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Heritage and Museal Education

In Brazil it is common to see a distinction between Education in Musums (Museological Education) and Heritage Education.

This question is due more to the positions of the museal and heritage actors workin in Museums ou Heritage Site, than they intend the concepts to translate political positions and their practices.

Thus “Museal” Education (Museological  Education) is in Brazil a concept that can be differentiated from Heritage Education, Museum Education, or Heritage Education.

According to some positions defending the distinction between concepts, museum education will be a result of the current National Museum Policy. As such, each of the concepts, Museum Education and Heritage Education will be concepts that emerged in another time, bearing other meanings.

For colleagues who developed IBRAM’s policy of meseological education, the concept of “museological education” developed from the idea of ​​”integral human formation” looking at education as a process that develops from the context in which it is developed. It make sens.

This concept has as its requirement an “educational action” that develops educational practices centered on the needs of the subject and their interactions with society, valuing their ways of living, their knowledge and their culture. Inheritances and their assets are the starting points of the process.

However, if inheritances, memories, identities and heritage are starting points, heritage actions seek to develop individual awareness and create a “collective construction” of knowledge about history, memory and heritage and its processes of preservation and innovation.

What distinguishes this from heritage education, which has the same goals: Anything.

The issue defended by the “museal educators” of Brazil is that they understand that the tool of this education is the “musealized heritage”. According to its supporters “in the museal educational process the object of museums is not a sacralized good, but an object of question”. As such, it is subject to critical reading, including its repudiation, without its discarding. They themselves are relevant to understand their trajectories in society and the history it holds.

For the actors of museum education, the tensions and conflicts embedded in objects are useful for the human being to understand life in its complexity and contradiction. Therefore, they argue that museal education should develop processes that enable participants to develop all skills and potential, addressing the cognitive, emotional, affective and relationship domains with others. It can therefore develop with other domains of knowledge in other educational processes. That is, they argue that education is an active, liberating education and not a “bank” heritage education that results from the accumulation of actions. Once again this will not be a sucicinete to make a conceptual distinction between Heritage Education and Muscular Education. What distinguishes them and what allows to justify the difference is “game of actors” ie the positioning in relation to the action.