Abstract
This paper explores the emergence of school history museums in postcolonial Hong Kong through the case of Queen’s College History Museum. In the past 15 years, there has been more than twenty six school history museums set up by schools in HK within their campus to collect and interpret school history, traditions and achievements. Why would schools divert their resources to set up museums? Who are these school history museums for? Data in this paper is drawn from the researcher’s own curating and museum experience, as well as semi-structured interviews with school officials, students and other alumni.
Introduction & Research Problem
Museums have been construed as places of pedagogy and for enlightening the general public since the nineteenth century (e.g. Hill, 2005). While museum educators are passionate about bringing students into museums and making them accessible for education (e.g. Hooper-Greenhill 2007), it is in fact becoming more and more popular for schools in Hong Kong (HK) to establish school history museums within their own premises. In this paper, school history museums are defined as museums or exhibition spaces set up by schools themselves inside their campus that celebrate and enshrine their schools’ history, traditions, and achievements by collecting and interpreting school records and artefacts. In the process, the schooling experience is museumised. With at least 26 school history museums already set up and several new ones being planned, it is apparent that school history museums have become part of the most recent trend in the development of museums in postcolonial HK since the mid-2000s. But why would schools, being education institutions themselves, choose to divert their resources to set up museums? Why have they only been set up in the past ten years but not earlier? Who are these school history museums for? I will explore these questions with the case of Queen’s College History Museum (QCHM), a school history museum established in 2013 inside the then 151-year-old government secondary school.
Literature Review
School teachers have realised the pedagogical value of museums in school settings as early as the nineteenth century (e.g. Vidal, 2017), and have been utilised around the world nowadays. For example, teachers have been using in-school museums to help instil heritage awareness among young pupils in Mexico (Larrauri, 1975), compensate for the perceived shortcomings of solely textbook-based education (Liao, 2005), improve pupils’ literacy and inquiry skills through curating opportunities (Eakle & Dalesio, 2008; Ryder and Annis, 2016). The effectiveness of the school museum is also recognised by museum professionals. For example, D’Acquisto (2013) argued that school museums were catalysts for student learning as they combined academic and creative learning, connected students with the community, thereby made learning more relevant.
Nevertheless, there are regional differences as to what school museums are used for. On the one hand, school museums in the west tend to focus on general history of the locality or community (Geraskina, 2013; Brunelli, 2015) On the other hand, school history museums in China are often exploited as tools to conduct ‘ideological and political education’, such as to instil Chinese nationalism and state-approved historical narrative amongst students (Liu 2018).
But more importantly, the recent emergence of school history museums can also be explained with the concept of historical consciousness (Crane, 1997; Seixas, 2006), and imagination of belonging to national communities (Anderson, 2006); memory phenomenon (MacDonald, 2013). In my paper, I am going to explore the relationship between school history museums and historical consciousness.
Methodology
I have adopted an ethnographic approach to studying the aforementioned museum-like institutions as a cultural phenomenon in HK by conducting an in-depth, focused fieldwork research. Over the course of ten months of fieldwork, I have used four qualitative methods – interviews, participant observation, museum analysis, and archival research – to gather research data. This literature review has encompassed Chinese museum theories, issues in contemporary Chinese philosophy and patriotic nationalism, ancestral hall, as well as government publications and policy papers that discuss the development of museum and heritage industry in HK. Those work has further been supplemented by continued communication with my research participants by email and in social media forums, as well as through library and archival research. I adopted a bottom-up ethnographic approach in the field, and then an interpretivist approach towards the examination and synthesis of my research data.
Findings & Discussions
Firstly, I argue that the emergence of school history museums is triggered by an identity crisis in a rapidly changing socio-political environment, which is the result of HK’s decolonisation. Alumni of various schools who have advocated for the museums are actively searching for their own ‘roots’, their history, heritage and identity as they struggle to cope with the accelerated pace of change. These museums can be seen as by- products of the alumni’s hope to preserve remnants of the ‘good old days’. Secondly, I argue that the emergence of school history museums reflects a growth of public historical consciousness in post-handover HK. In addition, instead of using museums as a medium of practical instruction, schools in HK are more eager to use them as a tool to establish their own historical narrative, which is ultimately tied to ideological and moral education. Thirdly, I argue that school history museums in HK are hybrid institutions: they embrace the ‘western’ concept of displaying heritage in an exhibition space, and at the same time Chinese values such as filial piety, treating the space as a cohesive, inward-looking institution that celebrates achievements of predecessors, visualises heritage and relationships, and ‘gathers people’.
Conclusion and Implication
It is often said that schools are miniatures of societies, reflecting the trends and issues cotemporary to the wider society. In this case, the sense of historical consciousness developed – as a product of nostalgia – amongst alumni looking back at their schooldays reflects a general nostalgic turn in the wider HK society. In a wider perspective, the emergence of school history museums also shows how postcolonial non-state museums in HK are hybrid institutions embodying both ‘western’ and Chinese values. More specifically, they embrace the ‘western’ concept of displaying heritage in a museum-like exhibition space, and also the values associated with Chinese ancestral halls by treating the exhibition space as a cohesive, inward-looking institution that celebrates the achievements of predecessors. They also visualise heritage and relationships, pass on culture and ethos, and, most importantly, ‘gather people’ and reinforce a communal sense of identity. In addition, the very establishment of school history museums, with the contributions of alumni, is also a manifestation and extension of the Confucian ideals of filial piety – that is, the importance of showing respect for elders and teachers.
Key words: museum anthropology, school history museum, identity construction
Biography: Joseph Yu is currently a secondary history and politics teacher in London. He completed his doctorate in Anthropology at Oxford University researching the development of museum in postcolonial Hong Kong. Trained in anthropology, history, international relations and education, Joseph's research interest lies in the development of colonial social institutions.
References
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