VITAL FORCE IN EDUCATION

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 88, 30 April 1937, Page 6

VITAL FORCE IN EDUCATION

Visits of School Children to Museums DR. OLIVER'S ADVICE Art galleries aud museums of the British Empire to-day are vital forces in the education of the child, according to the Director of tlie Dominion. Museum at Wellington, Dr W. R. B. Oliver, wlio officially opened the new wing of the art gallery and museum at Napier last night. In the course of an interesting address he stressed the value of these institutions for educating school children and told how the Hawke's Bay institution at Napier might be used for this purpose. "A talk about museums would be inooxnplete without referring to the child, he said. "The mind is most open and impressionable during the school period. After that, fixed habits of thought become dominant and new ideas are not so easily received, and this in spite of the fact that these ideas can be supported by demonstation and argument. • Naturally, then, the child comes in for special attention in Museums. Some 'museums have special sections for children. But even so the wHole museum should be so labelled that secondary school children can learn from readmg the labels and studying tho exhibits which illustrate them. That is the idea to keep uppermost — the specimen should iliustrate the label."

Dr Oliver said that although the museum was an educational institujfcion tvas not officially part of the education system of the Dominion. But it was a very useful adjunct, and as schoolteachers had tlie liberty of taking their classes out during school hours, the museum should cater specially for them. The Dominion Museum, he was pleased to say, had been visited by many thousands of school children since it opened... After returning to the school they were asked to write essays on what they had seen. "The kind of exhibit that best appeals both to children and adults is that in which a .whole case or one side of a case refers to a single subject," said the speaker. '"The subject may be quite a wide one, such as Maori weapons, but nothing should be included outside the related subject. All' the labels will then have some relation to each other. ' They will, in fact, as a whole, tell a Btory. This method works well with regard to economic exhibits, and these generally attradt attention. Thus the history of coal, the manufacture of sugar, or the making of Maori stone tools are types of exhibits defmitely educational in character and which should, in my opinion, gradually be built up in place of coltection! which naturally are tnot'e easily and tberefore first placed in position. "But all the children within the distriet served by the museum cannot visit it.*frequcntly. Only those living in the iinmediatc neighbourhood can do so. The museum must tlierefore cxteud its work outside its four walls. Naturally, tliis is done by lectures and wireless talks ; but a method has been developed jn Ameriea and now is being introduced in New Zealand of circulating exhibits. These are portable exhibiticn eases provided with suflicient materiai information lor the teachers to base their lessons upon. They are circulated- •regulariy to - the schools, each ase remaining about two weeks in eaeh school." That system, said Dr Oliver, worked wonderfully well in Ameriea, and also in New Zealand, for since Auckland has had its new museum it had equipped and kept in circulation a number of these cases. Through the latest grant from the Carnegie Coropration 30 of these cases had been distributed among the museums at Auckland, Wellington" Christchurch and Dunedin. Thcso were now in ccurse of preparation, and there was no reason why, for this particular activity, the Dominion Museum should not include in its district the cities of Napier and Hastings.