VII.-Public Museums as Aids in Teaching. By JAMES COLVILLE, [Read before the Society, 11th January, 1888.] I PROPOSE in the following paper to bring under the notice of the Society a plan for the better utilising of public museums and cognate institutions for purposes of ordinary school teaching, considering in the first place its bearings on education, and in the next place the probable effect of its adoption on museums themselves Discussion will bring out the weak points of the proposal, determine the departments of teaching to which it is applicable, and give a direction to its further development. Although most departments of educational work have been carried on in recent years under more favourable conditions than formerly, there is room and urgent need for a new departure in a direction in which our Corporation, as custodiers of Museums, Parks, and Galleries, can lend efficient aid. What I am about to say in support of this position is well foreshadowed in the following quotation from a paper, recently read before this Society by the accomplished Curator of the Museum. During the past fifteen years," says Mr. Paton, "education has made enormous strides in our midst, and large sums have been expended in the machinery of elementary education and school buildings. We are now on the threshold of other important changes in connection with scientific and secondary education, and in the efficiency of all these educational movements the museum of the city ought to be an important factor. It ought to be the centre around which educational institutions should cluster, the storehouse whence they could draw the material examples and illustrations required on the lecture table and in the class-room."-Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, Vol. XVII., p. 77. · Long convinced of the educative influence of museums, and desirous of making better use of them than was possible under existing conditions, I transmitted the paper I now read early last autumn to the proper authorities, requesting the privilege of borrowing objects from their collections, but scarcely venturing to hope that my prayer would be conceded without a struggle. To my agreeable surprise I was met more than half-way. I had suggested that, on the lines of circulating libraries, schools might subscribe to the museum and thereby entitle themselves to borrow from time to time from its contents, subject to the discretion of the Curator. However, in a circular addressed to the Chairman of the School Board, the privilege was offered most generously to all schools without such subscription. As I have already made ample use of the privilege, I am in a position to speak of the benefits to be derived, and of the actual working of the scheme. It is not necessary to recommend at great length such a scheme on theoretical grounds. If one feature more than another is specially characteristic of recent educational progress, it is the increasing importance assigned to things rather than words, to the concrete rather than the abstract, as an instrument of instruction. This, after all, is but the oldest and most natural of pedagogic methods. Lucid, simple explanation is good; diagram or picture still better; the actual sensible object best of all. What means this cry, as yet incoherent, for technical training but the expression of a feeling that the senses-the gateways of knowledge-form the safest basis for instruction calculated to prepare for the industrial business of life? What we have to do with here, however, is nothing more than the general education of the senses. This general education of the senses must necessarily have things rather than words for its instruments. Academic methods must ever remain indispensable to the training of the professional, learned, and governing classes; and in the olden days, when the resources of civilisation were few, and the field open to human effort limited, the need for such classes was paramount and their rewards great. No wonder then that these methods gained that firm hold on education which they so stoutly to this day maintain, No mere education of the senses will ever impart the subtle sense of the beauty of linguistic expression, the far-reaching grasp of the philosophical intellect, the noble enthusiasm of the statesman, the orator, the poet, and the preacher. On the vastly-preponderating class, however, of hand-workers in field and city, academic methods would be thrown away. Let them be strong with the strength of Antæus, greatest when in contact with mother earth. To all immature minds, unaccustomed to mental analysis and accurate linguistic expression, objective teaching is a philosophical necessity. Seeing is not only believing, but it should create a desire to see as the best basis for belief, for the human mind rapidly grows in acquisitiveness and assimilating power when brought into intelligent contact with the facts of nature. How, then, is the demand for objective teaching to be satisfied? Pictorial art pours out to us endless stores of illustrative material. It may be that this very abundance tends to cramp the imagination and gratify a mere vulgar wonder. Excursions and collecting are still better educators. Country children are in this connection, for the more familiar objects of their districts, independent of further aid, and can see, handle, and collect, as part of their daily experience. Geikie's recent book on the Teaching of Geography as a stimulus and guide to this delightful hunting-ground of the senses is admirable in its wise suggestiveness. But with the urban child the case is otherwise. On the other hand, if we consider great industries and mechanical processes, the town youth has the advantage. To him the street, the wharf, the market, the railway station, are a living moving museum. Whether or not either makes good use of his natural advantages, finding in them a stimulus to his curiosity, is another matter. Everyone is familiar with the all-important part which Bacon assigned to observation and experiment. Now, in the general education of the senses, museums play the part of experiment in supplementing and forwarding the slow process of individual observation. The formation of such in connection with the daily teaching of the school is most commendable. One of the most admirable features in the yearly report of a German higher school is the graceful and grateful reference to the various contributions, from pupils and well-wishers, of objects for the school museum. Any school collection, however, is necessarily imperfect, and, when the special interest in which it originated has evaporated, is liable to sink into melancholy neglect. We have therefore to fall back upon the public museums, and here the question arises— Do these quite satisfy the demand? A suspicion is apt to arise that they scarcely realise the expectations of those who believe in them. To most people they are shows, sights to be done, retreats in enforced leisure or stress of weather. The thousands whose visits the turnstiles tell feel no immediate need of education, and do not very well know how to set about the satisfying of such a want, supposing it to exist. How might such institutions be made educationally more valuable? The specialist is able to look after himself; but the problem is, how to bring under the influence of museums and galleries those young minds in whom intellectual acquisitiveness is but imperfectly developed. The inner eye sees only what it has been taught to see; we take the liveliest interest in those who are likely to be of service to us, anyone of whom we have no need being to us supremely indifferent. I once saw, and the sight was a depressing one, an apathetic procession of children led through the Corporation Galleries at a quick but not very steady pace, to see the prize drawings in connection with the South Kensington examinations. Here was education by official authority reduced to a farce. In a German town the visits to Botanic and Zoological Gardens form an officially recognised feature of the school programme. In Hamburg and Berlin, for example, it is as familiar as it is delightful to see lads, on their way from school, sketching the artistically-constructed houses in the Zoo, either alone or with a master; or classes marching off in the early morning to supplement the instruction of the class-room. Why this should be so would lead one far afield into a comparison between German and Scotch children, and above all between the position of education and of the educator there and here. To have our schools brought to the museums is with us quite impracticable and indeed inexpedient, whether by teachers conducting their pupils thither, or by lectures within these institutions themselves. How might the museum be brought to the school? This question is answered by the generous and enlightened offer of the Corporation circular. It is to be taken advantage of only on certain lines and within special limitations. Many instructive objects, from their size, nature, and value, are quite unsuited for lending. There would still remain plenty of useful material, particularly in the departments of natural history, economic botany, archæology, the raw materials of art and industry, illustrations of commercial geography and missionary enterprise. Nor is it possible to forget that in actual working the scheme will call for system, patience, and kindliness, on the part of the officials, and unflagging enthusiasm and industry on the part of the beneficiaries. On the former head, at least, there need be no apprehension with so enlightened a curator as Mr. Paton, and one so able and courteous as his assistant, Mr. Campbell. To discuss the advantages of this proposal to schools themselves would lead to an exposition of the first principles of teaching. Nihil in intellectu nisi prius in sensu is an old dictum that puts the whole matter in a nutshell. But the benefits to museums themselves would be considerable. The effect of educating through this channel the powers of observation will bring again and again to public collections inquisitive eyes that would never otherwise have looked twice at them. The direction thus given would lead to further developments. It would directly minimise their mere show aspect, and improve the scientific. One may see in Edinburgh the effect in this direction of a museum being directly associated with a great teaching institution. We have no such facilities for strictly scientific study, for schools and the general public are practically excluded from the Hunterian and Andersonian Museums--the only collections we have that exist specially for teaching purposes. The working of a school-lending scheme would no doubt soon reveal the defects of the Kelvingrove Museum in this connection. Take, for example, the department of natural history. The general educator does not look for specimens of the larger mammals-they are hardly worth the space they occupy; but he would expect to see illustrations of structure, especially in their comparative aspects, e.g., illustrations of skull formation, dentition, foot, horn, and the like. We may well despair of ever seeing realised among us the enchanting pictures, sketched in a recent article in the English Illustrated Magazine on "Ornithology at South Kensington." There one finds not only stuffed birds, but a family group- of parents, young, nest, and surroundings, the whole forming a perfect bit of nature cut out and fixed in its entirety before the admiring beholder. But there might easily be a comparative view of types of wing, feather, feet, beak, and the like. Take, again, Entomology and Conchology. Both are shown as a rule in the thoroughly dead and dreary style. Why should there not be, in addition to the orthodox cases for facility of naming and reference, groups showing the local forms at least, say of insects among models of the plants which they frequent, of molluscs in a bit of sea-cave, with weed and sand and shingle. Then, again, why speak of the transformations of insects when they are so rarely illustrated? Not only the imago, but its eggs, larva, and chrysalis ought to be shown together. It would be easy to find numerous illustrations of how museums would be developed educationally by their being used in actual school teaching. With this, again, is connected the matter of models. Anyone who has seen the Berlin Post-office Museum, or that of Hygiene, will know both how immensely behind the artistic Germans we |