The Teaching Uses of a Sociology Museum

Abstract

T nHE USE of visual aids in teaching is not new, but the broad application and wide acceptance of such techniques is a comparatively recent development. Educators are becoming more and more aware of the limitations and dangers inherent in verbalism and are casting about for remedies. At the same time, newly developed mechanical devices for visual representation have appeared to facilitate progress and to invite experimentation. The result has been a ready acceptance of whatever visual aids lay at hand. This has frequently meant a superficial and uncritical application of such techniques, or a particularistic enthusiasm for some one type of visual device or method. Such a limited view of the possibilities of visual methods, however, is now passing, and in its stead is developing the conclusion that no single device or method can be used to the exclusion of all others, but that a whole battery of visual aids, co-ordinated for a maximum utility, is the essential technique. It is such a battery of visual aids, as applied to the teaching of sociology, which this paper aims to discuss. The field of sociology has, to a considerable degree, become concerned with contemporary reality. It treats phenomena which are essentially alive and dynamic. It covers a territory in which facts and principles are continually evolving and rapidly increasing. And more than many other subjects, perhaps, it is in need of flexible methods for disseminating its accumulating knowledge. In its broadest sense, the social, or sociological museum is a collection of graphic materials, illustrative of sociological facts and principles, organized for teaching purposes. A department of sociology which provides itself with a well-organized set of visual aids, together with facilities for their exhibition, construction, and storage may appropriately be considered to have established a sociology museum. In its educational purpose and method, the social museum is comparable to the museum of natural sciences. Instead of the fossils, type specimens, and life models which have characterized such institutions, however, the sociology museum is built up of charts, maps, photographs, and similar auxiliary material. The sociology laboratory is one element of such an institution and is essentially a workshop where materials which lend themselves to student projects are handled informally and conveniently. In a functional sense, the museum is an agent of communication, employing visual symbols to obtain a greater expressiveness in the interpretation of social phenomena.