Thirty years of museum education: Some reflections

The InternationalJournal of Museum Management and Curatorship (1982), I, 213-230. 0 1982 Butterworths

Thirty Years of Museum Education: Some Reflections

DONALD MOORE

The three decades 1950-1980 might be termed the ‘didactic period’ in the history of museum development not merely in Europe but all over the world. A movement of evangelical fervour for the recognition of the educational purpose of museums burst forth in the early 1950s and, one after another, museums small and large vied with each other in setting up ‘Schools Services’. The thoroughness of the operation varied according to the political philosophy of the country concerned. In the United Kingdom, for example, development was gradual and piecemeal: some areas were covered twice over, others not at all. In the German Democratic Republic, the matter was regulated by a comprehensive law which laid down content and method for the whole country.’ In the newly-independent countries of Central Africa it was a matter ofestablishing a National Museum first, but that was not considered complete until an education service was added.2 The protagonists had a passionate belief in the value of

museums and galleries for educational experience, whether as a structured part of formal education, or as an informal process of individual self-improvement. It was essentially a gospel of the real thing. Museum instruction was intended to supplement, even at times replace the verbal and theoretical approach which dominated most education.

There was an eagerness after the war to rebuild the educational system and to use new methods and ideas in doing so. Wartime experience had made both victors and vanquished more appreciative of their material environment and especially those things which stood for culture and refinement. There was then a greater distinction between objects which were ordinary and consumable and those which were rare and precious. Many of the latter had been locked away in mountain caverns or hidden in museum basements during hostilities and people were anxious to see their ‘heritage’ again. Museums were emerging from a period of enforced inactivity. Curators were keen to get on with the job of curating and did not all look with favour on tasks which diverted their energies. Educationalists, on the other hand, could see the relevance of the resources of museums and art galleries for the improvement of education both in childhood and later life. Here were two dedicated professions assuming conflicting roles, the one seeking to conserve and the other to consume.

In the United Kingdom the early museum educationalists felt themselves a small and winnowed minority in the museum world, expecting and often receiving a hostile reception from their curatorial colleagues. They banded themselves together in an organization called the Group for Children’s Activities in Museums, later the Group for Educational Services in Museums (GESM), and finally in the present Group for Education in Museums (GEM). These subtle changes in phraseology indicated the shifts of emphasis which were going on in the period concerned. The GEM today (1982) has 3.50 members, about half institutional and half individual; it publishes an annual Journal and a quarterly Newsletter.3 The pioneers pressed on from day to day, with grand ambitions, hazy objectives, and tiny resources. They were under pressure from themselves and their clients to produce quick and spectacular

214 Thirty Years of Museum Education

results and almost never had enough time and energy to sit and think about the effectiveness of what they had done or the feasibility of the tasks which they had set themselves. They did, at last, by sheer industry succeed in gaining the sympathetic attention of the educational establishment on the one hand and the museum profession on the other. In the late sixties and early seventies a spate of official reports showed that the movement had earned acceptance, in Britain at least.

What is Museum Education?

Before going further it is wise to describe, if not define museum education. Museums and galleries are concerned with original objects, mainly threw-dimensional. Their tasks are to collect, preserve, study and display various kinds of objects. An educational role is implicit in ‘display’, but the first three aims have to be fulfilled before it is possible to show or explain things to the public. Among museum curators there are differences of opinion on the nature and importance of their educational role. The attitude of many is reflected in a report on the British Museum in 1969: ‘A very large part of the work of the Museum is already directly educational through the scholarly work and research of the Keepers and their staff; through its publications; through the response given to enquiries by students and members of the public and through the lecture service’.4 At the time these words were written, the British Museum was exceptional among the larger museums of the United Kingdom in not having a formally constituted education service offering specific facilities to teachers or pupils; this omission was remedied as a result of the report and the first full-time education officer was appointed. The National Museum of Wales, founded in 1907 was described at its formal opening in 1927 as ‘in the fullest sense a popular university’. Its purpose was ‘to teach the world about Wales and the Welsh people about their own Fatherland’.s This was over twenty years before its Schools Service was founded, but even in those days its curatorial staff had begun to send out loan collections, give lectures in schools and demonstrations and classes in the museum.

If museums and galleries were so full of educational purpose and in their own view so successful in fulfilling it, why the clamour for educational services? There were two reasons: the outside world did not share the same opinion, and even if the opportunities were present, some organized method was needed to make them known and used. The depressing description of museums given by John Cotton Dana in his little book The Gloam of the ~~~e~~ (Vermont, 1917) was by no means the norm thirty years ago, but it lived on in popular folklore and that was enough to create a reluctance to visit among many members of the public. But there is a paradox here. Personal observation of any national or large provincial museum on a Saturday afternoon, wet or fine, will testify to the presence of hordes of children, few, if any, in organized classes. Sir John Wolfenden, Director of the British ‘Museum, was clearly correct in his foreword to That Nub/e Cabkt in 1973, when he raised the question: ‘Is the British Museum for the scholar or for the general public?’ He continued: ‘As this book clearly shows, it is for both, and for many other categories of person, too, who occupy places on the spectrum between the world famous scholar at one end and the rampageous schoolchild at the other’.6 *~use~rns and galleries are an enormous attraction to the young. Many adults regard them mainly as ‘somewhere to take the children’. Children come too, in small groups with friends of their own age. It is not easy to give figures because institutions do not always publish a full breakdown of their attendance statistics. Such information is more successfully extracted from museums where admission fees oblige a detailed record to be kept, as for example in the Welsh Folk Museum, near Cardi@. Admittedly that is a special sort of place, since in addition to conventional gallery displays it

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has numerous reconstructed buildings in parkland. There the proportion of juveniles attending is between one third and one half. Incidentally, the total number of visitors in 1977-78 was 284,000, more than twice that of ten years previously.’

It might seem self-evident that curators should take into account the need to communicate with children when preparing their displays, but thirty years ago there were many displays in all kinds of museum which seemed to be designed only to record research for the interest of professional colleagues elsewhere. Among the national museums in the United Kingdom, the

Pupils in a museum gallery. A class from the Corona School, Ikoyi, visiting a gallery of Benin bronzes at the Nigerian Museum, Lagos, 1970. The Nigerian Museum.

children’s gallery in the London Science Museum was regarded as a daring and rather questionable experiment. However, in another part of London there was a place proverbial for its popularity with children and for the variety of activities provided-the Geffrye Museum at Shoreditch. Originally opened in 1914 for the craftsman, student and connoisseur under the London County Council, it was transferred to the responsibility of the Education Committee in 1935 and it gradually built up a different clientele. The museum contained furniture and costumes; this gave children an opportunity for a favourite pastime-dressing-up, or ‘role playing’, as it is now called.* Out in the countryside of southern England can be found the Haslemere Educational Museum for natural history and local studies, founded in the nineteenth century and maintained by voluntary subscriptions and endowments. It emphasizes the ordinary things of the environment and welcomes all kinds of visitors who want to learn.9

As might be expected, children’s museums are on a grander scale in the United States of America. One was established as long ago as 1913 in Boston and now operates with a paid staff of 52 and numerous volunteers. It has ‘no separate educational department; the entire operation of the museum is organized to serve its clients’ educational needs’.‘O Another child-oriented museum in the USA is GAME in New York, a cultural resource centre incorporated in 1973. The initials stand for ‘Growth through Art and Museum Experience’. There is emphasis on practical activities and common objects, as at Haslemere, but in a very different environment. Part-time helpers and volunteers are in the majority on the staff.” These child-oriented museums, admittedly a minority, have done two things: they have produced displays which aimed at defined clients and they have devised a structure of activities, a ‘program’, so that young visitors do not have to work out everything for themselves on arrival. Most people, young or old, find the solitary contemplation of objects a difficult undertaking. They enjoy activity with an obvious goal. The educationalist’s task is to break the viewing into manageable parts, to make things move, if possible, and to create


evenrs which will sustain interest. Thus a whole variety of techniques have come to characterize museum education: the guided visit, the demonstration, the introductory talk, the gallery assignment, the quiz paper, the competition, the dressing-up, the play-acting, the drawing, the colouring-in and the cutting-out- not to mention the conducted visit to the world beyond the walls, from which the specimens have been gathered in the first place.

A curator does not normally enter his profession with the expectation of taking part in such activities, and yet teachers will assert that these are necessary means for ensuring effective learning. It is obvious that someone other than the curator, someone in sympathy with the work, will have to be appointed to carry it out; yet it has to be someone who understands the material and methods of the museum. The perceptiveness and range of interests of the intermediary are crucial. The practice has generally been to take recruits from the teaching profession and expect them to familiarize themselves with the museum aspects of the work. Museum-based knowledge is very different from school knowledge, and classroom teachers find it hard to make the mental adjustment. They look for ‘visual aids’, they search for ‘curriculum material’, without realizing that they have come to a storehouse of original objects, which in &heir essence do nor ‘illustrate’ some generalization or pre-existing story, but actually provide the primary evidence on which many structures of knowledge are based. The long typological sequences of Bronze-Age pottery have no place in a school syllabus (at least until quite recently, when archaeology was introduced as a subject of examination in A and 0 levels in England).”

There is an instructive tale from the early nineteenth century, when scholars divided the history of northern Europe into ‘Heathen Times’ and ‘Christian Times’. J.C. Thomsen, first curator of the Danish national collection of antiquities, was faced with a practical problem of laying out his specimens in the space available. With an inspired decision he put the stone artefacts in one room, the bronze in another and the iron in the next. This arrangement was later found to have a chronological foundation, and led to a new hypothesis about Manfs early past, the framework of Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages, enunciated in Thomsen’s Ledetraad til Nordisk Oldkyndighed (1836). This is still the principal way in which we think about prehisrory today, It was probably a good thing that there was no Schools Service OAicer around to complain to the curator about an *unintelligible arrangement’. But Danish educationalists were then too busy pursuing the ‘living word’ in the Folk High School movement.13

Let us examine in more detail the possible variations on a school visit to a museum. A few teachers may arrive with half the school and use the museum as a giant play-pen while they go off for coffee in the museum restaurant, a practice mentioned in connection with the open air museum at Arnhem by a recent Dutch report, Museums and the Guidance they give their Visitors.*4 The answer to this problem lies with the school rather than the museum, but the latter can impose restrictions to ensure quiet days for other visitors. A letter to The Times on 4 May 1982, headed ‘Distraction in the galleries’ refers to the menace of endless and vast parties of school children in the Sistine Chapel. and the Scanze in the Vatican, the Uffizi and Pitti galleries in Florence and the Louvre in Paris, ‘plainly deriving no benefit, other than pleasure at not being in school, from an experience which . . . they were ruining for everyone else’. In a serious visit a teacher will come with one class only-and ifit numbers more than about fifteen pupils, even that will have to be divided to derive benefit from a gallery visit. Should the teacher act as guide, or the museum education officer? The teacher knows the pupils better and is aware of the syllabus to which the visit is relevant, but the museum person knows the exhibits better (and is marginally more likely to have been told if they have been moved overnight), and he may well have something important to point out which has nothing to do with the syllabus.

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The facility for actually handling specimens is specially valued by schools. It is often more purposeful and economical to take a full-size class to a room apart where tables can be arranged in a flexibie way for the pupils to touch objects in a way which cannot be done in a gallery. This method is ideal with durable specimens like palaeolithic hand-axes and Bronze- Age palstaves. With suitable question and answer-the heuristic approach-the pupils will

A miniature, portable exhibition case for loan to schools: ‘Old Stone Age Tools’. It contains six original specimens from museum reserve collections with explanatory reconstruction pictures and

rediscover for themselves how J.C. Thomsen worked out his hypothesis of the three ages of prehistoric time. Chopping wood with a neolithic axe-head is another way of entering the past, as is lighting a Roman lamp filled with olive oil.‘” The prospect of expanding such work to its full potential is alarming. If all schools heeded the urgings of HM Inspectors they would overwhelm the tiny educational resources of museums. For example, there were in Wales at one period some 3.50 secondary schools and 2,000 primary schools, all with an open invitation to visit the National Museum in Cardiff. Admittedly some were 200 miles away, and therefore less likely to come, but if all were scheduled to arrive at a rate of four per day, nearly 590 working days would be needed to deal with them, an impossible task within one school year. Like banks and shops, museums can only survive on the understanding that all potential customers do not arrive at the same moment, and that some never come at all. Those school parties which come will probably only make one visit in a year; indeed, for many pupils this may be the only museum visit of their school career. The museum education ofKcer has probably never seen the group before and will never see them again. He or she has fifty minutes or so to complete his task, and will never know the effects of the operation. The school teacher, on the other hand, can see the pupils develop over a period and take corrective action when methods have been unsuccessful. Watching the ‘formation’ of individuals can be


one of the satisfying aspects of school teaching, and this is denied to the museum teacher. It came to be realized that primary school children were arriving in greater numbers than

secondary, while among secondary pupils the ‘grammar’ element was less likely to be present than the ‘modern’. This led to a remark by one of HM Inspectors of Schools that the younger and the less bright the child, the greater his or her chance of visiting a museum in an organized party from school. But there are many other groups-cubs, guides, handicapped pupils, blind pupils and youth groups-all wanting to claim a part in the facilities available. Groups also come from training colleges and universities, interested not so much in the particular exhibits on show, but how they might use museums in their future teaching careers. As pressure on schools’ services increased, the tiny number of persons providing the facilities began to see that expansion was finite. Then came a torrent of paper: guide-sheets, made skilfully into simple questionnaires which woufd lead the children to representative parts of the galleries and let them develop a theme, using, it was hoped, their own observation and judgement rather than copying the answers of the next child. Examples of question sheets may be seen in almost all museums, local and national. Particularly serviceable booklets are produced by the Imperial War Museum in London There has been concern at this development far fear that paper will come between the individual and the specimen, the very pitfall which it was intended to avoid.

Many of the questionnaires, pictorial leaflets and cut-out models are the product of scholarship. A series of cut-outs of Roman soldiers was published by Cotchester Museum, based on the research of the late Russell Robinson of the Tower of London Armouries. How can one judge the effectiveness of these devices? If by the number of sheets consumed, there would seem to be no doubt of their success. They are also an aid to discipline, producing a degree of order and quiet in the galleries. Every teacher knows that delicious moment of absolute silence when a whole class puts pen to paper at the same moment. There are many other duties to be carried out in a Museum Education Service, such as dealing with personal or posta?! enquiries from teachers, usually on museum material relating to a particular locality. Museums are well qualified to answer questions on local studies in human history and natural history. Enterprising teachers sometimes get their classes to write letters of enquiry, but thirty separate letters asking the same question, perhaps arriving by different posts, are not conducive to good relations between the museum and the schools. A school may, however, be inspired to carry out original field work in its locality.16 There are exhibitions to arrange, especially children’s art competitions. Children find great kudos in having their paintings hung in a public place; teachers bask in reflected glory and use the exhibition to keep themselves informed of standards in other schools; they would not dream of entering the school next door to find out. Finally, there may be holiday activities and film shows to supervise, always with the need ta invent some new gimmick, such as giant paw-marks on the floor to show the way to the zoology demonstration.

Education Officers may visit schools to exchange information with headmasters and members of staff, who are generally glad to see outside visitors, especially sympathetic observers in a position to offer practical help. They may be asked to carry out in the school the same sort of demonstrations which the schools might have received in the museum visit. Unfortunately, the head is often tempted to make a general assembly out of what should be a tutorial, and pupils are carried out fainting after the blinds have been pulled down for a slide show. Among its extra-mural activities the National Museum of Wales has developed a method for setting up temporary museums of specially prepared exhibits in large halls in distant parts of Wales. Visits by schools are programmed and supervised by members of the Museum Schools Service with the help ofclass teachers. Several thousand pupils might thus participate, who could not visit the main museum.

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Few issues raise more heat than Loan Services. The idea of taking a weekend case full of real museum specimens to a school seems admirable. The pupils will enjoy the thrill of touching a real graptolite, handling a real Roman jug or seeing a real painting at close Quarters. These experiences can delight, inspire and inform, but are not easy to measure.” The logistics of supply and demand; however, are formidable. If 350 schools all ask for a

An assemblage of material for loan to schools, 1967. Left to right: printed fabric; model of DNA molecule; exhibition case ‘Relics of the Ice Age’; oil painting; Roman pots; modern ceramic vase; preserved botanical specimens (3 sets); exhibition cases ‘The Housefly’ and ‘Jointing in Rocks’; recons~uction model of

keep at Goodrich Castle, Herefordshire. The National Museum of Wales.

Roman jug at the same time, are there 3.50 jugs available, and is it either possible or desirable to buy another 349 to satisfy the demand? Perhaps the schools will no longer be ‘doing’ the Romans when the extra jugs have been obtained. In the case of original paintings there can be only one by definition, and all applicants save one will have to be disappointed. Happily, not all customers will participate at the same time. Indeed, experience shows that constant reminders by letter, telephone and visit are needed to keep a Loan Service in operation. Even if there are fifty palaeolithi~ hand-axes in reserve through some lucky bequest, there is the process of boxing, labelling, storing and checking them, not to mention collecting them into loads for delivery. Some delivery system will be necessary and that means vans, drivers, schedules, mail-shots, and a Transport Officer.

But it is well known that school loan services contain much more than original museum specimens. If botanical specimens are to be circulated, it is no use sending out original peaches and potatoes. ‘The grass withereth and the flower fadeth’, and some method either of preservation or replication in another material has to be devised. Hence the need to appoint technicians, nowadays quite expensive members of staff. Would it not be more economical for the museum to give the actual fruit away and tell the children to eat it after the lesson? Or should the museum bother about perishable specimens at all? It is possible to argue that these models for schools were only an extension of what has already been done in the museum galleries, where curators are already expert in keeping hawthorn in blossom on the bough for the stuffed blackbird. But modelling does not stop here. How was the newly-discovered DNA molecule to be shown but in a large three-dimensional structure made of wood or plastic? As well as curating specimens, an archaeological museum has special expertise on


ancient sites and buildings, owing to its excavations in the field and its wide knowledge of such investigations elsewhere. Why not harness this to making models of early b~ildings?‘~ Model-making, in any case, is a useful activity for testing archaeological hypotheses. The only drawback is that any mistake or inaccuracy in interpretation will need a lot of eradication if it is reproduced in twenty-odd copies and circulated to generations of learners. Archaeologists would prefer to keep their mistakes to themselves. School loan services have, without realizing it, created a curatorial problem of considerable size for themselves to maintain and update their collections. Of course, some museum loan services find it impossible to meet the demand from their own resources and have to engage free-lance model-makers.

The reasoning continues: if we have insu~cient real things, replicas or models, why not send photographs of them? Thus another category is added to the loan collection. However, if the photographs are of good quality, they may be more than welcome in schools to supplement the poor and meagre illustrations often found in school textbooks. Certain specialized kinds, such as aerial views, would be well beyond the resources of a school to buy, and a loan would be invaluable. A photographic print is only one form of image mechanically produced, so why not include other kinds, such as slides, filmstrips and films? Films lead on to sound tapes, gramophone records and now videotapes. A museum loan service is soon transformed into an audio-visual loan service of the kind which is often organized independently by a local education authority, as a ‘resource centre’. Museum objects are indeed resources and an argument could be made for including them in LEA collections. Curiously enough, some school loan services came into being under the auspices of a local education authority without the intermediary of a parent museum. The classic case was the Derbyshire service, which returned to the norm by setting up its own museum base.

Evaluation

How shall we evaluate the great outpouring of effort that has taken place to make museums and galleries more responsive in specific ways to the educational interests of many different sorts of client? We are unlikely to find general agreement for the criteria to be used, or enough statistical evidence when we have clear criteria. More often than not, judgement is based on opinions about efficacy, expressed by providers, receivers or independent observers. Judgement can be based on numbers-of museums involved, of schools given attention, of parties guided or of pupils visiting. Such figures could be compared with those of the year before, or with the totals reached elsewhere or with some theoretically possible target. The yardstick could befinancial cost, contrasting one museum or region with another, or pricing the services generated and comparing them with results obtainable from the same money spent on other things. Or again, work could be confined within ‘cash limits’, leaving the provider to decide priorities. Self-assessment is the mode of evaluation used in the annual reports of providing institutions and it tends to put their activities in a favourable light. Hans Zetterberg has said: ‘Most people involved in museum education naturally believe that they are accomplishing great things; anyone engaged in a poorly paid activity with an idealistic content needs such beliefs to sustain his efforts, particularly since the efforts often go beyond the normal call of duty.‘]’

Considered opinions on the worth-whileness of the work have been expressed in publications by some doughty practitioners-Molly Harrison in Museum Adventure: the story of the Geeye Museum (London, 1950); by Renee Marcousi in The Listening Eye: Teaching in an Art Museum (HMSO, 1961) and by Barbara ~instanley in Chifdren in Museums (Oxford, 1967), to mention only three. The report produced by the Schools Council

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Working Party, Pterodactyls and Old Lace: ~~se~~s in ed~c~t~un (Schools Council, 1972) is full of testimonies and testimonials from teachers and pupils who had participated in museum activities. Indeed, the intention of the working party was to furnish case histories and anecdotes to persuade the unconvinced that they should be using museums. Stress was laid on the inspirational value of museums and the excitement they could generate in

A portable model for loan to schools ‘Pembroke Castle’. Back- ground board shows air view, ground view and plan of site. For transportation, the model is replaced upside down in box (60 x 60 x 15 cm.). The Nationai Museum of Wales.

children. The Working Party, not surprisingly, failed to discharge one important part of its remit-‘to prepare a clear statement of the philosophy of the educational use of museums’.zo Only occasionally is a heretical view expressed from within the movement. Alun Williams in 1972, referring to museum education, declared: ‘It appears to represent a genuine effort to contribute something valid to our educational system in its widest and most public sense. Yet, I feel it stands an even chance of proving itself a misguided waste of effort, the sort of scheme, that, seen in retrospect, will appear as an inexplicable lapse of judgement, as embarrassing to future apologists as the bathing machine or bloodletting-or nearly ~0.‘~’ We questioned the value of tours guided by the museum teacher and demonstrations that resembled lessons in school. Going to a museum should mean going to a special place for a special event, in other words it should be as different as possible from school. The great contribution of the museum was to provide ‘neutral ground’ for the exchange of ideas between different educational groups.

It is easy for artists and historians to overemphasize the cultural aspect of museum contact- the broadening of minds, the starting of new interests, the pleasure of new


experiences-but there is a ‘bread-and-butter’ aspect as well. If a student wishes to become an oil prospector he has to know his rocks, and a geology museum is an indispensable part of his training. The availability of specimens from a neighbouring museum may be the deciding factor in enabling a school to offer a geology course. Not that geology lacks general educational value. Its many possibilities have been successfully explored by D. Emlyn Evans, starting with very young children, who might be thought unreceptive to scientific

terminology.22 It is strange that the vocational possibilities of museum education have been almost

ignored. In 1949, when folk museums had hardly begun in Britain (though well established in Scandinavia), Dr Iorwerth C. Peate foreshadowed the effects of the museum which he was then planning: ‘The Welsh Folk Museum will become a centre for architectural and craft education, both visual and instructional. It is hoped that in due course apprenticeship schemes will be initiated so that youths can return to the countryside well grounded in the history of their craft and trained in modern methods of production.‘23 He continued: ‘The folk museum is not only the re-creation of a picture of the past: it is also an experiment in social regeneration.‘24 These hopes have not been realized. The museum concerned has become a huge success in terms of esteem and attendances, but visitors come to look and wonder, not to learn skills. Training, there has been, but that was to build up a team of museum workers, not to revitalize the Welsh countryside. Indeed, the majority of visitors would seem to come from outside Wales and are unlikely to apply what they have learnt to their own daily lives. Even Welsh people, looking at their recent past in the museum, may thank the museum for preserving it and go away to lead a very different life. Reports by outside observers, such as HM Inspectors of Schools, have been unanimous in praise for what has been achieved, but critical of the speed of development and of the relatively small numbers of schools and pupils so far affected. Another recurring complaint, characteristic of a country where the provision of both schools and museums is decentralized, is the unevenness of provision. This has an echo in West Germany where an issue of the periodical Rheinische Heimat Pjege in 1973 contained an article ‘Den Museen einen Platz im Bildungs-system’ by Friedrich Gorissen, who complained that museums had not been regarded or organized as part of a complete educational system. They depended on the local accidents of foundation and were generally regarded as part of ‘Leisure and Culture’. He urged that new museums be founded to fill the gaps in coverage.*j

In England official attempts have been made to assess the influence of museums on the schools. During 1966 a survey was carried out by a Working Party of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate to ascertain: (a) the sort of use which educational institutions of all types made of the facilities provided by museums, and (b) the effect such facilities had on the curriculum and teaching. The survey revealed that some schools were undoubtedly using museums, and that museum education services, where they existed, were being kept busy, but in the light of the total possibilities, the situation was disappointing. There was much to be desired in the quality of response from both sides. Many problems had to be solved before the educational use of museums became a normal and fruitful activity. 26 Five years later the Department of Education and Science produced an important Education Survey No. 12, Museums in Education (1971) and after paying tribute to what was already being done, repeated allegations that teachers were not responding to the opportunities. Singling out the subject of history, it referred to museums in the following terms: ‘To ignore their resources . . . as a tool for the educationalist is incomprehensible; but this is often done. Graduates in history can emerge from our universities without having been guided to visit a museum as part of the

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course and without having had their attention directed to any other kind of evidence than the

written word. Some teachers leave our colleges of education and university departments of education without having advice on, or experience of, using museums as a source of material for their own studies, for teaching purposes, or as places to which they would as naturally take

children as they would to a library . . . The enthusiasm aroused by a walk along Hadrian’s

Wall and a visit to its museum can be far greater than the most imaginative teacher could arouse in the classroom. ‘*’ A key notion here was the importance of training future teachers in

Holiday activities for children in a museum. Boys study the Roman Army, using exhibits which have just returned from loan to schools. The National Museum of Wales.

the use of museums. It had become clear to museum teachers that they might make their efforts go further by briefing school teachers rather than dealing with pupils, and particularly by getting their message to teachers in training. At first the accent was on publicizing the museum’s existing facilities rather than encouraging the teachers to undertake similar work themselves. Many provincial museums in England developed close relations with neighbouring Training Colleges (or Colleges of Education, as they were later called), receiving parties of students and providing lectures in colleges. The National Museum of Wales secured agreement with all the colleges of education and teacher training departments of university colleges in Wales to provide an annual lecture on museum education to teachers in training.28 This was as long ago as 1954; presumably a follow-up study would reveal a heightened awareness among present-day teachers as a result, though this has not actually been done. However, these ventures are now sadly diminished owing to cuts in funds on both sides and to the closure of some colleges.

The trainers of teachers themselves have been giving thought to the nature of their subjects and, sometimes, to possible links with museums. The Institute of Education of the University of London in 1973 published a collection of papers entitled The Study of Education and Art, edited by Dick Field and John Newick (London, 1973). In its 244 pages there was no mention of museums or galleries, the main locations where the physical manifestations of the subject might be seen. 29 The Faculty of Education of the University of Swansea produced a similar, but more down-to-earth volume, New History: Old Problems, edited by Gareth Jones and Lionel Ward (Swansea, 1978). A chapter here was entitled: ‘Beyond the Written Word: history from pictures and artifacts’, and another ‘Fieldwork in History Teaching’.30 Museums and monuments were not neglected. Elsewhere lecturers in Colleges of Education have been active in linking their subjects with museums and


monuments, as in R~mische Zivi~~sation an Rhein u~~~~~Ru, a trilogy of booklets by Elisabeth Erdmann (Paderborn, 1980). One part is a handbook for teachers, another is a work book for the pupil; the third is a catalogue of Roman monuments visible in the field and specimens and models shown in museums.3’ This is but one example in what is now a considerable category of literature.

Three recent attempts at analysis and evaluation may be mentioned: from the United States, from Holland and from England. It would be impossible to devise a more apposite title than Measuring the Immeasurable (Philadelphia, 1977) for a pilot study of museum effectiveness. The survey was conducted by Minda Borun at the Franklin Museum and Planetarium, Philadelphia; it was sponsored by the Association of Science Technology Centers and funded by the National Science Foundation. The museum is lavishly equipped with scientific apparatus relating, for example, to physics, energy, ships, and aviation; in other words, topics which lend themselves to dynamic, as opposed to static displays. Questionnaires were issued to young visitors to discover how effective the exhibits had been. A special questionnaire was provided for teachers. The results were mainly of interest to the museum itself, but the method could be applied elsewhere. Importance was attached to attitudes and preferences, on the assumption that if visitors found the museum to their liking they would return, and the exhibits themselves would be free to perform their function.j2 From Holland comes a report entitled in its summary English version Museums and the Guidance they give their Visitors by Folkert Haanstra and Bert Holman of the Kohnstamm Institution, University of Amsterdam, and published by the Dutch Government (1980). This is an attempt to get at the facts rather than chart a policy. Half the museums in Holland do no active educational work and a quarter only a little. Indeed there seems to be a widespread feeling among curators that it is not part of their task to offer popular enlightenment. More resources are gradually being devoted to educational work in museums and efforts made to induce regular visits from schools. It is admitted that the evaluation of educational work is still in its infancy, and that museums would need assistance and expertise from outside to perform such research. 33 One is reminded of the atmosphere in Britain thirty years ago.

Indispensable to the proper development of museum education is the compilation of handbooks and catalogues describing the facilities available over a wide area, so that one does not have to write to a score of institutions for an assortment of publicity leaflets and programmes. This is not the same as having handbooks listing and describing the museums of a region; these exist in some variety. The GESM produced in conjunction with the Museums Association a list of Museum School Service in the UK, noting the facilities offered. Perhaps the most comprehensive production of the kind is The Art Museum as Educator, published for the Council of Museums and Education in the Visual Arts by the University of California Press (1978). This work of no less than 830 pages provides not only a rationale of the work but a detailed account of every institution offering facilities. The book contains conclusions, judgements and some statistical evaluations. This is a model for other countries to follow.34 The matter has been tackled in a rather different way in the German Democratic Republic, where Kurt Patzwall has produced a complete rationale for museum education according to unified socialist principles. His Wir 3~s~chen ein Museum (Berlin, 1976) itemizes every possible educational activity connected with museums and probably mentions every important museum in the GDR in some connection or another; he finally lists all museums in the country under their bezirken, as well as those in neighbouring socialist countries near the borders of East Germany.3s

A similar situation obtains in relation to statistics of work actually done. Most museums publish annual reports containing statistics of their activities, including education, but there

DONALD MOORE 225

is little consistency as between institutions. In the 64th Annual Report of the Leicester Museums it was stated that total attendances in 1970 amounted to 379,711. There was a report on the School Service, but no figure for the number of children either visiting or given facilities. On the other hand 13,821 loans to schools are recorded as having been made, a decrease of 500 on the previous year, ‘more than accounted for by a reduction of filmstrip loans’. Even the simple statistic of a ‘visitor’ can be in doubt. Was it a fresh individual each time, or just another visit by the same person? And did he only come to use the museum

A demonstration for a primary class: how corn was ground in the New Stone Age. A saddle quern from the museum’s collection was used. The National Museum of Wales.

restaurant-a perfectly legitimate purpose and very desirable for the business viability of the concern-but liable to lead the researcher into error. Conscious of the problem of defining an attendance, Hans Zetterberg has proposed an ingenious formula: ‘Records should be kept of the educational work-load in a museum. Here we need something better than the conventional attendance statistics. In preference to these, we count the number of “client hours” the public gives the museum; that is, the number of participants in a class or a tour multiplied by the length of time the class meets or the tour lasts. We then compute:

Total client hours Educational Work-load =

Professional man-hours in educational work

This work-load index permits useful comparisons between the present and the past and between various museums. It also guides decisions on the number of guides or teachers to be hired and the number of programmes to schedule.‘36 If one interprets this correctly, it means that when thirty children are taught for one hour by one official, his work-load index is 30; if this happens five times in a week, it becomes 150.

A detailed and penetrating study was made by A.F. Chadwick for the Department of Adult Education, University of Nottingham, England (1980). This was The Role uf the Museum and Art Gallery in Community Education. Part I of the main survey was based on the answers to questions directed at a random sample of the public in the cities of Derby, Leicester and Nottingham. Museum Services have long been in existence in these areas and it was desired to know how far the public were aware of them. Part II dealt with the answers to complementary questions addressed to the providers of the museum services, namely the directors of the museums. This is an attractive way of trying to bring two points of view into

226 Thirty Years of Mweum Education

focus. Not surprisingly, the views expressed did notcoincide, and the discrepancies gave the museum side much to re&~t upon. The emphasis of the report was on developing the museum’s educational role in the local community, and it took for granted that the collecting and conservational roles were already catered for. Its recommendations that museums should

Activities for children, as arranged during holidays in the museum or in distant eentres during school time: chopping wood with a neolithic axe. The axe-head is of Scandinavian type, from the reserve collection, and the handle has been reconstructed by the museum according to an actual example recorded which was found preserved in the Sigersfev bog in Denmark. The ~at~~~a~ Mwwn of Wales.

become more comfortable, convenient and pleasurable places for public resort have in fact been realized in many places.37

Museums may draw some help from investigations carried out for another communica- tions medium-television. To learn more about the public for arts prograrnmes on television, the British Broadcasting Corporation commissioned a survey which was published as an Audience Research Report, The Ptlblic for the Visual Arts (London, 1980). Two important findings stand out. First, some 13 per cent of the population of Britain over the age of sixteen visit art gafleries several times a year138 and from other evidence it wodd seem that this proportion is not IikeIy to alter sign~~~nt~y in the immediate future. The number viewing television arts programmes, although small in comparison with those viewing others, is vastly greater than attendances at galleries; an average arts programme is seen on a single night by as many people as visit the Tate Gallery in a year. 39 Put another way, !I$ million people saw visual arts programmes during March 1979, while ~4~,~~~ people went to see the Post-Impressionism exhibi~on at the Royal Academy (which lasted 19 weeks).j* Gallery promoters may obtain from this report a clearer idea of what sort of people are likelv to visit their galleries, and they may also conclude that by displaying their wares on television they would reach a larger public.

The ~~~~~~~ ~#~r~~~ in March 1982 pubhshed a report, ‘Museums in Education’, produced by a working party set up in November 1977. It was an agreed statement by $1 the

DONALD MOORE 227

interests concerned; although there was strong educational representation in the working party, the document has a detached feeling, very different from the missionary style of the GEM publications. Education is to be kept in its place and its protagonists brought back into the wider scene. The period of the deliberations was marked by concern and alarm, not only in museum but in educational circles. The upheaval produced by the restructuring of local government in 1974 had left its mark. What could have been a golden opportunity to reorganize museums in a logical way was missed, and the situation left more confused than before. A familiar complaint appeared early in the report ‘throughout our enquiry we have been struck time and again by the lack of adequate statistical knowledge with which to clarify changing situations or emerging patterns. The number of parties of school children using museums for educational work seems to have gone steadily upwards for several years, but proof of this is Iacking . . . It is difficult to present a conclusive argument that museums are an under-used resource without proper data. Clearly the fault here is a professional one and we should like to see the Museums Association take a more active part in the collection and preparation of data which would be of great value both to national enquiries such as this and to researchers from many other fields.‘41 The further thought is culled from The Times of 21 April 1982, where a heading reads: ‘Museums should be places of entertainment’. Mr Michael Montague, Chairman of the English Tourist Board declared: ‘Today’s visitor

A travelling exhibition for children: ‘In Search of the Past’. This was jointly produced by the Museum Schools Service and the Department of the Environment Ancient Monuments Division in 1974, and was accompanied by models from the museum. This showing was in a

teachers’ centre in Swansea. The South Wales Evening Post.

expects to be excited, entertained and above all involved.’ A supporting speaker said that in 1980 about 52 million visits were made to museums and art galleries in England. ‘While many museums consider themselves as educational institutions’, he continued, ‘many are presenting themselves in a more entertaining way, with many abandoning the word “museum” altogether. This is what the tourist expects on holiday.‘42

Mention was made earlier of using financial statistics to assess the cost of educational effort in museums, but it is not intended to deal with this in the present paper. The task would


inevitably mean consulting the confidential archives of museums, local authorities, national institutions and voluntary bodies, where access is unlikely to be granted. Many figures are published in annual balance sheets, but the stated expenditure on museum education often represents only a fraction of its real cost. Local authorities may provide unspecified transport and postal facilities, national services may provide accommodation, heat and light at no debited cost, and voluntary bodies have resources in unpaid help. Even if published expenditure is set against recorded output, only a partial picture will emerge, since it is impossible to quantify certain items of output, such as writing a gallery guide, or devising specifications for a new delivery van. As a general rule one may assume that educational personnel are paid less than curatorial, and that national museum salaries are higher than local. Whether this rehects any difference in worth is a matter for argument. One thing is obvious from experience, the elimination ofeducational personnel is unlikely to result in a net increase of other staff for the museum concerned. The disproportionate rise in the cost of fuel in the late 1970s coupled with financial cuts in museums and schools had three unfortunate effects. It made the distribution of loan material more costly and it inhibited museum ofhciafs from travelling. It also affected school travel in a curious way: to save money, more children were packed into each excursion, producing the crowded condition which the receiving institutions wished to avoid.

Conclusion

It is possible in a general way to evaluate some trends and consequences of the museum education movement, at least as far as Britain is concerned. The 1950s saw the introduction as it were of a Trojan horse full of teachers into a museum world which had become for the most part inward-hooking and static. The teaching staff survived in their little islands ofeducation, making almost no impact on the appearance of the main galleries but devising their own ‘progressive’ exhibits in miniature, and circulating them among the schools. There was no problem in finding enough to do, but inspectors continued to say that not enough was happening, The museums themselves became better known to the public; certainly there was a steep and steady growth in attendances over the whole period, and some thanks must surely go to the schools services for this. The 1960s were marked by the rise of the designer-another kind of communicator-this time visual, not verbal, He-and she- began to change the appearance of the galleries, making them more sequential and pictorial, Displays were d~~&kko~~~~~~~t; the script arrived, and so did the phrase ‘a triumph of display over information’. The designer was also a mediator between rival departments and between museum and public. Environmental and ecological displays increased at the expense of old-style rows of specimens. Open-air museums grew in numbers and size, and the shift of interest from rural life to industry and transport met with a huge public response. The schools service people found their work suddenly easier and in some ways superfluous, though it is hard to claim that they had any direct responsibility for the situation. Something else had been going on unnoticed-the movement of educational staff across to the curatorial and management side, no doubt in search of more responsibility and higher salaries. It was in this indirect way that the educational movement succeeded in influencing the course of events. As well as this, new generations entered the profession and all was ‘go’. Educationaf activities took on more variety and embraced all kinds of informal activities, involving a wider range of age-even under-fives.

In the early 1970s a golden age seemed to have dawned, with all sides making plans for further expansion_ But clouds were on the horizon, A little book appeared in I972 The Limifs to Gr~amth~~ and by the end of the decade its prophecies were being taken seriously. In the

DONALD MOORE 229

mid-1970s economic stringency was the order of the day and painful cuts began to be forced

on museums and their educational services. Indeed it was being asked whether museums had a viable future at all under local authorities in England and Wales. Growth shifted to the independent museums. The Ironbridge Gorge Museum, comprising an old industrial complex of sites in Shropshire, received 75,000 visitors in its first year ofopening in 1973, and

A Christmas holiday event for children at CardiE ‘Jonathan’s Masks’, 1971. A demonstration to about 340 children was followed by individual participation. The National Museum of Wales.

a peak of 220,000 in 1978.* Torfaen Museum in Gwent, which began under a local authority, found it expedient to go independent. Both these museums belong to the era of the designer, but they also incorporate the spirit of the teacher. A new synthesis of the various elements of museum work seems to be emerging and perhaps the old separate, self-conscious ‘Schools Service’ may have become an anachronism. What is now needed is a considered appreciation of the situation backed up by facts, figures and locations. This is not a small undertaking and

it needs authoritative sponsors. The Museums Association with the help of charitable trusts might make a start with the British Isles and commission two full-time research assistants and a part-time supervisor to work for two years on a computer-based analysis of museums and kindred institutions, recording basic information about them, listing the educational and other facilities which they offer, and giving some assessment of what is going on and what has been achieved. The American Guide to Art Museums offers a pattern.‘j

230

References and Notes

Thirty Years of Museum Education

1. Decree of GDR, 21 December 1970, Neue Museumskunde, Jahrgang 14 (3/71 Berlin), pp. 170-76. 2. Donald Moore, ‘Museums and Monuments in West Africa’, Amgueddfa: Bulletin of the National Museum of Wales, 7, Spring 1969, pp. 20-28. 3. 4.

:: 7. 8. 9.

Verbal information from Dr E.D. Goodhew, Treasurer, G.E.M., April 1982. Department of Education and Science, ~~~seu~s and ~d~~a~~o~ (HMSO, 1971), p. 33. National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, Formal Opening, Pro_qamme of the Ceremony (Cardiff, 1927), pp. 20-21. Edward Miller, That Noble Cabinet: a History of the British Museum (London, 1973), foreword. National Museum of Wales, Annual Report 1977-78, p. 148, and 1967-68, p. 53. Molly Harrison, Museum Adventure: the Story of the Gefiye Museum (London, 1950). Royal Society of Arts, Museums in Modern tife (London, 1949), p. 41 ff.

10. Barbara Y. Newsom and Adele Z. Silver (eds.), Tke Art Museum as Edurator (University ofCalifornia Press, 1978), p. 123. 11. Ibid. p. 373. 12. University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate, General Certificate of Education: Archaeology, Advanced Level papers, 19SO onwards. Ordinary Level discontinued. 13. Glyn Daniel, Tke Three Ages (Cambridge, 1943). 14. Dancker Daamen & Folkert Haanstra, Her Educatieue Werk van Nederlandse Musea-,~~tiviteiten, Opuattingen en Positie van Educatieve Medetverkers (Amsterdam, 1980); see p. 25 of English summary. 15. Donald Moore, ‘Children in a Museum’, Amgueddfu, 13, Spring 1973, pp. 28-36. 16. The collecting of surface finds of prehistoric flints and ancient pottery by schoolchildren under the direction of Frank Noble at Knighton County Secondary School, Wales, recorded in The Radnorskire Society’s Transactions, xxii, 1952, pp. 3+ xxiii, 1953, pp. 16-21; xxiv, 1954, pp. 79-82; xxvii, 1957, pp. 62-71. 17. Vesta Edwards, ‘Twenty Years’ Service to Schools’, Amgueddfa, 2, Summer/Autumn 1969, pp. 27-35. 18. Donald Moore, ‘Archaeology in the Classroom’, South Wales Institute of ArchitectsJournal, 6, No. I, July 1962, pp. S-9. 19. Hans Zetterberg, Museums and Ad& Education (London, 1968), p. 38. 20. Schools Council, Pterodactyls and Old Lace: Museums in Education (London, 1972), foreword. 21. Alun Williams, ‘Personal View-the Museum as Neutral Ground’, Amguedd~, 7, Spring 1971, p. 29. 22. D. Emlyn Evans, ‘More than just looking’, Amgueddfa, 17, Summer/Autumn 1974, p. 25. 23. Royal Society of Arts, op. cit., pp. 64-65. 24. Ibid. 67. p. 25. Rkeiniscke Heimat Pflege, neue FoIge 3, Juii-September 1973, pp. 177-78. 26. I.A. Lefrov, ‘Museums and Edu~tional Insti~tions’, ~~useums3ournal~ 67, No. 2 (September 1967), pp. 158%. .’ 27. Department of Education and Science, Museums in Education (HMSO, 1971), p. vii. 28. National Museum of Wales, Forty-seventh Annual Report, 1953-.5’d, p. 43. 29. Dick Field and John Newick (eds.), The Study of Education and Art (London, 1973). 30. Gareth Jones and Lionel Ward (eds.), New History: Old Problems (Swansea, 1978): Donald Moore, pp. 59-77 and Arthur Peplow, pp. 45-58. 31. Elisabeth Erdmann, Riimiscke Zivilisation an Rhein und Donau: Arbeitsheft, Lehrersheft, Materialheft (Paderborn, 1980). 32. Minda Borun, Measuring the Immeasurable: a Pilot Study of Museum Effectiveness (Philadelphia, 1977). 33. Op. cit. ref. 14. 34. Op. cit. ref. 10. 35. Kurt Patzwall, Wir Besucken Ein Museum (Berlin, 1976). 36. Zetterberg, op. cit. chapter 7. 37. A.F. Chadwick, The Role of the Museum and Art Gallery in Community Education (Nottingham, 1980). 38. British Broadcasting Corporation, The Public for the Visual Arts in Britain, an audience research report (London, 1980), p. 2. 39. Ibid. p. xv. 40. Ibid. p. 18. 41. MuseumsJournal, 81, No. 4, March 1982, p. 236. 42. The Times, 21 April 1982, correspondence. 43. Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers and William W. Behrens III, The Limits fo Growth: a Report for the Ciub of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (London, 1972). 44. Verbal information from Dr Neil Cossons, Director, April 1982. 45. Op. cit. ref. 10.

Thirty years of museum education: Some reflections

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