5 2 Report of the President 



of Brooklyn, and to the Boy Scouts who kindly volunteered 

 to act as guides for the blind who attended these lectures. 



During the last half of the year, the work for the blind has 

 been in the immediate charge of Miss Ann E. Thomas, who 

 joined the department staff in August. In this work she has 

 been assisted by Miss Clara A. Kelsey. The success of this 

 branch of Museum instruction is in no small measure due to 

 the enthusiasm which Miss Thomas has aroused in the 

 teachers. 



The members of the department staff have been called upon 

 frequently during the year to give special instruction to classes 



visiting the Museum and to explain the exhibits. 

 Instruction T , . . r t , 



. . . , In this way the visits of the teachers and pupils 



within the , , . . . . . ; 



have been made more profitable and the number 

 Museum r , , ... , . 



of classes that have availed themselves of these 



privileges is increasing. Indeed there have been occasions 

 when the entire staff of the department was engaged in this 

 particular work. It is gratifying to observe that more and 

 more teachers are seeing the wisdom of confining the attention 

 of their pupils to one or two halls rather than to a general 

 view of the Museum. 



In connection with the broadening out of the field covered 

 by the Museum in its work in Public Education, an inter- 

 esting experiment was made during March and April by Mrs. 

 Vaughan. With the idea in mind of using the exhibits of the 

 Museum to illustrate the beginnings of human invention and 

 industry, a course was planned to serve the threefold purpose 

 of presenting the background of history, of arousing interest 

 in and respect for human labor and of showing school chil- 

 dren how to view the Museum collections intelligently. The 

 course, in a series of nine lessons, was given to a class of six 

 students from the New York Training School for Teachers. 

 The first lecture introduced the general theme: the develop- 

 ment of the human mind, and the origins of society as shown 

 in material culture; the remaining ones dealt with stages of 

 culture in various areas without regard to chronological se- 

 quence and included the study of primitive shelter, food, 

 clothing, basketry, pottery, ornament and design and the evo- 



