30
Often, the best way to discover a nation's priorities is to look at its budgeting decisions. Henchey suggests that if we want to support non-compulsory educational institutions such as libraries and museums, we will have to reevaluate our financial priorities. A look at some of the budget allocations in the United States demonstrales that he is right Federal funds appropriated in 1986 to
libraries: museums: oublic schools: public
$96,406,000 $24,116,000 $7,500,000,000 (source: Appendix to the 1988 Budget of the US Government, 1986 statistics)
On the local level: Percentage of Boston, I\,fassachusetts city budget for 1988 going to oubliclibraries: l.4Vo
nublic
schools:
27Vo
goes.
NH: Yes, though if you find that all the school svstems ln Canada have been abolished lt inight be an exaggeration to say that I
did it.
MUSEUMS:
AN ALTERNATIVE
MODEL
Norman Henchey says that librarles are
one example of a public educatlonal resounce
that is non-compulsory and, consequently, not a ftnanclal prtority. Museums are another. Like ltbnaries, they don't compel people to use thelr servlces, don't requlne anything (except in some cases a small fee) for admlsslon, don't tell you that you have to view one exhibtt before another or spend a certain amount of time tn the building, and don't test you on what you learned while !'isi[ng or glve you any kind of c.ertlffcate when you leave. Unlike libraries, but like collcgcs and unlversities, museums comblne the research and acfivity of the behlnd-thescenes stalf with the teaching funcdon of the exhibits. For years, I thought that a museum was only what it showed to the public. Then when I worked at the American Museum of Natural History ln New York City during the summers I was 14 and 15, I discovered that ln addltlon to the publlc exhlbtts the museum, behtnd the closed doors oflts olfices and Laboratorles, was a world of sclentiffc acttvt$r. It was not just a place to exhtbtt science, lt was a place where many peoplewere doing sclence. In many ways, thts is also a descrlptlon of a unlversity. Universit5r professors traditionally combine thelr own research and writing wtth passing on to thelr students what they have learned. But schools Gst, grade, and grant degrees, thus putting the students - the university's visitors - lnto a
kind of relationship with the instltutlon that people in a museum never have to enter tnto.
stalf of the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphta, which exhtbtts litera4r archives, told me that when vlsltors use the museum's collection for thelr owrr research, they sometimes point out errors, make suggesdons, pass on new lnformatlon. This ldnd of exchange, though posstble ln a A woman on the
else.
Recently I became curious about whether
other museums stmggle for autonomy the uray the Museum of Philosophy had to. I spoke wtth Donna Richoux's husband Frank Ross at the Museum of Comparadve Tnolog tn Cambrtdge, Mass., who told me that because the Cambrtdge Publlc Schools fund many of the museum's exhibits, thelr sctence
curriculum is actually starting to determine much of the exhibits'content. The museum is forced to teach what the schools think is trnportant more often than what the museum scientlsts genutnely want to share with the
(source: City of Boston Budget Office) (contirued trom preulous page) SS: Well, let us know howyourwork
the college had - or strlved to have - what Norman Henchey calls a monopoly on learnlng, and the odstenc€ of a museum of phtlosophy, whose foundtreg purpose was to malre phtlosophy available to everyone, threatened that monopoly. More tmportant, the college was able to force the museum to leave. Ifure put all our resources lnto schools, It seems, we also put all our thtnking there, so that lt becomes hard - both in pracflcality and tn our lmagteadons - to have anything
university, ls rarer. Knowledge tn schools typlcally flows ln on$ one dlrecdon: from teacherto studenL Museums, then, are ltke schools ln some ways, but the ways tn whtch they are dlfferent gfrrc them the potentlal to be irnportant models for us as we thlnk about how people can find work worth dolng and colleagues to Joln them tn that work, The summer I uras l8 I was luclry enough to be pa.rt of an experlment tn formingJust such a model. I was a tourgulde at the Museum of Phllosophy tn New York, whlch, durlng its brlef season of operadon, tried to demonstrate phllosoptrtcal concepts and encourage pldlosophtcal trunnng through appealtng exhtbtts and lnteractlve expertments. CrounCs of chtldren passed through our tiny space that summer, laughtng at our opttcal llluslons, clamortng for a chance to recreate the wax-meltlng expedment that led the philosopher Rene Descartes to conclude, ,'I think, therefore I am,' and settling back tnto pr:zzled reflecdon at one of the guides' thought-provoldng questlons. Ttre founders of the museum dldn't set up the extribits only to attract lnterested vlsltors. They also hoped that by opening the museum they would be creating a place where people who uanted to dlscuss philosophy - to gather with others, to questlon and argue, to read and then talk about what they had read would be able to meet outs{de a unlversity,
where philosophy tradtttonally belonged. For a while, this isJust what happened. We gathered tn the small olflce - some of us as young as 14 and some as old as 65 - to talk about phllosophy, sometlmes contlnuing the conversatlons over dlnner or whlle keeprng an €ye on the young vtsttors the next day. Often, what we told the vlsltors during the tours was a reflecflon of the dlscusslons we rvere having behlnd the scenes. We would say about a pardcular odrtbtt, 'I would interpret It this way, butjustyesterday my colleaglre over here rvas saytng..." Our vlsitors got the sense that philosophy was an activity ongoing, Iluid, and excitlng. The museum closed at the end of that summerwhen the college that had gtven tt space for those months clalmed to be unable to do so any longer. It seems strange, perhaps, that the college wouldn't urant to make room for an organkadon that celebrated somethlng that they, h theory, also valued. But
publtc. Scott Lloyd at the Museum of Hologra-
phy (3-dtmenslonal photography) in New York Ctty said something similar. He
explalned that years ago the museum was very much a center of research, was in fact the only place where people were worklng to derrelop holographic technologr. Now, because the museum must concentrate on daneloping lts exhlbidons to get funding whtch often comes from the schools - less energr has been arrailable for the behtnd-the-
scenes acflvlty.
It's fmstratlng - and very significant that these small museums find themselves havtng to make so mErny concessions to the schools. Scott Lloyd told me that when holo-
graphy was flrst lnvented ln 1947, no one knew about lt exc.ept the people ln laboratories who were developing it. "The muserun has become a way of spreading informadon about holography,' he said, "We have no secrets." No secretsl Ifonly schools could have thts attitude, or support lt in museums. A frlend of mtne, now in graduate school, says that people ln her departrnent arc careful to keep from each other the ideas they are dweloplng. 'You don't talk about what you're thfnldng wtth people in your own department,' she tells me. 'You never know what they might do with it.'And I remember suggesdng to a professor who visited the Museum of Phtlosophy that by making philosophy seem exclting and accessible, we might be sendlng a more tnterested group of sfudents to hts college classes one day. 'Yes,'he sald, 'But I don't ltke all this talk about philosophy betng somethingyou can do anywhere. It kind of reduces the quality of it. People are forgetttng that philosophy is meant to be an
academlc dtscipltne.' And schools are forgetting that before they were unlversally compulsory, phllosophy, and aU the acuvities schools nowclaim as thelr own, were more like$ to be "done
anywhere.' Availability, accessibiLtSr, secretiveness - these seem to me to be the real lssues confronting both museums and schools. If we dectde that we don't want secrets, let's begln to put our energy, lntelligence and financial resources into educatlonal models that are as genutnely publlc as mus€ums ane destgned to be. - SusannahSheffer GROWINC WTTHOUT SCHOOLING #59