Museum in a school bag
Hand in hand, museum and local authorities
MúzeumCafé 22.
Discussions between museums and local authorities about learning and museum education began a long time ago. However, there is little talk about what schools can expect of museum education or how they have been helped by it. In Britain numerous so-called museum education centres already existed decades ago, and they took the museum experience to far-away schools. In Hungary for more than thirty years museums across the country have been making carefully considered and interesting suggestions to teachers who have wanted to see what museums can offer, to experience the benefits and gladly incorporate them into the everyday life of their schools. It’s quite possible that they are thinking ‘only’ of making their own work better with a view to the children’s edification, and of course there was always the perceived task, in addition to school work, of taking the young people to a museum in place of the parents. Experience shows that a teacher takes pupils to visit a museum so they can see and experience what such an institution is like . Despite all this and considering the positive results of many years of attempts on the part of museums, plus the cooperation established between school teachers and museum education officers, we still can’t say that the majority of teachers consciously use museums. However, cooperation between public education and museums has never been as timely as today, since schools are diverse and museums have to adapt to this diversity and different requirements. How can useful results for the children be achieved on the basis of undoubtedly good intentions? The importance of long-lasting links between schools and museums requires that the two types of institutions co-operate even in relation to methodological issues.