Museums originally were meant to be of use primarily for specialists. The research material collected over years were not exhibited in a manner to facilitate popular education of instruction. The didactic object has now become more important and with this end in view more attractive display is attempted in all progressive museums. To illustrate an idea is now more important than to show comprehensive collections. Exhibits are displayed to stimulate thinking and questioning. The museum worker in India along with other groups of educators would like to develop a scientific attitude of mind in the masses of those who have acquired the habit of visiting museums.
To-day the Government of India and the State Governments are interested in fundamental education to help people who have not had access to formal schooling to understand and solve their immediate problems by their own efforts. As illiterate adults cannot be educated through the written word, substitute methods have to be found for their education through visual aids. Here museums come in as institutions of great utility. Methods of communication which museums have been developing for decades can easily be adapted for fundamental education.
Without our being aware of it, progressive museums have changed their roles. They are no longer store houses of curious objects which really interested a small percent-age of visitors and mildly amused or bored the rest. "Museums in many countries" says a UNESCO pamphlet "can no longer be considered sanctuaries for the connoisseur or specialist. They are actively engaged in revising exhibition policies and relations with the public at large and play a more important role in general education."
In the Madras State, the educational authorities have long recognised that teachers and students could gain a great deal by visits to the museums. From about 1910, the Museum staff used to conduct students from city schools round the galleries of the Museum and popular lectures based on Museum material given by the staff of the Museum were arranged periodically. As the number of schools increased, this service could not be performed adequately by the limited staff of the Museum. From about 1930 onwards the teachers of the schools of the City of Madras were invited to make a general study of fifteen hours duration) of the galleries of the Museum with the help of the Qurators of the various sections. With the greater knowledge gained by this contact with the exhibits, the teachers were themselves expected to take their pupils on conducted visits of the Museum. From 1949 onwards, in addition to the fifteen-hour demonstration course, we organized a somewhat intense though short course in museum technique for teachers of the State. This has been now included in the Second Five-Year Plan of the State Education Department. This book is intended primarily for the use of the teachers under-going the course at the Museum. It is our hope that all good schools will have small museums of their own through the joint efforts of the teachers and students.
The usefulness of educational briefly stated as follows, as a recent writer has done:-museums may be (a) It conveys to the children a greater number of facts in less time than if these were conveyed through words; the information about them can be more easily assimilated by the children.
(b) A number of facts can be presented simultaneously and the relation between them can be presented with clearness.
(c) The teacher and pupil can co-operate in the process of learning.
Impressions obtained in childhood are most vivid and lasting, and to the child's mind, knowledge is most welcome when its acquisition is flavoured with entertainment. The best educational museums therefore provide information to the children in the most attractive form. Children are everywhere admitted free and no pains are spared to make them feel at home in the museum. To make the museum mean the most possible to the child, it has been found advantageous to organise loans of portable exhibits of various categories for use in class rooms. Most of the larger museums of the United States of America have special departments of education which prepare and circulate enormous quantities of material to the schools of the area served by them. School Extension Service has come to be established as part of most museums in the United States of America including even the most conservative ones such as the Metropolitan Museum.
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