Great news: your child will be visiting a museum with their class soon! But aren’t field trips complicated, and don’t they require a lot of organization? Maybe—but they also have many advantages when it comes to learning and academic motivation.
The most obvious benefit of going to a museum is undoubtedly the opportunity to have new experiences. While these trips are often tied to school curriculum, they also allow students to discover surprising things that they wouldn’t necessarily learn in the classroom. Museums generally serve a cultural purpose. This means that they inform the public about various elements that make up what is often referred to as “general culture.” There are all kinds of different cultural domains to explore:
In addition, simply going to a museum can be a new experience in itself. Taking the subway or the bus or going to a new city can be quite the adventure! And when kids have these new experiences with their friends, it brings them closer together, creating a fun atmosphere and positive memories.
Students may sometimes think of field trips to museums as breaks from school, but they offer important benefits when they form part of a school project. When a child sees something at a museum that they’ve learned about in class, they see its relevance in an entirely new way. They realize the importance of that concept and become more interested in it.
It may seem obvious, but for kids who haven’t been to many museums, exhibition halls often have a magical quality. There are so many things to see, try, and explore! More than one parent can tell the story of how their son developed a passion for space after a visit to the planetarium, or how their teenage daughter became interested in archaeology after spending an afternoon at a natural history museum.
To encourage this natural curiosity, you can encourage your child to explore their new discoveries through different projects:
It can be a bit difficult to learn about professions in cultural or scientific fields when you don’t know who to ask. Museum staff are often specialists in their museum’s area of focus:
Having conversations with these specialists can be a great opportunity for your child to ask questions that they might not have gotten the answer to otherwise. In addition, museum personnel who work with youth can dramatically change the attitude or perspective of visitors simply through their passion and storytelling. Such encounters can have a powerful effect on students and impact their future decisions.
All museums have an educational mission. However, they differ markedly from schools because they’re much more focused on practical learning and the dissemination of culture. For some students, reading and listening are not enough to retain class material. They need to experience it. A lot of kids particularly enjoy the interactive aspect of museums. For example, it’s one thing to read that a tyrannosaur could measure up to 13 metres long, but it’s much more striking to see the skeleton in real life!
Writing : The Alloprof Parents' team