- RICARDO MAKYN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
It's all smiles for these students of Airycastle Primary School in St Thomas.
Rebecca Tortello, Contributor
ULTIMATELY, ONE of the greatest things teachers can do is enable students to wrestle with issues of right and wrong. For this to happen, teachers must be willing to create classrooms rich with imagination that can provoke the mind. We can worry about test scores till doomsday, but the least we should do in the classroom is encourage creativity and questioning.
Sadly, I found in my dissertation research that this idea of releasing children's imaginations and curiosity as a methodological imperative does not yet seem to be widely reflected in Jamaica's education system.
In considering Jamaican children's reactions to their experiences in museums, I asked over 200 primary school children from urban and rural areas and public and private schools to tell me what they remembered and why. The children's reactions reflected an appreciation of interactivity, the sparking of curiosity, autonomy, creativity, critical thought, and reflection. They affirmed that being able to look at culture and the arts is neither superfluous nor irrelevant as many may think. It is absolutely critical to civic education, to being able to discuss and disagree in a reasonable fashion and to being an interesting and interested person.
Yet, when I asked the children to imagine what they would do if they could create their own exhibit, most of the children had trouble understanding that there was no right or wrong answer to this open-ended question. They were uncomfortable with the type of question. Once we moved past that block, most eventually spoke of exhibits similar to those they had seen.
If they had been to the National Gallery of Art they spoke of creating an exhibition on Jamaican paintings, or sculpture. If they had been to the People's Museum of Craft and Technology they spoke of exhibitions on the post emancipation period of Jamaican history. Only a few spoke of exhibitions based on topics of concern to them - ideas that came directly from their own sense of creativity and social justice. What were these areas of concern? Lack of knowledge of the past, HIV/AIDS, crime and violence, child abuse - all topics of crucial importance in Jamaica today and on which the children had not seen any type of exhibition.
The study's findings have highlighted that the process of learning is as important as the learning itself. Educational philosopher Maxine Greene calls this process, 'adventures into meaning', which museum experiences can provide as my research attests. The children's reactions to their museum experiences indicate that this process is happening to some extent in Jamaica, and it is worth noting because, if harnessed and facilitated, these 'adventures into meaning' could move squarely in from the margins of the formal school system. It is important to remember that cultural institutions tend to resonate with creative, critical, imaginative, individual, and innovative thinkers.
For a post colonial country whose policies reflect a preoccupation with national self-definition as it strives to engender patriotism and achieve international recognition, Jamaican history/art and folk museums should therefore mount in importance and relevance, because they can also promote individual self-definition and related pedagogy. In addition, art itself should not be narrowly defined. As one museum board member in my study stated, "We continue to miss the connection of the arts to the broader social spectrum."
MUSEUMS AS EDUCATIONAL TOOLS
My study revealed that Jamaican school children a significant museum-going audience on the island recognise museums as educational and memorable for multiple individual reasons. They indicated the desire to learn by returning to museums and making new personal connections with the objects and ideas. This has highlighted the need for a new attitude towards teaching methods and informal education in Jamaica in general, and towards museum education in particular.
The study's findings suggest advocating for museum-school partnerships, that in turn, demand the framing of non-traditional, open-ended pedagogy related to the idea of learning for life. This, however, depends on enabling institutions, like museums (not traditionally recognised as educational by the general public) to serve in that capacity. Museum visits, for example, could be made a mandatory part of teacher training and school curricula. Training of museum guides should be increased and greater interaction between museum staff and teachers fostered.
However, care would have to be taken to ensure that the magic and marvelling found in the museum experience are not turned into an assessment-based, didactic process. This approach involves acting on a vision of learners as individuals first, whose own growth leads to the growth of the nation, which, in essence, is what culture does it feeds individual and national development without premeditated outcomes. Happily, the seeds of its being realised are there in the curiosity to be found in the mind of a child. It is our job as educators, administrators, parents and policy makers to uncover it.
Dr. Rebecca Tortello is an assistant professor of education at New York's Adelphi University.
