Dr Judith Guedalia

Frequently when one lives in a place you don't see it as well as a tourist does. Tucked away in ‘The City' is a small museum that reminds me of a movie I saw in 1959, it was called The Mouse that Roared.  It was a comedy about a teeny country that figured out how to get money from the USA coffers.  Lose a war against the US and you are assured reconstruction funding, so they declared war (in the movie, much to their chagrin they won the war and didn't get the funding).

The Jewish Children's Learning Lab (515 West 20th Street, NYC) is indeed The Mouse That Roared among Children's Jewish Museums.  I am always on the hunt for new activities and here I found a museum that allows children to learn and experience the history of others. In recent years developmental psychologists are studying a new area of understanding how children interpret other people's actions and intentions.  Children show a precocious ability to understand intentions.  We have always been fascinated by the infant's first ‘relationship' with their mother through gaze direction.  More recently (early 80s) there is an increased interest in TOM - The Theory of Mind. 

What is "Theory of Mind"?
"Theory of Mind" is a specific cognitive ability to understand others as intentional agents, that is, to interpret their minds in terms of theoretical concepts of intentional states such as beliefs and desires.  Interpreting other people's actions and intentions allows us to make assumptions about what causal effects result in certain behaviors.  This ascription of ‘content' to mental states is paramount to understanding the social world around us; it makes our living in a society become coherent and intelligible.  Research with animals has shown that the capacity to ‘make conclusions' about another animal's behavior could be seen as a biological ‘gift' independent of language.  Just imagine going to Japan for example, and not understanding a word of Japanese and trying to understand their cultural bowing, which is normal social interaction there, in our terms.   Children and adults, who are Autistic, have Asperger's Syndrome, or to a lesser extent, Non Verbal Learning Disabilities, have difficulty in specifically this area of cognitive function.  By studying and understanding aspects of TOM (Theory of Mind) we are aided in developing methods to ‘teach' it to those who are not ‘wired' for this most important type of thinking.

A test that we use to check this cognitive schema is called "Sally Ann Task" it is really a task of ‘false belief'.   We set up two dolls, a small toy and a lidded box.   We say: "Sally puts a toy in the lidded box and goes away. While she is away, Ann takes the toy and then puts it somewhere else and goes out. Then Sally comes back, and the experimenter asks: "Where will Sally look for the toy?"

The 1983 original results showed that children over 5 did not have problems in attributing to Sally a false belief, whereas younger children predicted indifferently that Sally could look for the toy where Ann has put it.  Today the work of Wimmer and Perner among others, have lowered the threshold of attributing false beliefs to 3-4 years of age.   It is as if at a younger age the child has ‘opaque vision' and cannot NOT see and relate to what they experienced not withstanding the fact that the other person did not experience it in that way.  An older child can (put her/himself in ‘another's shoes') understand the concept that another person would conclude differently because they had different experience or information to use to make the conclusion.  

This brings me to the story of the Little Experiential Museum that Roared.

The Children's Learning Lab has a number of ‘exhibitions' that travel through-out the country to bring Jewish and American Jewish history to children who would not have this opportunity in their cities.  From Home to Home: Jewish Immigration to America, allows the ‘visitors' to experience the feelings of being a new immigrant. What decisions would you make under similar circumstances?  The From Tent to Temple: Life in the Ancient Near East permits the exploration of the lands of the Bible; and answers questions such as what connects us to the people and places of an ancient time? The traveling exhibit was scheduled to go to Cheyenne, Wyoming in March of 2001.  According to Chris Leppek of the Intermountain Jewish News, in his feature The Bible Bamboozles Wyoming: "..the stir was centered on whether public school children in the capitol city should be allowed to visit the exhibit during class time.  The exhibit triggered a local constitutional debate on the issue of church and state separation, eventually drawing into its vortex the regional media, the Cheyenne school board and superintendent, members of the Mt. Sinai congregation and the Denver office of the Anti-Defamation League.

According to Dorothy Feldman, librarian and member of Mt. Sinai, the exhibit is geared for children in grades 4-6. Through interactive panels and activities, it describes the daily lives of Jews and other ancient peoples in Egypt, Babylonia, Canaan and the Sinai. It examines the varied religious beliefs of these people, including Jews, and depicts images of various pagan gods, explaining that in Judaism the deity is worshiped not with images but through words.

The exhibit's "hands-on" approach, Ms. Feldman told the Intermountain Jewish News, encourages children to dig in sand, feel samples of clothing, grind grain and set up tents in order to get a feel for lifestyles in ancient times. "It's beautifully done," she said of the exhibit.

The original idea was to have the exhibit at Mt. Sinai, and to invite children from both public and private schools to visit, Ms. Feldman said. That was changed after Mike Klopfenstein, assistant superintendent of instruction for Laramie County Schools District 1, told Mt. Sinai that he could not allow public school children to visit a house of worship, citing church-state separation guidelines. In a last minute turnaround, the exhibit found a home at the Wyoming State Museum, which featured the exhibit through the end of March.

The change of venue, however, did not change the school district's position. Klopfenstein, after examining the exhibit, determined that its content, with several references to the Hebrew Bible, monotheism and passages associating biblical commandments with morality, is religious in nature. Although the assistant superintendent told the Wyoming Eagle Tribune that Cheyenne public schools do allow instruction on "religion's role in civilization," this does not include field trips to exhibits that are religious in nature.

"When the district hands out materials or takes students places, it implies an endorsement," Klopfenstein told the Eagle Tribune. He suggested that parents of public school students could take their children to the exhibit on their own time.

Klopfenstein acknowledged that Cheyenne public school students had recently been allowed to attend Black heritage events at a local Unitarian church, and added that some parents had objected to that visit.

"Looking back," he told the Cheyenne newspaper, "I'm not so sure I made the right decision in letting the students go to the Unitarian Universalist Church, even though it wasn't a religious program."

Ms. Feldman, while happy that the exhibit found a home at the Wyoming State Museum, remains upset that the school district initially prohibited students from going.

"The Bible really is the history of Western civilization," she said, "but some people are going to consider it doctrine. There are two ways to look at it and he [Klopfenstein] looked at it in consideration of all the trouble he had received from people."

In general, the school district's decision did not seem to go over very well in Cheyenne. Local media reported that many local residents, especially Christians, objected to the prohibition against public school attendance.

In the wake of the public outcry and under the threat of a lawsuit, the school district's board of trustees reversed its initial stance, voting on March 22 to allow public school students to attend the exhibit."

And so, as human behavior would have it, more people from cities up to three hours away (mostly non-Jewish) came to experience the path from Tent to Temple, the museum received scores of positive feedback letters from children, parents and teachers.  This episode helped break down barriers of ignorance and discrimination, and touched the mentality of those of other religious and cultural backgrounds. 

Now isn't that a great example of teaching The Theory of Mind. (The Jewish Children's Learning Lab -515 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011, 212-924-4500-Open the whole week of Chanuka including Sunday).

Tags: False Belief | Opaque Vision | Sally Ann Task | The Theory of Mind | TOM | Wimmer and Perner