On museum education : presidential address / by Jonathan Hutchinson.

  • Jonathan Hutchinson
Date:
[1908?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On museum education : presidential address / by Jonathan Hutchinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    minently into notice the almost universality of the scope of the Educational Museums which it is a main part of my present object to recommend. I must now leave the topic of the Educational Museum and proceed to the larger one of Museum-Education. That the problems of popular education have been vastly modified during the past half century is obvious to all. In the first place the number of those concerned in them has been multiplied. This, however is the least of the changes. Of far greater importance is our developed perception of their paramount importance. We no longer imagine that education concerns only the young, and them only for a short time and in a restricted number of topics. The schooling which sufficed for our ancestors now ranks as a mere preliminary to real education, an essential one it is true, but of use mainly in reference to higher things. Every one must of course learn how to read and write, and must gain a smattering of arithmetic, geography, and histoiy. These may suffice for the earning of a livelihood and the patient discharge of most social duties. As disciples of progress however, and believers in evolution, we feel com- pelled to aim at a far higher standard. We look to the development of the individual man and the improvement of the race. We note with pleasure the advance which humanity has recently made in reference to sympathy, to capacity for enjoyments which involve no suffering to others, to temperance and to self restraint. The exaggerated individualism of the past is becoming merged in an in- telligent perception of social interests and social duties. The race has to some extent lost its taste for the grosser pleasures, and has rejected many of the grosser superstitions. Whilst human life has become more valuable, and its possession more to be prized, we have at the same time by a rational perception of the real nature of Death deprived it of its terrors. These gains have been achieved for us by education, and they are but a prelude to what we hope to realise by patient perseverance in the same path.
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