Brooklyn College Field Trip | Visiting the Royal Ontario Museum
Spring has arrived and Brooklyn College classes start going on field trips. On the morning of April 5, led by Ms. Bianca, Ms. Cassandra and Ms. Grace, students departed from the campus and went to the Royal Ontario Museum of Canada, to deeply feel the richness of history, and to appreciate the heritage of multiple cultures.
Royal Ontario Museum
The Royal Ontario Museum is Canada’s largest museum of world culture and natural history. Located north of Queen’s Park in downtown Toronto, the Museum houses a number of permanent galleries and hosts international travelling exhibitions.
The Royal Ontario Museum is the 5th largest museum in North America and the largest museum in Canada with the largest collection of natural sciences, animal ecology, art and anthropology. It has 40 galleries and over 6 million items, including artifacts from several continents and periods, as well as natural exhibits such as dinosaur fossils.
It is worth mentioning that the museum has a large number of exquisite Chinese artifacts, numbering more than 40,000, second only to the British Museum, which has more than 50,000 Chinese artifacts, and the second largest collection of Chinese artifacts overseas.
The history of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) dates back to 1912, when the building was constructed by the Ontario government and the University of Toronto. The Royal Ontario Museum has had several expansions throughout its history, the most dramatic being the Renaissance ROM in 2002, designed by renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, which combined the original traditional architecture with crystal, Byzantine style and deconstructionism, making the ROM a national landmark and a vibrant cultural destination in downtown Toronto.
Brooklyn students in the teacher’s guidance, quiet and orderly shuttle through each exhibition area, from natural science to human history, dinosaur bones, meteorites, jewellery, cultural treasures of various countries, modern art displays and many more open presentations of the displayed exhibits.
On the ground floor of the Royal Ontario Museum, the main exhibition of Asian cultures and Canadian aboriginal cultures, including the Asian culture of the Chinese Museum has brought students from the Yin Shang period to the Ming and Qing cultures spanning five thousand years of space and time, great artistic value of murals, statues of Buddha, terracotta figurines and bronzes which are also breathtakingly beautiful and poignant.
Teachers carefully and professionally explained to students the culture of Canadian Aboriginal people and Canadian history. The Natural History Exhibition Hall is located on the first floor and is divided into the Mineral Hall, Dinosaur Hall, Mammal Hall, Bird Hall, Biodiversity Hall, etc. The hall contains hundreds of dinosaur fossil specimens from the Jurassic to Cretaceous Periods, as well as all kinds of minerals, gemstones, and meteorite specimens, with oldest specimens having a history of 4.5 billion years, which is a paradise for nature enthusiasts.
The World Culture Exhibition Hall on the third floor consists of the Europe Pavilion, Middle East Pavilion, Africa, America, Asia-Pacific and South Asia Pavilion, mainly displaying ancient European Greco-Roman Byzantine Egyptian civilisation, as well as cultural relics and monuments in Central and Southeast Asia, Africa and the Americas, with a wide range of displays to let students intuitively feel the charm of the world’s history and culture, and stimulate their curiosity and exploration of the world’s cultures and long history.
In Canadian education, learning is never confined to textbooks and classrooms, but more often comes from life outside the classroom and practical programmes on campus. Brooklyn College in Toronto has the advantage of being located in a metropolitan city with a multicultural mix of world-class museums, renowned universities, financial institutions and leading corporations all located in Toronto.
The Brooklyn Field Trip is an educational enrichment programme that integrates activities into the learning process, providing students with a rewarding and thought-provoking experience. Each semester, the Brooklyn College Field Trip programme organises targeted visits to a variety of organisations, including museums, top schools and large commercial companies, to give students a different perspective on North American culture.
Students learn by observing, develop their interests by experiencing, and find the direction of their future endeavours. Through practical experience, not only to expand knowledge, but also to develop teamwork, communication and leadership and other comprehensive qualities, but also to further stimulate students’ learning initiative, which is Brooklyn for many years in a row to maintain excellent teaching results and high acceptance rate of prestigious schools is an important factor!
