▶ Your Answer : Knowing a
country is significant because it can make a great influence on people. Some
people simply think that going to museums is the best way to understand a
country because people can learn a lot of materials in one place. However, I
believe that to go to museum is not the best method to know about a country
since people cannot learn present value of a country and know invisible
culture.
First
of all, going to museums prevents people from learning modern value of society.
Museums usually consist of artifacts in the past time of a country. It tends to
make people learn only about the past of a country, not the present day of it.
For example, Yuna, one of my high school friends, was majoring in art history.
When she was a freshman, she got an assignment to submit a paper to know about the
art of America. She expected that she could find the relevant data in the
Metropolitan museum, which is one of the huge museums in New York. However, she
could not get enough information from the museum because the museum displayed
only several statues and paintings in the past era of America. Unfortunately,
she had to find more the data from other resources such as documentary programs
on television or websites to know about present days of America. In this
regard, people cannot grasp a country through museums because they often give
information only about past period.
On
top of that, people cannot learn much about intangible culture through museums.
Museums are characterized with displaying tangible sources such as sculptures,
paintings, and discoveries. It deters people to learn a country's distinct
atmosphere which is not directly seen by eye. For instance, James, my foreign
friend, visited Korea last year. He wanted to experience original culture of
Korea, so decided to go to the Korean traditional museum in Seoul. He could
learn several materials such as Korean traditional clothes or houses, but was
not able to learn the real culture of Korea. Therefore, I invited him to my
house and lived together during a few weeks. During homestay, he could directly
experience Korean culture such as yielding a seat in subway when the elderly
came. He felt that he could learn much more crucial values by living in my
house rather than by going to the museum. If he had only gone to the museum, he
could not have experienced invisible, but authentic culture of Korea. My
friend's experience demonstrates my view that people cannot learn unseen
culture in the museum.
To
sum up, people cannot understand a country well by going to museums because
people can only get information about past of a country and tangible sources
from museums. Consequently, people have to seek other sources to learn a
country thoroughly. |