SCHOOL MUSEUMS IN THE KINGDOM OF POLAND – IDENTIFICATION OF MAIN ISSUES

School museums – which had been foundedmostly in the vicinity of educational institutions – used tocollect teaching aids. So-called natural history cabinetswere the most popular among them, recommended, interalia, by the Commission of National Education in 1783. Thetradition of collecting this type of exhibits was commonuntil the middle of the 20th century. There are two typesto be distinguished: school museums and pedagogicalmuseums, which differ with respect to the character oftheir activity and the kind of exhibits. School museumscollected basically objects of natural science, instrumentsfor teaching geography, chemistry and mathematics aswell as prints and facilities used during lessons. The secondgroup also specialised in exhibits of natural science, but theywere no longer used and usually of higher scientific value,including patterns and examples known in the educationsystem. Among the earliest school museums created inthe Kingdom of Poland were Warsaw collections of theInstitute for Deaf and Blind People (1875), and those of theEugeniusz Babiński’s so-called Realschule. At the beginningof the 20th century the idea was spreading, inspired interalia by the exemplary activity of the Polish School Museumin Lviv (1903). The biggest number of school museumsand collections were created in institutions founded bythe Polish Educational Society (1906–1907). The survivedresources give us relatively detailed information about thecollections from Warsaw and Pabianice, which aspired tobe categorised as pedagogical museums. The SecondarySchool for Boys of the Merchants Association in Łódź andthe Pedagogical Museum in Warsaw (1917) had also in theirpossession some interesting collections. The latter one wasbased upon the collections of former governmental schools,in which – in accordance with a decree issued by Russianauthorities – the scientific exhibits were to be collected.