Museum - a word descended from lat. museum, which translates as "temple". This is a unique institution that collects, studies, stores and demonstrates samples that show how nature, the human mind and creativity are developing. Children are the most welcome visitors to museums. After all, it was in childhood, when the mind of a small person wants to know the whole and immediately surrounding world, and it is worth introducing the child to culture. An unprecedented phenomenon of Russian culture can be called the creation of school museums aimed specifically at young visitors. We will discuss these organizations in the article.
School Museum: Definition
The school museum is a type of museum organization of educational institutions, represented by a wide variety of profiles. These institutions can be attributed to departmental and public museums, pursuing educational, educational and cognitive goals. Managed by an asset of teachers and students, they are fully included in the public education system. Often the curator is a specialized state museum.
School museums began with interdisciplinary classrooms, where a rich fund of educational and visual aids, herbariums and other items collected by the students — biographies, stories, minerals, rare photographs and objects — was stored. The phenomenon quickly spread in teaching, becoming an effective means of training and education of the younger generation.
The activities of school museums in Russia began in the 19th century - then they were created at the noble schools. The next stage of their development is the twenties of the XX century, when the boom of creating local history museums took place throughout the USSR - many of them took root at schools. Celebrations of anniversaries associated with the history of the Soviet Union in the 50s, 70s, also led to the spread of such museums.
School museums are created on the initiative of teachers, school graduates, students and their parents, chefs. Here, students are engaged in the search, storage, study and systematization of the exposition. The entire collection they collected becomes part of the museum fund of the Russian Federation.
Today in our country there are about 4800 school museums, of which:
- historical - about 2000;
- military-historical - about 1400;
- local history - 1000;
- other profiles - 300-400.
The objectives of the museum at school
School museums pursue the following goals in their activities:
- Promoting the development of skills in research activities among students.
- Support for children's creativity.
- Building respect for local and global culture.
- Raising respect for the past.
- Formation of a sense of responsibility for the preservation of historical values.
- Cultivating a sense of pride in the history of their Fatherland.
- The students have a sense of belonging to the past of their small homeland, modern history.
- Ensuring the relationship between the school and cultural institutions.
Objectives of the activity
School museums, photos of which you will see throughout the article, strive to solve the following tasks:
- Education proper patriotic moods of the younger generation.
- Familiarization of the child with the history of the family, region, country, the whole world.
- Satisfying the needs of schoolchildren-researchers in writing history themselves.
- Preservation and demonstration of authentic historical documents and artifacts.
- Filling children's leisure with search and research work, studying the collected collection, preparing and caring for exhibits, participating in conferences and creative evenings.
- Helping students to comprehend the beginnings of research, the formation of an analytical approach.
- Contributing to the concretization and expansion of knowledge of the children gleaned by them from school textbooks and teachers' stories.
Work principles
The work of the school museum is based on the following principles:
- Systematic communication with school lessons.
- The use of all types of extracurricular activities: seminars, patronage of veterans, conferences, etc.
- Occupation of scientific and research activities.
- Creative initiative of schoolchildren.
- Public Relations.
- Strict accounting of museum fund units, expositions.
- Permanent communication with state museums.
The social mission of school museums
Speaking about school museums and their role in conducting local history studies, we will touch on the social aspect of this activity - let's see what this organization can teach a child as a citizen, member of the family and society. So, what gives the student participation in the museum at the school:
- Acquaintance with the problems and pride of the native land from the inside - through search and research activities.
- Raising respect for the past, cultural heritage - through acquaintance with the affairs of ancestors.
- Skills of independent life - participation in trips, expeditions.
- Traits of a researcher - through a search, analytical, restoration work.
- Rehearsal of future social roles - in the Museum Council, a child can be both a leader and a subordinate.
- The role of a direct chronicler, documentary scholar - schoolchildren write their own history of their land, staff funds, make up expositions.
- Professional certainty - having tried on a real profession, the student can already decide whether he wants to devote himself to this area in adult life.
Hallmarks of the institution
Features of the activities of school museums stem from a certain kind of traits that are characteristic only for this organization:
- The work of such a museum is consistent with the educational objectives of the school.
- Has a collection of genuine historical artifacts and documents.
- Demonstrates an exposition or several expositions clearly divided by subject.
- Has the necessary equipment, spaces for the exhibition.
- The Museum Council is constantly functioning - active students who, under the guidance of teachers, conduct research activities, work with foundations, take care of the safety and proper form of exposure.
- In the activities of the organization you can always catch the features of social partnership.
- Educational and educational mission is realized through mass educational and exhibition activities.
What are school museums?
Each museum at the school has its own profile - specialization of activity, filling the fund, which connects it with a certain science, discipline, sphere of culture, art, activity. The main groups are as follows:
- historical;
- natural sciences;
- art;
- theatrical;
- musical;
- technical;
- literary;
- agricultural and so on.
The museum can conduct complex work. An ideal example is the local history orientation. The children study the nature and culture of their region, city, district as a whole. It is important to note that museums of a specific profile can focus only on a specific phenomenon in their sphere. The historical museum can study the history of only a city or school, the literary - only the work of unknown writers, the musical - only the ditties of a certain ethnic group, etc.
Talking about what school museums are, one cannot but mention the monographic ones - dedicated to a specific object, person, event. These include the museums of the samovar, books, the New Year, etc. School museums of military glory, photos of which you will also see in the article, are also monographic. They can be dedicated to rear workers, knights of the Order of Glory, etc. Memorial (manor-museum, apartment-museum) and historical-biographical (dedicated to the life of a certain person) museums are fully included here.
Museum funds at the school
As in museums of national importance, the funds of the school museum are divided into two components:
- Primary: museum items that fit the profile of the institution.
- Supporting material: reproduction of a genuine collection (copies, models, photographs, casts, etc.) and visual material (diagrams, posters, diagrams, tables, etc.)
The fund may include:
- tools;
- products, finished products;
- numismatics;
- weapons, signs of military glory;
- Houseware;
- visual sources - works of art and documentary materials;
- written sources - memoirs, letters, books, periodicals;
- media library - textbooks, films, a music library in tune with the profile;
- family rarities and relics and so on.
About the museum at the school
Existence is a key feature of absolutely any museum. Exhibits that reveal a specific object or phenomenon are combined into a thematic and exhibition complex, the latter constitute sections, which, in turn, represent the entire exposition.
Basically, in compiling the exposition, the historical-chronological principle is used - each part of it consistently talks about the event, subject and phenomenon. The most common methods for constructing an exhibition from collections of funds:
- systematic;
- thematic;
- ensemble.
School museums are a special and unique component of the educational and educational process. She is able to achieve those goals, to solve those problems with which ordinary schooling can not cope alone.