The National Museum of Australia is a fantastic place to work. Apart from the joy of working in this magnificent place with its wealth of objects and stories, an education officer’s work is infinitely enriched by the many children who take part in our programs. Every child is different, so although we may do our camera programs many times a year every program is different due to the combination of personalities and backgrounds the students bring with them. Occasionally we too learn something new. Because it’s the tail end of the year and most teachers are exhausted from writing reports, setting exams or organising school events, I’d like to lighten the atmosphere and share some of the more interesting snippets we’ve learnt from students in the last couple of years. As an entree, Q: ‘Does anybody know who Captain Cook was?’ A: (Kindergarten student) ‘He was in Peter Pan!’ Quite understandable for this age…
Apparently the name that we call the day that Arthur Phillip planted the flag in Sydney Cove in 1788 is ‘Tuesday’. Aboriginal people met up in the Australian Alps ‘to eat bogan moths’ and a mission was ‘something that James Bond would go on’.
Canberra’s Southern Cross Club used to be subtitled ‘the club for Catholics and their friends’. This might help us to understand one local year 5 student’s answer as to why the Southern Cross is on the Australian flag: ‘It’s because there are a lot of Catholics here!’
Something very important happened with the Olympic Games in 1956, to do with how we watched them. ‘Plasma screens?’
And finally, Sir George Reid, federation parliamentarian, former prime minister and barrister, features in the Australian Journeys gallery. His profile and history do not immediately suggest a racy lifestyle, but I have been assured by one student that, ‘Sir George kept his wigs in a tin and he would take them out so that he could wear them to a bar.’
There is of course, an elephant in the room here. That is, amusing as some misconceptions are, how many of them are recreated once they leave the museum? How many Great Walls of China are keeping out rabbits (to quote the broadband service ad)? Obviously we can’t set an exam before students are allowed to leave the museum. We spend a certain amount of time with students during their programs encouraging them to question, to work out, to think outside their experience. The challenge is to get all the kids, not just the bright ones, thinking and questioning after they leave us. We want more kids thinking along the lines of these two creative souls:
- ‘An artefact is a souvenir from history’
- ‘Captain Cook’s fame spread throughout Europe like rabbits and as readers devoured accounts of his voyages’.
Any suggestions, folks?
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