Dear Friends: Perhapes I was too strong in my opinion on Children's museums, however it has been my experience that they hardly live up to their expectations. How many "museums" have a play tower, water play or that plastic ball land? They have become generic. One of the assignments I give my students in the Graduate program I teach in is to go to such a place and observe how the children play, interact, and learn. We also interview the professional staff about their jobs. We find some very remarkable things, generally very unpleasent. The executive Director of one such museum told me a very interesting thing one time. They said, " We were doing average until we discovered that you market a children's museum to adults not to children." "It plays off their guilt" "It does not really matter if the kids are learning anything only that the parents think that this is quality time, after all the parents have the money." When educational institutions start chasing dollars and not quality education we all suffer. Brian ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://museums.state.nm.us/nmmnh/museum-l.html. You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).