What do we think about when we hear the word “museum”? Actually, I cannot tell about all the people, but the first thing I think about is history. There are hundreds, thousands, millions of museums all over the world! I consider them to be places, that accumulate examples of some non-material conceptions like art, ethnology, history or science, and many other conceptions.
All of them are really important for humanity. And most of them are very spiritual. Do you remember your school studying, when all the group was taken to a museum and told about its history, meaning of all the exhibits and explained, what we should do to make people remember us dozens of years long?
I am sure that almost every person has visited a museum at least once during his life. And I have done it, too. To tell the truth, museums usually do not impress me. The studying of the past can be interesting for some time, but does not stay in memory for a long time.
Nevertheless, some time ago I have discovered a new type of museum for myself. It is the Museum of Tolerance I have visited recently. Actually, even its name made me interested. I could not imagine, what can be exhibited to tell us about tolerance. How surprised I was when I found out there were no boring shelves covered with a layer of dust! But, well. Let’s start from the beginning and talk about the original idea of such a museum.
As for me, we should define what tolerance is to come closer to understanding the idea to the creation of such an institution. So, what is tolerance? We can look for the definition in dictionaries or services of search, but I am sure that there is no need to do it. Most of us think about human rights, equality and freedom of choice when the word “tolerance” is said. That is right. It is an acceptance of something we do not share or even do not understand at all, the respect to people, who differ from us with their skin color, religion, gender or just life views. Parents tolerate their children’s behavior and religion tolerates sexual minorities.
However, the modern society still has serious problems with discrimination and injustice. That was the main reason to establish the Museum of Tolerance. It was founded twenty-three years ago in Los Angeles and was the first and the only museum of its type. Almost a quarter of a century, this institution tells the world about the reasons, causes, tragic consequences and historical influence of all the kinds of discrimination, like as racism, sexism, gender and religious discrimination, etc. Simon Wiesenthal “expressed the difference between The Museum of Tolerance and other museums very accurately, saying that it does not only remind us of the past events, but remind us to act.” (Segev)
It is a kind of an educating center that was created to exhort us ask questions, learn more. And it works! Visiting this institution, we have an opportunity to know more about the Holocaust and different kinds of discrimination from the people who know about it even more than they wish to know.
The victims of injustice, leaders of international organizations created to fight prejudice and spread the tolerance conduct the lectures and are ready to answer any question all the visitors of the museum can ask. Their words are often corroborated with various documentary materials: movies, photos, historical papers and so on.
Also, different educating programs are made for people of different ages and professions. For example, there are special courses for 5th and 6th grades that include different ways to explain serious and important things to children. It contains meetings with Holocaust survivors, showing different artifacts and documentary movies, discussions, when every child can say his opinion of this topic and in will be thought of in a grade.
Special programs are also intended for medical workers and policemen. The representatives of these professions contact with different groups of people that are not easy to be tolerated. And there are situations when patient actions cannot be helpful. So such courses teach people of that professions to make the right decisions in difficult situations at work and in daily life.
So what bad things can the promotion of tolerance contain? Let’s think about it. As for me, there is nothing good in a propaganda, even if such an honorable notion like tolerance is to be spread. We can easily find many examples in human history and our daily lives when the excessive toleration caused the aggressive behavior of minorities, which tried to revenge when they got such an opportunity.
But we even do not need to consider extremes, as the bad side of this medal is clear – the methods which are used by the leaders of the Museum of Tolerance to deliver the information to the society. It is a well-known fact, that this institution is visited mostly with teenagers, students of the middle and high school.
At this age, human psychics is very flexible and can be easily influenced with different factors. In this period of our life we are in a constant search of ourselves, of the truth and the right position we are going to follow all our lives long. It is not easy for a common teenager to think critically and identify what is true or false, where is the line they should not outstep.
Those methods and technologies the Museum of Tolerance uses influence our psychics deeply, I think. They show movies and diagrams, give us all the possible proves clear and brightly to make to impress us, to fight all the doubts that could appear in our minds.
It is easier to create people with a certain union life view with the help of making them sure in the only version of the events that happened in the past. The facts they propose us are difficult to be checked and rethought, the pictures that clever and famous people with serious faces show us stay in our memory for a long time.
Consequently, there is the great aim to make people more tolerant and respectful to each other through the studying of the negative experience of previous generations. This aim is a basic idea of the Museum of Tolerance as far as I have got it. But the ways that are used to reach this aim should be improved, as they press the consciousness of people and take back their chance to think critically.
I hope this kind of educating institutions to be popularized with time. Nowadays it already has its departments in New York and Jerusalem. It is a real progress! I am sure it can help to tolerate our society in future.
Works Cited
Marcuse, Harold. "Experiencing the Jewish Holocaust in Los Angeles: The Beit Hashoah—Museum of Tolerance". Other Voices, February 2000. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
Segev, Tom. “Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends”. New York, 2010. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
Museum of the Tolerance | Los Angeles, CA. Museum of the Tolerance, Los Angeles. N.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2016. <http://www.museumoftolerance.com/>
