In this article, Thomas Munro (curator of Education for the Cleveland Museum of Art from 1931-67) seeks to reflect on the possibilities of education in museums in the face of a new idea of childhood. The child Munro talks about is a curious, creative child who should not be subjected to tedious educational practices, capable of destroying her childlike nature. Munro considers that if it is necessary to think about how to make the child love a museum, then something needs to be fixed with art museums, not with the child.
"We don't have to popularize Charlie Chaplin or Mickey Mouse with children, and they are excellent Art at the same time. There are children's rooms in most public libraries, where they come and feel at home without urging. [...] Like the schools of yesterday, the museum is hampered by the dismal tradition of being a dark, cold, and austere abode of great Art, forbidding and incomprehensible to the young"
The question, then, was how to change this situation and prepare the museum to receive the child. Firstly, according to Munro, it would be necessary to change museum policy. For museum directors, children were seen as "an unmitigated nuisance, whose presence in a museum could only mean dirt and disorder, noise, grubby finger-prints and pencil marks". Well, the experience was telling him that self-government was the point. It was giving children a sense of responsibility. Regarding which art was more appropriate to children, it would be "simple story situations, familiar objects, types of person, animal and fairy-tale which the child can understand, and they do so in Art forms which are simple, direct and vivacious". The developmental rationale is present in his words. The child was seen as progressing from the simple to the complex, and in this progression, also progress in terms of good taste, i.e., developing her "powers of appreciation". Moreover, this art, should be exhibited according to the children's standpoint.
"Children like to handle things, to turn them over and look at them from all sides. [...] So far as possible, children should be able to see, handle and use Art objects under comfortable, informal, and happy conditions"
And the adult, as it was also becoming a common sense within arts education progressive practices, should almost be invisible, in order to preserve the children's natural powers intact. Indeed, he argued, the function of a museum 'guide' or 'instructor' should be "to point out" and be "forbidden to speak except to say, at rare intervals, "Look at that!"
The text ends by talking about the spaces for active doing that the museum of the future should invest in, the playroom and studio space.
CM