2. Miriam Musco
• Director of Education
Science Museum of Western Virginia
Roanoke
• Ed.D. candidate
Educational Leadership
Nova Southeastern University
3. • Access to informal learning
opportunities is NOT equal.
• Neighborhood income determines
the level of access people have to
informal education.
• Museums and other informal
education institutions MUST work to
combat this inequality
4. What is informal education?
Museums, aquariums, zoos, libraries, botanical
gardens, and cultural institutions are all
considered sites for informal education.
5. Why Informal Education?
• 90% of adult learning comes from informal
education
• Informal education can help adults with
continuing life skills
• Family visits to informal education sites help
provoke learning at all age levels
• Informal education inspires lifelong learning
and interest in subjects not considered
previously
6. Why Informal Education?
• Informal education allows people to learn
what they like, when they like, at whatever
pace they like
• Informal education facilitates personal
development and a sense of community and
helps create a bridge to formal learning
7. Income Inequality
• In the 20th century, income inequality reached
its lowest point in 1953. Since then, it has
only been increasing.
• From 1979 to now, incomes in the bottom
fifth of earners grew by 18%; for the 1%,
incomes grew by 275%.
• This far outpaces income inequality in other
developed countries.
8. Income Inequality and Education
• “An American child’s chance of acquiring a
quality education depends more on the
parents’ income than on almost anything else”
• Educational attainment perpetuates income
inequality.
• 25% of American public school students live in
poverty, which is much higher than any other
developed nation.
• Closing this achievement gap could increase
our GDP by up to $670 billion.
9. Economic Segregation
• Economic segregation is the phenomena of
people of similar income levels living in the
same areas
• Income is the biggest factor in where people
live and is the primary form of segregation in
cities
• Since 1980, income inequality has risen in all
but one of the 250 largest metropolitan areas.
85% of all urban neighborhoods are more
income-segregated than they were in 1980.
10. Economic Segregation
• For the poor, economic segregation is linked to
higher mortality, higher unemployment, lower
earnings, and more social problems.
• Economic segregation also lowers poor
children’s likelihood of completing high
school.
• Private schooling contributes to economic
segregation by leaving public schools with a
higher concentration of poor students
11. Economic Segregation
• For the wealthy, economic segregation
produces policy (such as lower income taxes)
that favors their interests and better
government in their areas.
• In economically segregated areas, the
wealthier are more likely to earn a college
degree than in more income-diverse areas.
12. Economic Segregation
• Economic segregation is self-perpetuating and
multi-generational.
• It is particularly glaring in cities, where poor
and wealthy neighborhoods are close to each
other.
13. Income and Informal Education
• Studies have shown that low-income urban
children have less access to books, partly due
to the lack of libraries in their neighborhoods.
• Museums play a smaller role in the lives of
low-income individuals than in the past, due
in part to unaffordability of admission.
• Museums can be seen as catering to the
privileged, funded by mistrusted institutions,
dependent on low-wage structures, and
lacking the right to interpret certain histories.
14. Income and Informal Education
• However, informal education offers benefits:
- Provides an outlet for unheard voices
- Provides safe space and inclusion
- Encourages economic development
- Allows for unstructured learning
- Promotes tolerance and encourages
social justice
• Informal education institutions must
understand and work to combat barriers to
entry in order to provide these benefits.
15. Methods
• Examining urban centers to correlate median
income with access to informal education
institutions
- Looking at the median income range
among different zip codes
- Counting the number of museums,
libraries, and zip codes
- Finding a relationship between these two
factors
16. Methods
• Identifying attitudes in low-income
neighborhoods towards museums, libraries,
and the arts
- Examining the two lowest-income
neighborhoods of cities
- Surveying residents of those
neighborhoods on their attitudes and
experiences with informal education
23. What Can We Do?
• Grants!!!
• Sponsorships
• Outreach
• Special family days
• Ceremonies, etc., that connect to people
• Off-hours programming
• Go into the community
• Making it as easy as possible to visit
*will be going over the research here
Continuing life skills: literacy, numeracy, appropriate communication, computer literacy
*informal education as contrast to negative perceptions of formal education
* Can inspire formal learning and credentialing
College graduates earn 2.4 times for than high school grads and 5.4 times more than high school dropouts
The next highest country has a 17% poverty rate
“Job dislocation” for the poor
Gatreaux experiment – housing lottery system, those in mixed-income neighborhoods were more likely to be employed
Social problems = high school dropouts, teenage pregnancy
Concentrated poverty=less likely voters, wealthy voting dominates
Poor cities are more likely to be corrupt
It is disheartening to see wealth so close to you
Mistrusted institutions = government
Low-wage structures = janitors, food service
Without authority = holding objects not theirs, who tells history?
Outlet = tell their history
Economic development = if they locate to poor areas
Unstructured learning= may have bad experiences, due to poverty, with formal education
Social justice= can show how people agitated in the past
Philadelphia has the highest income inequality among the cities studied so far (Gini coefficient)
Five richest zip codes contain 111 informal ed. Institutions; the five poorest contain 21 (excluding 19104)
Again, this is the most income-unequal city, also recently named the poorest large city in the country
Chicago has the lowest income inequality of the 3 cities, but still high
Five richest contain 22 informal ed. Institutions, the five poorest contain 6 (excluding 60637, U. Chicago)
Los Angeles is closely behind Philadelphia in terms of income inequality
