[PRCo] Docent

[Fred W. Schneider III]

Greg - a docent is the current buzz word within the historians society
for a person who takes people by the hands and leads them through a
historical property, explaining everything we want them to know about
the property. Docents are the interface between the museum and the
public.  It is probably proper to call a motorman or conductor a docent
but it usually isn't done because we are trying to recreate the past. 
There are trainmen don't wear hats with docent on them.   I don't know
just when the word caught on ... perhaps in
the last decade ... former presidents' homes have docents, trolley
museums have docents, but I think in National Parks we may still be
calling them park rangers.  

There has been, in the pages on pages on pages on this topic, an opinion
that the museum tries to control and regulate what the docents say. 
That would not be proper and really isn't done because the public will
meet as many as seven different people during the day, and we would not
want them to all sound like parrots.  But considerable emphasis has been
placed on helping docents understand their subject. The docents have
been told not make up history, should not guess when they don't know,
and should tailor their speeches to the interests and prior knowledge of
the patrons in front of them.  Both PTM and BSM have given their members
the historical tools needed.  They have been told to judge 1900 events
in terms of other 1900 events, not in terms of how we do things today. 
They have been told, for example, that they might want to say that this
car was built when Calvin Coolidge was president, in a period of
unexcelled national prosperity, in the era of the Charleston, the
Flapper, back when your Great Grandmum was dating, when there was one
automobile out there for every five people.     

Sadly, I met in my life one book author / publisher who told me that the
facts really were not important because his sales were not aimed at
railfans who would know he made a mistake but at the general public. 
I've also met docents who changed facts from week to week or even from
hour to hour.  Worst of all, one of those people was someone who has, in
my lifetime, supervised me and she admitted she had no knowledge of the
subject at had and didn't plan to learn.  Sad isn't it.  And she was
part of a club mentality ... she would go out on Sunday afternoon to
play cards with friends and maybe be interrupted by a visitor to the
site.