CILS Anyone?

Rob Semper, Director of the Center for Learning and Teaching at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, at the recently adjourned Center for Informal Learning and Schools Bay Area Institute told an interesting anecdote about the role of museums in society. Apparently, over the course of the last year he has spent a substantial amount of time in Washington D.C. working the funding channels available to science museums. Part of his work has involved lobbying members of the Senate and House. The basic sphell is something along the lines of "Science museums are a powerful resource on the path to public science literacy. As educational organizations they represent potential opportunities for educating an increasingly diverse population . . . yadda yadda." All on the straight and narrow . . . until Senator so-and-so looks at you and says "Museums do education?" Say what? I mean I get that not every town in the United States has an Exploratorium, but I was definitely under the impression that the 400+ science museums claimed to exist according to ASTC (2005) were evidence that the educational mission taken-up by the museum community was, at least, part of the public discourse. Apparently , at least according to publicly elected Senator so-and-so, this is not the case. What to make of this? First, as someone intimately concerned with the course of the science museum community in the US I am forced to reframe what counts as important issues of attention. I spent the better half of this conference engaged in discussions about the importance of innovation in science museums; a topic I find endlessly fascinating, but significantly less important in the face of evidence that science museums aren't even recognized as educational organizations by public officials. Problem? I think so. As far as I am concerned, the main attraction of a 'science museum' is the serious turn they've made towards foregrounding education over and above other possible goals. We've still got some serious work to do, since this is, apparently, not as foregrounded as I assumed.