TEACHING IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM^ 



By Agnes Laidlaw Vaughan 



AS an experiment in the teaching of 

 history with the aid of museums, 

 it was proposed to begin with a 

 brief study of primitive man and the 

 beginnings of human social life. A 

 class of thirty-five boys of 5 B Grade, 

 that is about twelve years old, visited 

 the American Museum in charge of a 

 teacher. The class was met by the 

 Museum instructor in a small lecture 

 hall, in which she had placed a collection 

 of objects consisting of stone implements, 

 wooden, shell and gourd utensils, baskets, 

 pottery and weapons, all of which the 

 children were permitted to handle. 

 The boys had been reading Robinson 

 Crusoe, so the instructor took the adven- 

 tures of Crusoe as a text and compared 

 his situation with that of early man, 

 dependent on his surroundings and on 

 his powers of invention. 



The theme of the lesson was the in- 

 crease of man's power over matter, illus- 

 trated by the evolution of his tools as his 

 power to use perception and memory 

 developed into reason. A river pebble 

 was shown as the earliest hammer; 

 next the hammerstone with pits hol- 

 lowed to fit the thumb and finger, a 

 shaping of the implement that aug- 

 mented its utility while it diminished the 

 effort required to produce effect. x\xes 

 and knives of flint, chert and obsidian 

 were examined and the growth of the 

 ideas of symmetry and adaptation were 



I In line with thie work in teaching described 

 here, an elaborated series of lessons has been 

 prepared for a class of teachers from the New 

 York Training School. On the completion of 

 this course in the American Museum the class 

 will continue the work at the MetropoUtan Mu- 

 seum of Art. A similar experiment is being car- 

 ried on in Boston to correlate education in pub- 

 lic school and museum, and notes on the results 

 of the experiments will be presented at the Mu- 

 seums Association meeting in May. 

 76 



discussed as well as the effect of the 

 nature of material on the perfecting of 

 the tool. Also a digging stick, the pre- 

 cursor of hoe and plough, was studied, 

 together with bows and arrows, slings, 

 stone, shell and iron-pointed spears, used 

 in war and hunting, and implements 

 designed for the preparation of food, 

 with questions as to their modern 

 equivalents. Emphasis was laid on the 

 persistence of form in some articles, 

 which illustrates the happy discovery 

 by the early makers of a perfect adapta- 

 tion of the implement to its uses. The 

 effect on the growth of human mind and 

 power came in for consideration, the de- 

 velopment of ingenuity and invention 

 from these simple origins which have 

 made possible the complex machinery 

 and processes of modern times. After 

 the discussion the class visited the 

 anthropological halls and asked many 

 more questions in relation to the ma- 

 terial on exhibition. 



Another lesson, conducted in similar 

 fashion, took up primitive fire-making, 

 the preparation of clothing and the be- 

 ginnings of art, earliest manifestations 

 of love of beauty and of that need for 

 self-expression which is the deepest 

 craving of humanity, the end toward 

 which the satisfying of hunger and other 

 passions is but a means. 



Several members of the classes after- 

 ward called at the Museum to ask the 

 instructor further questions. No tabu- 

 lated record of results could be made 

 from this experiment but there was 

 neither doubt of the interest aroused in 

 the children, nor of their eagerness for 

 "more." 



The recent installation of the exhibit 

 on the antiquity of man will be of value 



