Can the museum be a space of discovery and delight?
Ashwin Prabhu
Photos: Sakti Prasanna Monhanty. Courtesy: DAV Public School, Pokhariput.
It is instructive to start this essay with an amusing recollection from the history of the Government Museum, Chennai (erstwhile Madras Museum) which gives us an insight into the space these institutions have occupied in public consciousness. The museum, founded in 1851 thanks to the efforts of its superintendent Edward Balfour, was physically housed in the same campus as the city’s first public zoo. The locals of Madras, to distinguish one from the other, apparently referred to the museum as cetta college (‘college of the dead’) and the neighbouring zoo as uyir college (‘college of the living). Cetta College – a learning centre devoid of life, a gallery for stuffed animals and inanimate objects. Sadly, little seems to have changed in the imagination of educators over more than a century when it comes to viewing the museum as an active extension of the classroom. What would it take to re-imagine this hoary institution as one that is alive with rich possibilities of learning for young minds?
Neil MacGregor’s 2010 radio series, “A History of the World in 100 Objects”, a delightful result of a partnership between the BBC and the British Museum, shows us one way in which, in the hands of a creative educator, a museum’s collection can serve as a springboard to an exciting investigation of history through material heritage. In 100 episodes of the epic series, each 15-mins in duration and centred on a single artifact, the curators and radio producers attempted to traverse two million years of humanity right up to the present day. The audio content was eventually rendered into text and published as a handy book by Penguin. Since then, there have been a few attempts to create an Indian equivalent of this landmark approach. Devika Cariappa’s expansive A Children’s History of India in 100 Objects and Vidya Dehejia’s India: A Story through 100 Objects both mirror the approach pioneered by MacGregor – that the story of our past can be understood by interrogating physical artifacts and that there is no better place than the local museum to facilitate this enquiry.
In the West, museums have long been seen to be as “in the service” of the public, and both schools and students have hence been critical beneficiaries of the museum system. A general social culture of volunteering prevails, and serving as weekend docents (volunteer guides) is a favoured pastime of the young and old alike. Fresh university students and retired folk from various professional streams – both embrace the role of acting as guides at the neighbourhood museum and giving back to the community. Museum curators have dedicated ‘Educational Outreach’ teams which are constantly envisioning ways in which the museum’s exhibitions can be integrated into the school curriculum and looking for opportunities to welcome school students into their galleries.
Here, in India, we’ve been somewhat half-hearted in our attempt to leverage the museum as a rich and vibrant learning space for the young. School trips to the museum, if they happen at all, are uninspiring affairs with students being lined up and trooped past a series of exhibits with little or no engagement planned. Silence is of paramount importance and consequently, questions are frowned upon. Children are expected to read and learn solely from the information boards accompanying the exhibits – many of which are dry and textbook-like without directly referencing the exhibit itself. And responsible for this situation is not just a complete absence of motivation in the museum authorities to attract and engage with new audiences, but also an unfortunate poverty of imagination in the teacher.
Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly Prince of Wales Museum) in Mumbai, established in 1922.
Photo: Bernard Gagnon, courtesy: commons.wikimedia.org
Any meaningful change in this status quo can only happen when as educators we are interested in answering the question – what can museums offer to the classroom?
The starting point perhaps is to appreciate that any history cannot be told only through texts. And the reason for this is quite elementary – texts have not always existed, especially when we want to understand cultures of the distant past. And when texts and the written word finally did emerge, they emerged only in a few pockets of ‘civilizations’, excluding large swathes of the world. A robust history therefore is a coming together of both ‘texts’ and ‘objects’. Objects constitute an entire material history of humanity which has much to offer to the observant and interested learner. They hold within them dates and years, reigns of kings, periods of great tumult and progress, ages of invention, creativity and enterprise. Through an object, a discerning viewer and student can investigate purpose, beliefs, and power – its use and abuse. Through a well-curated and anchored tour of physical heritage, one can journey along a time arc of thousands of years in a single afternoon.
The other aspect is to recognize that children learn not just through ‘content’ but also ‘contact’. Physical, first-hand contact brings along with it an experiential quality which the best of textbooks struggle to achieve. A skilled museum curator will know how to place an artifact in its social, historical, and cultural context using the object itself and carefully chosen accompanying text, visuals, audio, and video. The viewer is thus left with insight not just limited to the physical object itself, but which emplaces it in a larger, more ‘real’ world.
Chennai Rail Museum, established in 2002.
Photo: Lakshmi Kiran, courtesy: commons.wikimedia.org
Finally, when as educators we begin to integrate museums and museum visits into our lesson plans and pedagogy, it is vital to keep in mind a few pointers to ensure a learning-filled trip for the children:
- Remember to keep the batch size small for the visit. Not more than 25-30 children. If the class size is larger than this, then it is best to organize the class into smaller batches and plan separate trips for each batch. Another possibility is to have each batch visit a different museum gallery on the same day anchored by separate teachers.
- Spend time orienting the students to what they will be seeing prior to the visit. Some basic familiarity with the museum, its layout, and its exhibits can go a long way in ensuring better learning outcomes on the actual trip.
- Do not be ambitious. If the museum you are visiting is a large, sprawling public institution, it is better to spend a whole morning in a single gallery than attempt to cover the entire museum in the same day. If the museum is in the same city your school is in, then you can and should plan multiple visits over a school year for the class rather than a ‘one-off’ trip.
- Make multiple visits by yourself to the galleries you are going to take your students to. Prepare specific worksheets for key exhibits where you would like the children to pause and spend time. The worksheet should be for individual work and have exercises which encourage first-hand observation, provoke further questions from the child, and help stoke wonder. Make sure you include a few sketching and reflection exercises in the worksheet.
- Design the museum visit with a break in the middle. After snacks and water, gather the children around and make time for coming together as a group. Allow the children to share what they have learnt, ask clarification questions of each other, go over their responses to the worksheet, and then orient them towards what to expect in the second half of the visit.
- Create strong linkages between what the students ‘see’ and ‘learn’ on the visit with their academic curriculum. Assign follow-up reading work and exercises from the textbook after the visit. Very often these museum visits tend to become stand-alone trips quite disconnected from the daily transactions of the classroom.
- In all of this, do not forget that children also need to have fun while learning. Allow for spontaneity during the trips, impromptu wandering into unplanned galleries, and for children to linger around exhibits that appeal to them for as long as they want.
Two hiyang hiren watercrafts flanked by two tanna hi watercrafts, inside the Hijagang Museum in the Kangla Fort, Imphal
Photo: Haoreima, courtesy: commons.wikimedia.org
It is an opportune time to be an educator in this country now when we are gradually broadening our definitions of education and seeing thoughtfully designed new public spaces for learning emerge. In addition to the grand public museums which are our colonial legacy, there are several other state-owned and private museums which have come up in the past few years – the Bihar Museum in Patna, the Science Museum, the Museum of Art and Photography, and the Indian Music Experience Project in Bangalore, Dakshina Chitra, the museum on art, architecture, crafts and performing arts in Chennai, and the intriguingly named Museum of Solutions in Mumbai, an exploratory space designed especially for children – to name but just a few.
Etymologically speaking (“the seat of the muses”), by pursuing imaginative and energetic pedagogy, we now have an opportunity to help museums reclaim their original roots as places of contemplation and inspiration, for ourselves and for our children.
The author taught English and history at The School KFI for five years between 2014-19. The time he spent in school allowed him to examine his questions around learning, growing, and finding one’s place in the world, and his first book Classroom With A View – Notes from the Krishnamurti schools published by Tara Books in 2022 is an outcome of that engagement. He is very interested in exploring new ways of teaching the social sciences and his second book Sculpted Stones – Mysteries of Mamallapuram by Tulika Books is one illustration of an approach which is quite unconventional. He can be reached at ashwin.prabhu@gmail.com.
