What does NRC think | As a National Museum, the Education Museum deserves a thorough parliamentary debate

The National Education Museum in Dordrecht is threatened in its survival. Certainly not for the first time: in the last century and a half it always rose as « a kind of phoenix from his axis », said the curator last week NRC. This time the situation is criticism, because both the municipality of Dordrecht, where the museum is located, as the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW), the largest lender, have announced that they can stop the subsidy.

Like a depot that begging for shelter and food, the museum has already had a lot of wanderings. The germ of the collection is located in the Dutch School Museum, founded in 1877 in Amsterdam. Over the years, the name and the location have changed: after a bankruptcy in 1965, the archive remained in Amsterdam and the collection moved to a depot in Utrecht, to be exhibited again from 1981 in successively Zoetermeer, Rotterdam and now Dordrecht.

From private museum it developed into a subsidized institute that not only acts as a museum but also as a study and documentation center. That is why the 350,000 objects not only consists of school benches and ink pots, but also of educational materials, pedagogical treatises and reports on education policy. It would even be the largest collection of source material in the world in this area. Rightly so that scientists from home and abroad sound the alarm.

Historical classrooms will continue to exist after the Education Museum was closed, in local school museums or the National Open Air Museum. But the part of the collection that shows which ideas were transferred in education, which pedagogical and didactic innovations have been tried out and how education legislation developed is irreplaceable.

Not long ago it seemed that the ministry was also aware of it. At the beginning of last year, the DSP group, precisely at the request of OCW, issued advice on strengthening the knowledge function of the museum. In the report, it was fine -tuned that this could also be important for the department itself, because there are « deepening and historical awareness » due to the rapid rotation of civil servants, as well as a « policy memory ». It was advised to invest structurally more in the museum.

The fact that the opposite happens has to do with the political wind that has been blowing since last year. Unfortunately, the Cabinet Schoof is cutting back on education. That now also applies to educational heritage. It is highly unhappy that the municipality that caught the museum in 2011 is also withdrawing. Dordrecht, if all municipalities, are confronted with increasing costs and falling income, and opts for maintaining other, more locally bound facilities.

That choice can still be defended, but the minister should feel responsible for a heritage collection that is of national importance. What will happen with that is unclear. This requires a thorough debate with the parliament. The necessary debates were conducted in the Lower House about the future National Slavery Museum, the National Holocaust Museum that last year and the never -realized National Historical Museum. It can be expected that the House will consider extensively to the possible lifting of this National Museum.

To share

Mail the editors