The Museum of Gothenburg was born out of a merger between the collections of six different museums. One of these museums was the Gothenburg School Museum, which was managed by the Society for the Promotion of Public Education in the Diocese of Gothenburg up until 1991.
When the School Museum first opened on Saturday 22 May 1909, its purpose was to showcase the best new pedagogical solutions – the latest schoolbooks, durable and comfortable school desks, practical map racks, or anything else that was new or interesting for schools. The idea came from the Museum of Gothenburg, which had opened its own school department back in 1862. This department was closed in 1894, but not before arousing an appetite among the Society’s members. Many were teachers or headmasters who appreciated the value of being able to examine and test out school materials before purchasing them. It was for this reason that the Society decided to open a school museum.
The school museum was also popular with the manufacturers of textbooks and teaching materials. Publishing houses supplied the museum with free copies of new publications over many years. To begin with, the School Museum focused geography. Teaching in this subject naturally required the use of maps. Depictions of nature and the environment from different countries were also used, in addition to paintings or photographs that were printed as wallcharts. In 1911, about 2/3 of the collections were made up of school wallcharts. Many were rolling charts: i.e. paper mounted onto a soft fabric attached to a rod that the chart could be rolled up around. Today, however, the majority are med of paper mounted onto hardboard, which is a more durable solution that may be both hung up and laid out.
Today, the school collection is more than 100 years old. It has been a long time since it was used solely to present new products. From as early as the 1950s, many manufacturers of teaching materials set up their own showrooms, and the museum began to receive fewer and fewer materials. Instead, the school museum became a museum in the true sense of the word by focusing on the now historical objects in its collection.
The Society for the Promotion of Public Education in the Diocese of Gothenburg
The society is a non-profit organisation which supports schools and education, founded in 1824 and modelled on an archetype in Stockholm. At this time, there was no law requiring that all children attend school. The majority learned what the church demanded, but no more. The aim of the Society was to help as many children as possible to receive an education. There was particular focus on the system of mutual instruction, which in 1824 was one of the cheaper forms of tuition. A school that used mutual instruction could have one teacher for hundreds of school children as some of the students also acted as support teachers.
By the time compulsory primary education was introduced in 1842, mutual instruction had almost completely disappeared. The Society continued to support public education through a wide range of projects and people. Its most long-lasting initiative is likely the School Museum, which the Society ran up until 1990. The Gothenburg Municipality had long supported the museum financially, and in January 1991 it took over its administration.
As a friend organisation to the school collection at the Museum of Gothenburg, the Society has provided assistance in arranging and registering the collection and it has contributed towards a number of exhibitions about school and education. In connection with the 100-year jubilee of the school collection in 2009, the Society also published about the School Museum and its work.
In addition to the School Collection, the Society also support other educational activities. For example, they hold talks on a range of subjects at their annual meetings. The association is open to anyone who is interested – please contact the Society’s board for more information.
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