Through the course of some research on Garden City history this week, I ran across an article on education and the need for reinvention in schools. The journal article was a practical analysis of schools that have done well at incorporating the precepts suggested by Charles Reigeluth in a chapter of a book that he edited on change in education. The article, which included Garden City Community School as a case study–the reason that I ran across it in the first place–discussed the need for change in education. It suggested a need not for reform or improvement, but for transformation–a complete change of form, a systemic overhaul. In reading “A Framework: Reinventing the Museum,” and “The Museum, a Temple or the Forum?” it struck me just how similar education and public history are in many ways. Both are tools to educate, both have historically used highly defined systems to effect that education, and both, under more severe public scrutiny have had a tendency to become defensive rather than responsive.
In the readings in “Reinventing the Museum,” I find a lot of discussion about how museums can reinvent themselves, how they should be more reflective, how they should be more sensitive and inclusive, and numerous other catchphrases and key words, what I don’t read as much is discussion of external perspective. Much of what is being said is from internal entities–people in the museum that are working off an already biased perspective of what they believe the public is experiencing. Socially, our culture is at a point that demands individualized education rather than en masse programs. The article on education talked about it in terms of industrial world vs. new world. In the former education was done for the purpose of producing a product that would function as a seamless part of a giant machine. The intent was to de-individualize the parties so that they could be controlled all at once in an efficient manner. The new world, the modern world, has seen a (caution: catchphrase ahead) paradigm shift in how society thinks about education. In this new world education is about the individual, it is about satisfying the belief that each person learns differently.
My questions are at a more philosophical level when it comes to museums. It seems that museums and the people that run them have identified that there is a problem. The solutions that are proposed, on the whole, seem to discuss what types of structures could be erected (both intellectually and physically) that would serve the public. What if it is those structures that are the problem? What if no structure could be devised that could satisfy the public? Perhaps the question that needs to be under greater scrutiny is how to effectively reach the public by individualization. Simply restructuring does not seem a rational course of action in a society and culture that dislikes structures and institutions. Of course individualization of history can sound a lot like (watch out, another catchphrase) selling out. But it seems to me that, if at some point the museum was born–and I am sure that it was a radical notion at some point in history–then at some point it must adapt, and that adaptation may be, nay, should be, as radical as the birth. Perhaps, the era of the museum is altogether over, and it is time to invent, rather than to reinvent. I don’t know. Thoughts?