattis! -Mrs. Gonzalez