A History of Poop, an Introduction

Whether you call it poo, poop, a number 2 or something else, we tend not to think too much about it after we’ve flushed it away, but there is actually a lot to be learnt from poop. If your is learner fascinated by poop, toilets and all things yucky then this is the class for them. This introduction class will encourage learners to think about what we can learn about the past from poop and toilets. 

In this class, we will learn about how people in the past went to the toilet. We will look at toilets and toileting habits from the Roman period, from the Middle Ages and from the Victoria  Era. It’s not all just yucky stuff though - there is real history and information to be learnt from studying poop and toilets. We will talk about how toilets affected the health of different communities, look at how social status impacted on toilets (and health) and even touch on the history of science. In this class, learners will practice interpreting different artefacts (toilets), make predictions, ask questions, give their opinions and begin to think about how toilets have changed throughout time.

We will look at different images and accounts of toilets from these time periods and use a discussion based approach to come to conclusions about what the toilets can tell us about different time periods. The class will use a variety of primary and secondary sources to inform our discussion, and discussions will take a historical approach.

No prior knowledge is needed for this class - just an enthusiasm for all things yucky! It is helpful if your learner has a vague understanding of time - for example can understand that dinosaurs weren’t around 200 years ago and that 2000 years ago is different from 1000 years ago.