Balearics to have a museum of education

The Balearics may soon have a Museum of Education, according to education and culture minister Damià Pons, who said that it would be set up in Inca. Pons was speaking at the presentation of a meeting of representatives of five regions who are in Palma to prepare the Iberian Forum of Educational Museums which will be held here next year. During the two day meeting, which starts today, the experts will discuss various experiences involving museums of education. Pons pointed out that Galicia and the Balearics were the only communities with projects of this kind. In the case of the Balearics, there is already an education archive and plans for the museum are well advanced, and will probably be presented in December. Exhibits will include the first computer used in a school in Majorca, which weighed 180 kilos, as well as desks and chairs from the Franco period. It will also include material collected by the late teacher Magadalena Ramis Vidal from the period of the Republic which was donated to the ministry by her family. The curator will be Jaume Serra who said that this museum will be the first in Spain to have an archive and library specialising in education. At present, the archive, which is in Calle Mestre Torrandell of Inca, has two lineal kilometres of documents from various periods from the end of the 19th century, while 5'000 pieces have been inventoried for the future museum. If negotiations with the Inca council prosper, part of the museum will be in the old General Luque barracks. The library will have 7'000 titles, the oldest of which dates from the 18th century. A glimpse of what the museum will be like will be provided by an exhibition which opens in two rooms in Palma's Museum of Majorca in Calle Portella tomorrow. One section will reflect education up to 1936, and the second will show the state of education after the Spanish Civil War. Serra said that no other region had such extensive information on education during the Republic as the Balearics.