Keeping up with the Joneses was an American pastime during the 1980s – more specifically, keeping up with the adventures of Indiana Jones on the big screen. The original film in the popular series, Raiders of the Lost Ark, earned $209 million upon its initial release in 1981, and the subsequent prequel (Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom) and sequel (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) likewise ruled the domestic box office, respectively scoring $179 and $197 million each.
Conceived by Star Wars guru George Lucas and influenced by his love for 1940s serials, each installment was a rollercoaster of thrills as Indiana Jones traveled around the world searching for ancient artifacts. Old time movies were just one of George Lucas’ many passions, however, and in the early 1990s he created a television series based on the character – The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles – as a way to satisfy his love for history.
“I have an educational foundation working with interactive projects, and I got this idea to get kids involved in history through the Young Indiana Jones character,” Lucas said at the time. “The turn of the century is my favorite part of history because it has so much to do with the emergence of the modern age we live in today. It seemed like such a great idea and such an interesting adventure that I just got lured into it by the creative potential.”
It was the educational potential of the series that lured South Carolina school teacher Thomas Riddle, who tuned in for the premier of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles on March 4, 1992. “As I watched that night, I began to imagine how I could teach my students by using this TV series, jotting down notes and ideas along the way,” he explained in a three-part blog post on Imagineering Education in March 2022. “Two weeks later I taught my first lesson with Young Indy, and from there, I never looked back.”
Riddle recorded each new episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and then rewatched them numerous times while crafting lesson plans around the narratives. “Whenever the show featured topics or events that were appropriate to what I was teaching, I would use that episode in class,” he wrote. “As a teacher, I loved it. But more importantly, my students did too, and were more engaged in the content they were learning because of it.”
The 1999 release of the series on VHS offered new opportunities for Thomas Riddle. Each original hour-long episode had been paired with another – creating a feature-length film in the process – and Riddle crafted new lesson plans to reflect the format change. Riddle was promoted to assistant principal the following year but continued to push The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles as an education tool not just in his own school district but others in the region as well.
In 2007, Thomas Riddle was named the social studies coordinator for Greenville County Schools in South Carolina and its 70,000 students. Part of his duties was providing assistance to middle and high school teachers and the subsequent release of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles on DVD provided an ideal opportunity. Not only did the three-volume set contain the twenty-two feature length films from the VHS release but included ninety documentaries on the real world historical events contained in the narratives.
“As the new Social Studies coordinator, I would be able to share what I knew to be an incredible educational resource with teachers in all of our schools,” Riddle later explained. “With this in mind, I developed a plan for a district-wide program that would allow middle and high school students to explore the past with Young Indy as their guide while also creating an interactive museum-style exhibit based on the real historical events experienced by our favorite fictional archaeologist.” He named the project Walking through Time with Indiana Jones.
Thomas Riddle spent a large portion of the school year conducting workshops for social studies teachers on how to incorporate The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles into their lesson plans. He also assisted the students participating in the museum exhibit – each was tasked with selecting a real world topic from the television series, research the historical significance, and then create a display using artifacts, documents, and visual aids.
The Roper Mountain Science Center in Greenville, South Carolina, was selected as the site for Walking through Time with Indiana Jones. Riddle worked with the facility’s staff to craft hands-on experiences that both utilized the center’s existing resources and were related to the adventures of Indiana Jones. On May 10, 2008, approximately two thousand visitors from the Carolinas and Georgia then descended on Roper Mountain for the largest single-day event in the institution’s history.
“From trekking through the indoor rainforest and digging for fossils in the Paleo Lab, to mapping an archaeological site and learning ancient hunting techniques, adventurers both young and old were provided hands-on activities that left more than one participant claiming, ‘I feel like Indiana Jones!’” Thomas Riddle wrote on Imagineering Education.
The museum displays created by students were sprinkled throughout Roper Mountain and focused on Ancient China, Ancient Greece, World Mythology, Teddy Roosevelt and the Conservation Movement, the Harlem Renaissance, the Suffrage Movement, Innovations in Transportation, World War I, and World War II.
The success of Walking through Time with Indiana Jones inspired Thomas Riddle to continue his efforts to promote The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles as an education tool with an Adventures in Learning with Indiana Jones website co-created with fellow South Carolina teacher and web designer Wes Dodgens.
“As our online presence grew, we began to connect with fellow educators around the world who shared our interest in teaching with Indy and we were heartened to hear from so many that found our resources useful for their classrooms,” Riddle explained on Imagineering Education. “We also enjoyed connecting with many educators who were unfamiliar with the Young Indy series prior to finding our website but were now not only fans, but were also using the films and documentaries in class.”
In the television series, Indiana Jones encounters various influential figures from the early part of the twentieth century, including T.E. Lawrence, Charles de Gaulle, Albert Schweitzer, and Theodore Roosevelt.
“I’m not telling you the story of Teddy Roosevelt in fifteen minutes,” George Lucas told the New York Times in 1992. “All I’m doing is introducing him to you. All I’m saying is that this man is Teddy Roosevelt. The idea is obviously interactive. The idea is for the viewer to say, ‘I’m interested in that character. I want to read more about him.’ The show is designed to spark the imagination and curiosity of students and just acquaint them, on the barest level, with these figures.”
Thomas Riddle not only recognized what George Lucas was attempting with The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles but expanded upon it as well, introducing students to the factual adventures of Theodore Roosevelt – and a plethora of other historical figures – side-by-side with the fictional adventures of Indiana Jones. As a result, keeping up with the Joneses became an educational, as well entertaining, American pastime.
Anthony Letizia