This is not a library!

This post is a bit out of order, given that the last one takes us to the end of the book, but indulge me here. I wanted to discuss what Dana has to say about museums and education-- a topic obviously relevant to this course. Some of what I noticed about these sections are similar to comments we've made all semester about what a visionary Dana was. He accurately predicted many of the educational practices that have now long been a part of museum work, such as the suggestion that "the teachers in all schools will be given courses of lessons on the use in the classroom of illustrative material of whatever kind they need and the museum can furnish" (189). Sounds like teacher training (and possibly curricula generation!) to me, but Dana goes further than things museums have actually done at present with some of this statements. He's rather ambitious at times, and it would certainly be interesting to see what he would have to say about museums today. Would he be disappointed that we do not have a branch museum in every school (189), or that most modern museums are not "very much like a lending library" (191) ?

Of all the staggeringly accurate statements Dana makes in this book, his final section on education is the most impressive. He writes that "a museum is not a school; it cannot afford to become a school," (196) and while he probably have meant "afford" in a basic, monetary sense, I think there is so much truth in that statement taken another way. One of the reasons I am interested in museum education is that there is more flexibility in a museum to find out what works (as well as what does not) in terms of how people learn-- to study processes associated with learning, to experiment with new methods, and to make changes based on those findings. Not that there is never innovation in the traditional educational system, but it seems that the basic structure is unchanging. Students may try any number of new activities or systems, but the pattern of lectures directed at rows of desks seems permanent. Dana wrote in 1928 that lectures "are generally thought to be quite the most ineffective form of educational effort" (195). Museum education is an area that can break away from that pattern. A museum can be a tremendous resource for traditional educational structures, but it can also create very different learning experiences.

I am amazed by Dana's proclamation that a museum is not a school, and should not try to take the place of one. Though the course that museums have taken into the 21st century is not necessarily the one Dana envisioned, they embody a number of his hopes. They may not be touchable libraries with satellite sites in every school, but they have embraced the educational mission to the extent that it forms the basis for the definition of a museum. Whatever judgment Dana might pass on museums today, I am sure he would appreciate that.

(Yes, if anyone is familiar, this post title is a reference to 1990s Nickelodeon programming, just so you know!)