Opinion
Can museums heal the nation?
In recent years numerous museums and galleries have targeted audiences’ health and wellbeing needs. From mental health service users, older adults with dementia, people with physical and cognitive disabilities, to public health education, training and rehabilitation, museums are offering an impressive variety of healthy programmes and activities. The challenge is to fully understand the benefits …
We don’t need more teaching to the test
“It’s a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” Albert Einstein was voicing concern about equipping society to meet the challenges of the future. So should we. Like fictional headmaster Thomas Gradgrind and education secretary Michael Gove, we tend to get rather hooked on what Charles Dickens’s Hard Times refers to as facts, facts and “nothing …
Dull history will not inspire learning
The draft of the reviewed national curriculum for England has finally been announced by the Department for Education. If implemented, these changes will impact negatively on museum education and history teaching generally, especially affecting younger learners. The emphasis of the new history syllabus is clear – a movement away from learning about people and how …