Why is it called the “Mind Museum”? Who conceptualized it? How did the name come about?
We had studies. Like I said, I was proud of the process of doing the Museum. When we were trying names with Science in it, the Filipinos didn’t like it. We conducted Focus Group Discusssions (FGDs) and surveys. When we put Science in, natatakot sila (they become scared). It’s not that they don’t like it, but they would say, they did not like science education. So we said, how do we go about this? The framework is “what you know, how you know it, and what to do with it”—this is what science is. So it has always something to do with how the mind works. So we latched on that. When we were just starting, it was just me and my managing director Manny Blas. When the results came out of our research, we found out that if you put “Mind” into “Museum,” it was okay with Filipinos. They got intrigued. The Board loved the name Mind Museum right away.
Who is the primary target audience of the Mind Museum?
I always say that when we conceptualized the Mind Museum, I did not have the burden of being a museologist or a museum expert. So, I didn’t know any better. My instinct was, because I was grounded in the sciences, I just said, I will probably ask a neuroscientist and a cognitive scientist who will tell me the latest so far about how humans learn and that’s one of the advantages we had even with being kulelat or being at the tail-end of all the science museums in the world.
I tried to turn around our being kulelat into an advantage. Because the advantage now is we now know more than at anytime in history how the brain works. And there is a science to this because it was only in the last 20 to 25 years that we can peer at our brains without killing ourselves, because we now have scans. And so, I talked to them and we had many, many conversations about how humans learn. And that’s one of the things that came out—you never target learning; that this is for Grade 1 and this is for Grade 2. Humans will learn what they will learn. That was a big recognition about how to conceptualize the museum. You never target a specific audience. You target everyone. Because a science museum should target everyone.
I think, science is a human right and should therefore be accessible to everyone. That is why we subsidize 60 percent of the admission price of all public schools and all teachers, regardless of whether they come from public or private sector, because science is a human right. It’s a big thing for us who work in science museums.
Can you give a profile of the average Mind Museum visitor?
The average Mind Museum visitor is a Filipino who would always tell us” ‘We didn’t know that there is a museum like this.” And then, they would say, “Really, it was built by Filipinos? All Filipinos?” And then they would say, “You are a nonprofit, nonstock museum?” Usually, students don’t ask these questions because this is the first generation of students who grew up with a Mind Museum. When we were kids, we did not have one. The average student today is just so busy, they are not known for self-reflection.
Aside from receiving an international award, what to you has been the most important achievement of the Mind Museum since it opened in 2012?
The Mind Museum made good on its word. Talk is cheap. We can always talk about our wishes, our desires for the future, but what makes the difference is if you do it. And we did it. We had to raise a billion pesos and we did. This is a P1-billion project. We convinced the board to donate this lot, the prime area fronting Shangri-La, where they will have to accommodate buses from public schools. The corporations and the trustees are very generous supporters. They are the prime movers. I’d like to think the museum is successful because it’s true inside out. Even the team works that way. What we deliver is what we live out inside.
What do you mean when you say you are grounded in science?
Science is just the way the world works. I’m grounded in the way science works, not in a particular field. And I always remind people, especially kids when they are scared of science, especially when they are already called Chemistry or Physics, I always tell them that, We invented these things, because nature, when it wakes up in the morning does not say, I’m just going to do Biology today. Or I’m just going to do Physics today. Everything happens at once but humans cannot understand everything all at once. So we had to devise maps of knowledge. Chemistry is molecules, anything bigger than that is another matter. Biology is anything that has to do with living things. We are very limited. But right now, with the tools and what we fnd out things being interconnected, it’s not like that anymore.
When I say that I am grounded in the sciences, it just means I’m grounded on how you know what you know. So, when you tell me something, I would ask you, how do you know that? We’re all used to that process. You don’t come to me and tell me, just claim it, just because you really feel very strongly. Yes, but how do you know that?