WITH the approval and cooperation of state educational authorities and the support of the Carnegie Corporation, the Museum and the Commercial Museum have undertaken a new service to the schools of Pennsylvania outside the city limits of Philadelphia.
The plan is to establish, in certain schools in various districts, School Museums, containing yearly increasing collections of objects, photographs and lantern-slides which are of specific use as visual aids in the teaching of subjects now in the required courses of study.
The plan, which will be incorporated in the work of at least two state teacher’s colleges this year, is now in operation at the Lansdowne Public School and in the Lancaster Boys High School, where the various classes, in addition to studying the collections they have received in connection with their school work, are engaged in reproducing others for the School Museum, thus incorporating industrial art work and cooperative effort into the development of the School Museum.
The plan differs from others which have been developed by various museums in that instead of merely loaning collections for a limited period to illustrate one particular subject, it aims above all else to teach the children in school the value of all Museums as “encyclopedias of objects” where, with a proper knowledge of how to study specimens, they may obtain for themselves first hand information more vividly and stimulatingly than from books alone.