POWERHOUSE COLLECTION

'The Goat' object lesson card by Oliver and Boyd

Object No. P409

Object lesson cards holding small objects, drawings and text were used in schools from the 1850s to the early 1900s. Their aim was to help children learn by seeing, touching and thinking, rather than just by reading, listening, copying and reciting. This particular card gave children some information about different types of goats, where they live and how people exploit them. As is typical of the cards in this set, its approach was uneven; for example, it gave considerable detail about the making of Morocco leather but left the 'oil process' for making chamois leather a mystery. It stated that millions of kid skins were used in Britain each year to make gloves and boots, but made no comment on the farming system that supported such slaughter. The formal language of the text suggests it was designed for teachers to read and then convey the information to students in simpler terms. Today, colourful posters have replaced drab lesson cards on classroom walls, children are exposed to a wide range of three-dimensional learning materials, and they have access to huge amounts of online information. In the absence of such resources, children of the 1800s might well have been delighted by these cards. However, in the hands of a poor teacher they could have become just another series of lessons to be learned by rote. The purchase of two groups of lesson cards by this Museum in its early years reflected the Anglo-centric education that it espoused. The topics chosen by the publisher of this card, Oliver & Boyd of Edinburgh, were organised into the categories Animal, Vegetable and Mineral; those chosen by Cox & Co of London were organised under the headings Manufacturing Processes, Foodstuffs, and Other Substances in Daily Use. The term 'object lesson' was probably first used by Elizabeth Mayo in her very prescriptive but lively and engaging 1831 book 'Lessons on objects'. In this book, she explained that the program of learning was designed for eight to ten year olds. She was concerned that students acquire a love of language as well as thinking skills and object knowledge. While the value of education through objects has been recognised since antiquity, its practice has been highly variable in both degree and form. Ironically, just when the object lesson card was falling from favour in Australia in the first decade of the twentieth century, the term 'object lesson' was gaining a foothold as an idiom. It is still in common use today to mean a convincing case, either positive or negative: a shining example or a cautionary tale. Debbie Rudder, 2015 References Elizabeth Mayo, 'Lessons on objects'. Adrian Young, 'Cabinet' issue 50, p16-19 http://www.academia.edu/8754879/Material_Wisdom_Learning_from_Object_Lessons Trove, various articles referring to 'object lesson' and 'object lesson cards' http://trove.nla.gov.au