In the Scandinavian countries, there is a 50-year tradition of offering education under the auspices of museums called “School Services.”
There can be great advantages to moving parts of teaching out of the classroom and into museums. Yes, you read that right! Museums can be an important player in the future of education!
The reader may wonder what a cultural history museum, such as the Vesthimmerlands Museum, must contribute to this context, both in general and concerning children with special needs, e.g., various diagnoses.
The following observations have been made over 10 years during approximately 2,600 educational sessions for kindergarten and primary school children, of which 500 sessions have been for children with special needs, e.g., ADHD, OCD, Asperger’s Syndrome, Autism, Down’s Syndrome, deaf children, etc.
Figure 1 Getting water for washing clothes in 1870 is a major task that requires a good physique! Photo: www.herregaardenhessel.dk
The museum is an aesthetically different experimental teaching space.
When a teacher chooses to move their teaching out of the classroom, there is a small disruption to a class’s daily routines and patterns. Students and sometimes teachers are put on the outside, you are “away from home”, so to speak, and often in an environment that may be architecturally different from what you are used to. It can be an environment that challenges and makes students curious. It can be historical environments such as reconstructions, open-air museums, or museums with very special architecture and aesthetics that both challenge and motivate pupils.
Figure 2 Interpretation of Mesolithic house based on archaeological material. Photo: Kim Callesen, Stenaldercenter Ertebølle, Denmark
Figure 3 An example of an aesthetic urban environment is: The Old Town, Aarhus, Denmark. Photo:www.dengamleby.dk
Figure 4 An example of an aesthetic modern environment is The Utzon Center, Aalborg Denmark. Photo: www.kunsten.nu
It is in this space that the daily classroom hierarchy is put on hold for a while, as students engage in a different kind of classroom learning, often like mastery exercises, i.e., where students learn to master small crafts through role-play or other activities. Here they are “set straight”, for what 12-year-old pupil is a specialist in dug out logboat sailing, flintknapping, or string-making?
Figure 5 A popular mastery exercise is to make a piece of string from lime bark and beads from a cherry stone, which changes students’ perception of a cherry stone from something you just spit out and throw away, to a resource that, through simple processing, becomes a treasured piece of jewellery. Photo: Kim Callesen, Vesthimmerlands Museum, Denmark
It’s not unusual for students to be surprised by themselves and find out that they may not be very good at football, but they can make a strong string and a beautiful piece of jewelry. Classmates noticed it too! Or the teacher who is surprised that students with various diagnoses want to dress up and take part in historical role-playing games! In this way, museums help to change not only the perceptions of teachers and classmates but also the self-perception and self-confidence of pupils, which often get a big boost.
In a way, history is made very concrete and brought to life! This helps to connect pupils’ learning to their emotions, and insight emerges.
Bringing history to life can also be done through role-playing in recreated historical environments, for example in the construction of a medieval castle at Guedelon in France
Figure 1 A medieval castle in Guedelon, France. Photo: www.guedelon.fr:
Encounters with Applied Science
Museums offer a unique opportunity for students to encounter some of the science often presented as theory in schools. Here, “half-life” is not just a concept, but one that is used to date skeletons, for example. Strontium is not just number 38 in the Periodic Table, for strontium isotopic analyses are a kind of geological GPS that can tell where a person has been or not. This is how science becomes concrete.
Figure 7 Replica of a skull found. Interpretations of the skull’s appearance can form the basis for a conversation about: what “story” will your skull contain. Photo: Kim Callesen, Vesthimmerland Museum
It has become customary in many museums to offer the possibility of a physical meeting with an archaeologist, historian, or curator. The opportunity to meet the relevant professionals, as role models, can have a significant impact on pupils and give them a greater understanding not only of the profession but also of the role of museums in society.
The artifacts play an extremely important role in the presentation. Replicas and advanced computer programs can be good and relevant teaching tools, but in my experience, getting close to genuine objects is a great emotional experience for students. It is a great experience to hold a real stone axe, made 6,000 years ago, where the pupils become aware of something essential – to be able to wonder! This is exactly where they ask the questions. How old is it? How can you tell? Who made it? How was it made? Etc. etc.
To reassure the reader, I should mention that museums often have study collections where the finds are without provenance, i.e., one cannot pinpoint the location with certainty. It is therefore possible to put objects in the hands of students, who are typically very cautious, almost reverent, with real objects.
Why do we need a museum? This is a question yours truly often asks the pupils whom the teachers’ herd into the exhibitions, and the pupils are of course polite and reply nicely that we should ” take care of the old things”, to which we often want to challenge them with “Why?” Museums should be a kind of “educational GPS” for students. To find your way, you need to know where you come from. This gives museum education an important place in students’ lives. Life must be lived forward but understood backward!
The museum as a social institution of knowledge
2 years of COVID-19, restrictions, and isolation have revealed the need for shared experiences and recognition. This is where museums can come in, with professional, factual, aesthetic, and learning programs that support the social community in the classroom.
This could be through different forms of communication – For example, can puppet theatre be used in a cultural history museum? It has already been seen several times, for example at the Museu Imperial in Petropolis I the area of Rio de Janeiro, where puppets of the 19th century imperial family play an important role in the presentation directly, but also as a social experience for the groups of children attending these shows.
Figure 8 At the Museu Imperial, Petropolis, Brazil, they use puppetry as part of teaching the youngest students. Photo: Kim Callesen Vesthimmerlands Museum
Much of the presentation is done through music, song and dance at the Museu Casa Do Pontal in Rio de Janeiro, an art museum. One is tempted to ask: “Can science be taught through music? Or is science musical? Can you dance the solar system?” Teaching at the Museu do Casa Pontal is linked to a shared experience that will make the lesson stand out in the memory – at least it did for yours truly!
Figure 9 At the Museu Casa do Pontal in Rio de Janeiro, music and singing are used as part of the curriculum with students. Photo: Kim Callesen, Vesthimmerlands Museum.
At the time of writing, the author is participating in the transnational Erasmus+ project “The traveling case of an experimental archaeologist (Shortened TraCe), which seeks to develop new ways to motivate students’ teaching in STEM-related areas through archaeology Specifically, the 4 participating countries/institutions will provide, a booklet, animated videos, lesson plans, hands-on activity and digital simulations of experimental archaeology. The reader might be tempted to ask whether cultural institutions should take over the teaching?
Still, museums should not be schools! Museums are special aesthetic learning and exploratory spaces that help not only to provide students with academic and factual knowledge but also to make students more aware of themselves as human beings in a historical context. Museums can complement the teaching that takes place in schools with other and new dimensions; perhaps museums can even help to create the researchers of the future. This requires museums to be good at drawing attention to what they have to offer, which in turn requires schools and teachers to understand that museums can be a part of teaching.