Museum Proposal

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    History of Education Society

    Proposed: A National Museum of EducationAuthor(s): Walter O. KrumbiegelSource: History of Education Journal, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Summer, 1956), pp. 152-156Published by: History of Education SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3659126 .

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    152 HISTORY OF EDUCATION JOURNAL

    PROPOSED: A NATIONAL MUSEUMOF EDUCATIONWalter 0. Krumbiegel

    Last year an article in the New York Times discussed thephenomenal growth of the company museum. The article pointedout that there were fewer than ten such museums in the UnitedStates before the first World War, and that there are several hun-dred today. One of the museums mentioned, the John WoodmanHiggins Armory Museum of the Worcester Pressed Steel Company,is reputed to have the second largest collection of armor in theworld, the Tower of London having the largest. This museum, onlytwenty-five years old, has had about 265,000 visitors. The CorningGlass Center has had over 2,000,000 visitors in less than fiveyears. Company museums, according to this article, are now used"for designing, research, legal and patent studies, sales training,tours, and institutional advertising."' The company museum is, ofcourse, only one type in the country today. Coleman in his threevolume work on the American museum mentioned museums whichdeal with the Confederacy, whaling, Red Cross service, numisma-tics, the work of the Federal government, and golf.2 There is abaseball museum at Cooperstown, N. Y. and a football museum atNew Brunswick, N. J. Then there are, of course, the great mu-seums of art, history, and science. Coleman counted 2,480 mu-3seums in 1939. Nevertheless, there does not appear to be amuseum of education. Some history museums, it is true, have ac-quired school material of historic value and held exhibits usingthese materials to prove a point. These materials and efforts,however beneficial to the cause of education, appear to be scattered.In view of the history, magnitude, and importance of education, itwould seem that this endeavor of man deserves a museum commen-surate with its importance. The proposal is therefore advancedthat a national museum of education be established.The museum visualized here is a national museum, compar-able to the great art, history, industry, and science museums. It isa museum about education, concerned with the history of education

    l Carl Spielvogel, "Something There for Everyone: Tourist, Researcher,Salesman." New York Times, (April 1, 1956).Lawrence Vail Coleman, The Museum in America: A.Critical Study.(Washington, D. C., The American Association of Museums, 1939), I, 121.3 Ibid., 18.

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    PROPOSED: A NATIONALMUSEUM OF EDUCATION 153and the contemporary problems of education. The museum con-tains materials from primitive, eastern, Egyptian, Greek, Roman,medieval, and modern societies related to this field. The emphasisof the museum is, of course, upon American education. The mu-seum contains original and reproductions of American classroomsof 1650, 1750, 1850, and 1950. The museum also contains settingsand materials of contemporary European schools. Dioramas rep-resenting significant educational developments deck the walls: theHebrew scribe teaching his pupils, the Egyptian boy learning histrade, the Greek palestra, the Roman ludus, the cathedral school,the medieval university lecture hall, the classrooms of da Feltre,of an early Jesuit school, a classroom of one of La Salle's schools,the inside of a vernacular school, models of an early academy,Hecker's Realschule, and Basedow's Philanthropinum, models ofPestalozzi's schools at Burgdorf andYverdon, a Lancasterian class-room, an early Kindergarten, one of the first Russian manualtraining shops, Dewey's elementary school in Chicago, and the Casadei Bambini of Maria Montessori. On the walls also are largephoto murals of the title pages of the great proposals and the lawswhich affected education during its long history. In the show casesand cabinets are special exhibits of writing materials, report cards,teachers' bells, hickory switches, maps and globes used by teach-ers in the past. Examples of children's school work throughoutthe ages fill other cases. Some cabinets contain models of con-temporary school buildings. There are also displays dealing withthe contemporary methods of teaching reading, writing, arithmetic,history, geography, science, health, music, safety, and auto driving.In the halls are statues of the great educational philosophers andreformers. The materials for such a museum exist, and the listmentioned here could be revised or enlarged by any historian ofeducation. The preparation of the exhibits, of course, requiresresearch, one of the functions of a large museum.Museums have several functions. They acquire and preserveobjects, educate the public, besides offering opportunities for re-search.4 The potential value of a museum of education becomesclearer when these functions are related to education as that termis considered here. As indicated earlier, the materials of educa-tional history seem scattered and are probably few in number.Many such objects, no doubt, have been lost or will be lost unlessattention is focused upon their acquisition and preservation. Thei Theodore L. Low, The Museum as a Social Instrument. Published at theMetropolitan Museum of Art for the American Association of Museums,1942, 20.

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    154 HISTOR Y OF ED UCATION JO URNA Lspecial collections related to education, such as report cards,samplers, school certificates assembled by private collectors,could easily disappear through heirs who do not appreciate theirsignificance. A note of urgency is entered here. Some Europeanmuseums seem to have been quite alert in collecting a considerableamount of pedagogical material. Possibly, a preliminary step infounding a museum of education would be to locate and catalogsuch material now in European and American museums and inprivate hands.The function of the museum which seems to have received thegreatest attention by "museists" in the present century is publicenlightenment. Here, too, a museum of education could make asignificant contribution. There has been a persistent concern inprofessional circles over what the general public knows about thework of the schools. Several organizations, both lay and profes-sional, have made serious efforts, of which the annual school visi-tation program is a conspicuous example, to inform the public ofthat work. Efforts are also being made to inform the pupils in theschools of the character of education. In a country where educa-tional policy, especially on the elementary and secondary level, isdetermined to some extent by laymen, such efforts seem desirable.A museum of education would offer an additional opportunity forlaymen to learn about education. Wittlin has pointed out that mu-seum exhibits convey more facts to adults and children in a shortertime than the spoken or printed word; that exhibits can presentmany facts simultaneously, in a synthesis, thus bringing out theirsignificance and relationship more clearly; and that exhibits stimu-late the powers of observation, logical thinking, responsibility, andimagination of the people.5 The thought that the general public andlay educational leaders would more likely learn more from a mu-seum than from books on education is probably not too farfetched.It is hoped in this connection that local and state museums of edu-cation will also be established, and that existing museums givemore attention to the problems of education, so that significanteducational exhibits will be within the reach of all. Also, it seemswithin reason to hope that such a museum would create more publicinterest in education and possibly stimulate some non-educator togive serious attention to educational problems. Not all educationalreformers have come from the ranks. Children would benefit fromthe museum proposed here in two ways: the exhibits would givethem a better understanding and appreciation of the nature of past5 Alma S. Wittlin, The Museum: Its History and Its Task in Education.(London: Routledge and Kegan, Paul., Ltd., 1949), 188.

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    PROPOSED: A NATIONAL MUSEUM OF EDUCATION 155and present education, and the teacher education work of the mu-seum would provide them with better teachers.

    A national museum of education would offer further oppor-tunities for teacher education and training. Certainly a close re-lationship exists between a course in the history of education and amuseum which presents the visual evidence of that history. Identi-cal aims exist here. Furthermore, the materials connected withschools of different cultures would by their very nature under-score the social relationship of education. Not only would thehistorical background of contemporary educational problems bepresented to the critical gaze of teachers new and old, but also thevarious solutions, real and hypothical, of those problems, insofaras those solutions lend themselves to exhibition, would be shown.Comparative education could help here by presenting displays ofwork in other countries. From all of these exhibits, teacherscould learn more about their craft.The museum considered here would not only encourage gen-eral educational research, but also point up (the words open upalmost occur to one) research opportunities in the history of edu-cation dealing with objects. Involved in such research are prob-lems of locating items, establishing their authenticity, their socialrelationship, and their educational significance. Opportunities forresearch are obviously connected with the reproductions of thedioramas mentioned earlier. Such research would naturally callupon the disciplines developed in other fields such as archeology,anthropology, and architecture and further our alliance with thegreat stream of scholarship. The museum would contain a special-ized library dealing with the history of education and special worksconnected with the exhibits. It would also publish reports of itsresearches and services. In connection with teacher education andresearch, the museum would, to some extent, supplement the workof schools of education. The relationship between the museum andschools of education presumably would be the same as the relation-ship of the other museums to the schools whose fields they repre-sent. The larger purpose of the museum would, however, remainpublic enlightenment.Acceptance of the assumption that a museum of educationwould benefit the American people leads to problems connectedwith founding such an institution. Involved here are the matters ofsponsorship, size, location, organization, administration, and thecrucial matter of finance.6 It would seem wise in this connection6 Arthur C. Parker, A Manualfor History Museums. New York State His-torical Association Series, edited by Dixon Ryan Fox (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1935), No. III, 23-89.

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    156 HISTORY OF EDUCATION JOURNALto call upon the thoughts of our experienced "museists" who havebeen responsible for making the American museum a significantinstrument of education. Possibly a first step toward founding sucha museum would be a meeting between "museists," educators, andhistorians of education to explore these problems.The museum envisioned here seeks to acquire and preservesignificant items of past and present education and put them to theuses partially explored above. The museum would refer to alleducation-public, private, parochial, elementary, secondary, col-legiate, essentialist and progressive. Such a museum could besupported by educators of all philosophic persuasions. The museumcould be a means for improving education for all. It is likely thatthe benefits from such a museum would equal those now derivedfrom the present museums in the United States.