A combination of classroom and experiential learning made the Children’s Museum an important fixture in the lives of Cambridge children for several decades, starting with Harvard University’s donation of a building at 5 Jarvis St. to the School Department, reported by the Cambridge Sentinel in May 1919. (There is no longer a Jarvis Street, but the location was near Harvards Pierce and Langdell halls.) It was specifically to be used as a museum for the children of Cambridge. By February 1920, the institution was already running smoothly, with teachers shepherding classes to the museum to enhance studies in the classroom. Museum educators showed children “specimens connected with the subject of the lecture. Thus the children are led to know the things for which the words of their text books stand. The knowledge that they thus acquire is probably much more definite than that gained by the vast majority of museum visitors,” as the Cambridge Chronicle explained.
The museum drew heavily on Harvard’s collections and solicited donations from community members to enhance its holdings. Children were given information about human and natural history and the arts and cultures of peoples around the world, and were then given the opportunity to examine specimens that illustrated what they had heard in their classrooms. For most of its three decades of operation, the museum was open during weekday school hours, with a number of Sunday and after-school hours to allow students to return with their families and share with them what they had learned. It also featured a library where “the children may come to read the museum books or to look at the magazines or pictures of other countries. A frequent visitor is a little girl who always settles herself contentedly in a corner with a bird book. Once she remarked, ‘I love this book. Birds are my favorite animals.’” In years to come, the museum would offer a weekly schedule of lectures, hands-on demonstrations, story times, games and special exhibits that drew thousands of children and their families to the building.
The museum’s establishment reflects the emerging pedagogy of the time, particularly the influence of European ideas about participatory education. During the first half of the 1910s, the approach of educators such as Maria Montessori had gained popularity in the United States, with teachers and school administrators embracing Montessori’s hands-on, child-led approach to learning. According to Montessori and her colleagues, children are inherently curious and drawn to the world around them, and it is the teacher’s job to facilitate learning by providing a wide array of materials and stepping back to allow students to pursue their own interests. Although Cambridge schools maintained a fairly traditional structure of teacher-directed learning, their ability to use the museum’s resources as a “satellite classroom” offered children more flexibility to delve deeper.
Emerging from World War I, many Americans found it impossible to ignore what they had learned about other nations and peoples, as well as the changing demographics of their own communities. In Cambridge, waves of arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Caribbean had led to both trepidation and curiosity on the part of many residents. The School Committee tried to channel this newfound interest in world cultures by offering frequent lectures to children of all ages by residents with direct experience, whether they were born and raised in another country or had traveled extensively. Schoolchildren enjoyed firsthand accounts of growing up in China (from a current Harvard student), voyaging to the South Pole (from a member of Ernest Shackleton’s expedition) and the cultures of the Amazon (from a former executive of a lumber company based in Brazil). The museum specifically sought to offer children a glimpse into the wider world to expand their horizons and dispel fear; although their lecturers were often American travelers whose accounts were presented through a visitor’s lens, the goal of these presentations was a broader understanding of the world and its peoples.
The museum’s unique charm, however, lay in the opportunities it offered local children to contribute. Cambridge schoolchildren were given the chance to share their collections with their peers through special exhibitions at the museum, and clubs such as the ever-popular stamp collectors club held contests and shows where budding philatelists could showcase their prized items. Natural history was a key component of the museum’s activities, and staff gave guided trail walks around Fresh Pond and other green spaces in the city to educate children about the flora and fauna in their own Cambridge neighborhoods. Hands-on scientific education was considered key to instilling in young Cantabrigians a sense of pride in and understanding of their local community, and the ongoing partnerships between the museum and the broader public helped foster this.
The Cambridge Children’s Museum flourished during the interwar years, but it faced challenges from other similar institutions and cuts to the school department’s budget in the 1940s and 1950s. The growing prominence of the Boston Children’s Museum (originally in Jamaica Plain) and the Boston Museum of Science (so named in 1939, it moved to its current location on the Boston-Cambridge border in 1951) offered more options to learn about and experience the world. In light of these large-scale, well-endowed institutions right at their doorstep, the Cambridge School Committee decided that funding its own local museum no longer made sound financial sense. It eliminated support for the museum from its budget in the 1950s.
Although its tenure was only a few decades long, the Cambridge Children’s Museum served an important function in the lives of thousands of schoolchildren, their teachers and their families. By bringing together elements of natural and human history, culture and science, the museum opened the world to young Cantabrigians in an exciting way and allowed teachers firsthand experience in child-led learning and emerging pedagogy. It also offered parents and families insights into what their children were learning at school, reinforcing material by allowing students to explain what they had learned to their loved ones. The programs created at the museum also served as prototypes for the educational departments of the institutions that would replace it in the second half of the 20th century – yet another example of Cambridge as a pioneer in the realm of education.
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