Earl and I visited a natural history museum on a recent vacation. We paid our admission and entered the first gallery, which contained a diorama of stampeding bison being chased by Indians to set the mood for what else we would see in the gallery. It also contained a couple with two young boys in tow and a group of women with children in strollers.
We had come to admire the collection in the museum and read much of the details available from plaques on the wall. I imagine the parents came to provide a family experience with their children. But the children, it seemed, weren’t up to the task.
“Oh look at that, look at that, Daddy, look at that,” one little boy repeated in a voice that could fill Yankee Stadium. The father obeyed. “I want to see that, I want to see that, I want to see that,” the boy continued, pointing to something across the room. I watched this little group and decided I would hold back until it had moved on, the better to read without distraction. A few minutes later, however, I heard the Yankee Stadium voice coming from another gallery, still exhorting his father to come here and see this. Reluctantly I moved toward the voice, as I’d read everything in the first gallery by now.
Later on our tour, we viewed a replica of an old sailing ship. Here we caught up with the women with children in strollers. Only by now, some of the children were roaming around the gallery while the mothers were standing and talking together. One little girl poked her head through the railing that cordoned off the viewing area and was about to climb through when her mother (At least, I assumed it was her mother) came running up and asked her not to do that.
“Please come,” she said, bending down to talk with the child. “We want to go this way. Please come. No not that way, this way.” It sounded as if there was serious role reversal going on here, with the mother almost pleading with the girl to come along. Had it been me, I would have picked up the child and carried her to a waiting stroller.
Even later, we saw other children running up ramps and touching some of the exhibits that were clearly off limits. They seemed to be parentless, as we never saw a mother or father call them back or set limits.
For me, museums are quiet places to reflect on what one is viewing and possibly learn something new. I like the old-fashioned kind, the ones that aren’t particularly “interactive.” In fact, the word seems to suggest that everything is some sort of a game and that standing and reading something quietly to ferret information independently is only for drones. After a day in the museum, however, I’d like to recommend that “interactive” also means “that responsibility whereby parents interact with their children in public places to help them behave properly.”
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