Cavemen didn't have classrooms

Check out this story on cavemen not having classrooms and the 'logical' conclusions about modern education one might draw from such an observation.

While, from an academic standpoint, holes could be poked in this argument, it is generally one line of reasoning that leads to a pretty solid conclusion in favor of museums as good learning environments (see The nature of learning and its implications for research on learning from museums for published material on, essentially, the same topic).

What I find really valuable in such arguments is the foregrounding of action. Such a focus draws our attention away from knowledge 'production', and starts to refocus it on activity as the primary piece to learning. This is, by no means, a new observation, but it is one that we need to keep repeating, because it does not seem to have sunk into the public consciousness about learning (i.e. - No Child Left Behind is essentially a massive program designed to emphasize 'knowledge production,' at the expense of robust action in schools. It even goes so far as to completely ignore the 'how' part in favor of a sharper focus on the knowledge-as-outcome part). Perhaps a better way to think about it might be to frame "knowledge" (or better yet, knowing) as a healthy side-effect to participation in action.

caveman drawing from www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/.../caveman1.jpg/view

Serious question: Are we mostly about science content? Or what?

One of the themes likely to run through my posts is a search for a clean and easy way to talk about what it is that science museums are supposed to 'accomplish.' After four full years of reading articles about learning in museums, and finding that the vast majority of them nervously conclude that people don't really learn the kind of science we render valuable on pencil and paper tests during their visits, I am left with a serious dearth of serious stabs at an answer to this question.

What I have found is some serious anxiety in the field, and a lot of serious money put into trying to figure out exactly how re-work science museums in order to create the causal link between a visit, and a 'better' set of science concepts. Perhaps this isn't the only way to conceive of public value to a museum visit?