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seum is the best introduction to the study unit. Others 

 bring their classes at the end of the study unit, using the 

 Museum exhibits as a summary. The Chicago Board of 

 Education recommends planning the "educational goals of 

 the field trip carefully and cooperatively with the pupils in 

 advance of the tour." Mrs. O'Connell, a successful and 

 enthusiastic teacher at Oscar Mayer School, brings classes 

 to the Museum often and prefers to come midway through 

 a study unit. She finds that someone new — the guide-lec- 

 tuer — rekindles the children's interest. In her view, the 

 school and the Museum supplement one another. 



Follow-up is vital to reinforce the Museum experience 

 and can be quite creative. Some schools and groups, such 

 as the Ecumenical Institute of Chicago, simply engage in 

 structured conversation, discussing in a casual way the 

 things seen at the Museum and relating these things to other 

 experiences. The Institute, a division of the Church Fed- 

 eration of Greater Chicago, is not an elementary school and 

 therefore has no set study units for children, but they are 

 attempting to enrich the lives of inner-city children and 

 encourage "image explosion" and "imaginal" education. 

 The children draw pictures of things seen at the Museum 

 and discuss them repeatedly in various contexts. 



The Chicago Board of Education lists a variety of follow- 

 up procedures — making booklets, writing themes, reading 

 stories, making checklists, etc. 



Mrs. O'Connell's class of above-average students sug- 

 gested their own project. They made masks similar to those 

 made by Indians and took great care to ensure "authen- 

 ticity." The masks were featured in a student art exhibit 

 and some months later, on a return tour, the children 

 brought their masks to the Museum to show the staff- 

 lecturer. 



Sullivan House, a settlement house in the inner city, has 

 an effective and on-going follow-up program. Douglas 

 Dillon, director of Sullivan House, brought nine boys rang- 

 ing from 10 to 15 years of age to the Museum for a short 

 visit. This visit was a flop. The boys, three of whom are in 

 Educable Mentally Handicapped classes and all of whom 

 have been involved with the police, paid little attention to 

 the exhibits and ran around as if in a fun house. The rep- 

 tile hall alone held their brief interest and the collared lizard 

 intrigued them. 



The following summer on a camping trip to Utah, they 

 caught a collared lizard and, on return to Chicago, asked 

 to go back to the Museum to re-examine the Museum's dis- 

 played lizard. This began a series of regular Museum visits. 



Mrs. Barbara Polikoff, of the Sullivan House staff, re- 

 lates, "Mr. Dillon thought of the idea of taking a camera to 

 the exhibit halls and giving each boy a chance to take a few 

 photographs. This follow-up of photography was very im- 

 portant because the boys were able to bring their museum 

 learning right back to Sullivan House. They photographed 

 the lizard, complete with the labeled information, and hung 

 the best of the photographs on their bulletin board." 



This established the pattern for subsequent visits. When 

 they wanted ideas for designs in art, they roamed the an- 

 thropology halls with the camera. One of them photo- 

 graphed a Chinese vase and, back at Sullivan House, an- 

 other boy saw the photo and used a variation of the design 

 to decorate a ceramic bowl he made. As Mrs. Polikoff 

 states, "The museum had stimulated a desire to learn in 

 these boys that school has never been able to rouse." 



Long-range retention of the Museum experience is, of 

 course, greatly reinforced by a strong follow-up program. 

 However, even when facts are forgotten, the positive im- 

 pression of the Museum remains. This fact was stressed 

 repeatedly by social workers, teachers and administrators 

 who deal with children whose attitude toward education 

 is negative. 



Mrs. Jean Feiler of the Ecumenical Institute explained 

 that children from the Institute respond not just to exhibits, 

 but to the total Museum. In the Museum they lose their 

 passivity and are stirred by their surroundings. Mrs. Feiler 

 says, "It is as though their environment had made them 

 different. Remove the environment and the child is trans- 

 formed." 



According to Mrs. Feiler, a group of three and four 

 year olds from the East Garfield area was taken on a full 

 summer of touring. They covered all the museums, parks 

 and zoos possible. When they were asked what they liked 

 best of the things that they had seen they repeatedly cited 

 the neatness, order and cleanliness of the Field Museum. 



Of course, it is desireable that facts and insights gained 

 at the Museum be retained as well and, although I was 

 unable to discover any testing data to support this, they 

 imdoubtedly are. One teacher was able to question a group 

 of children who had toured the Museum two years pre- 

 viously and reported that they had good and specific fact 

 retention. I spoke to a man who described himself as 

 having been a "slow learner and poor reader with litde 

 interest in school," and who had taken a Museum tour in 

 fifth or sixth grade — about 23 years ago. He specifically 

 recalls the guide describing the Multi-levelled Hopi Indian 





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SEPTEMBER Page 77 



