Efficiency in Action?

"It is possible to be efficient in action and yet not have a conscious experience. The activity is too automatic to permit of a sense of what it is about and where it is going. It comes to an end but not to a close or consummation in consciousness. Obstacles are overcome by shrewd skill, but they do not feed experience" (40).

I happen to really love this quotation, and I find it quite descriptive of what can happen in museums if those in charge of running them do not have this on their radar. How many times have we heard of museums offering activities that simply serve to keep the visitor busy? Elee, I'm sure you would gladly offer up scavenger hunts as being part of this group of activities. The list can go on and on; this has been a plague of the museum world. It isn't only that these activities that I severely frown upon serve to primarily occupy the visitor with a series of actions that they must perform but it also has to deal with something much more important--and that is consciousness. Now, that isn't to say that our visitors cannot have valuable learning experiences within our institutions when they participate in activities in which learning comes without recognition that it is happening. More precisely, what I am saying is that the mind needs to be present. There must be what Dewey indicates as 'consciousness' that pervades the experience.

Think about going into a gallery and picking up a bingo card that encourages visitors to find the various works displayed in each column. Sure, the visitor is engaged (ek!) in an experience--primarily a physical experience of hunting down certain visuals. They occupy themselves for a time, but what is the end result? Perhaps, this visitor was one in a family group, and this activity served to bring these individuals together for a common purpose. Fine. I would say that isn't a bad thing; it's a good thing. However, it certainly isn't the best thing. This is where we get to the heart of what Dewey is describing. What really counts is that we present to our visitors activities that will stir the conscious, that activate the mind. By doing so, they eliminate robotic movements, set patterns, and automatic reactions; they bring awareness to the learning environment in which the individual is situated. Most importantly, this cultivated consciousness bleeds into future experiences. It paves the way for a future experience to be informed by a past experience and so on.

Let's look at a few stories found in Dewey's text:

"A generalized illustration may be held if we imagine a stone, which is rolling down hill, to have an experience. The activity is surely sufficiently 'practical.' The stone starts from somewhere, and moves, as consistently as conditions permit, toward a place and state where it will be at rest--toward an end" (41).

Here is the problem in its simplicity: One cannot learning to their fullest extent if they only do something to get them somewhere without recognition of the surrounding variables and their influence. What happens when you mix in these variables?

"Let us add, by imagination, to these external facts, the ideas that it looks forward with desire to the final outcome; that it is interested in the things it meets on its way, conditions that accelerate and retard its movement with respect to their bearing on the end; that it acts and feels toward them according to the hindering or helping function it attributes to them; and that the final coming to rest is related to all that went before as the culmination of a continuous movement. Then the stone would have an experience, and one with esthetic quality" (41).

Doesn't that sound better?!

"If we turn from this imaginary case to our own experience, we shall find much of it is nearer to what happens to the actual stone than it is to anything that fulfills the conditions fancy just laid down. For in much of our experience we are not concerned with the connection of one incident with what went before and what comes after. There is no interest that controls attentive rejection or selection of what shall be organized into the developing experience. Things happen, but they are neither definitely included nor decisively excluded; we drift. We yield according to external pressure, or evade and compromise. There are beginnings and cessations, but no genuine initiations and concludings. One thing replaces another, but does not absorb it and carry it on. There is experience, but so slack and discursive that it is not an experience" (41).

My favorite phrase? "We drift." Do our visitors drift inside our galleries by not taking the physical and mental time to be conscious of their surroundings? Do they drift by not seeing the continuity of life's experiences? Do they drift by not recognizing the organizing factors of their experience? Do they drift by only seeing the finish line as opposed to the process of getting to a destination always in flux? Most certainly the answer to these questions is yes. Let's not let our visitors drift; let's create moments of consciousness, moments of activation.