Wichita’s “Old Cowtown Museum” is becoming a problem for the city because attendance has dropped and it’s not a money maker.
Some ideas floating around included making it a theme park and other gaudy ideas that may make it more attractive, but take away from what it actually is. It is one of the few “living museums” in the country. People are paid to spend the day out there in authentic time period clothing, making authentic food, using wood burning stoves and making clothes.
The two main problems the city has are that it expects everything it does to be a big money maker and our leaders have no respect for the past. We only teach Kansas History for nine weeks in the middle school and none in the high school level, so how are our young people going to learn the value of such a museum when they aren’t taught the value of history. The attitude in our schools is to just teach the basics that are needed for getting jobs, math reading and writing. “History is not important.”
Of course a “living museum” is not a big money maker. Why should it be? History has its own value. Many young people complain that Kansas is boring. It wasn’t always. It was the center of the Populist movement, the cattle trails and the “bleeding Kansas” period led to some of the most intense violence related to the civil war. But out students don’t need to know all of that, according to our leaders and our school board.
“Just look forward to the future. Don’t look back. The big aircraft plants made Wichita the “Air Capitol Center.” That’s all that matters.”
Today the “Air Capitol Center” is outsourcing its work and many Wichitans are now looking for near minimum wage jobs. That’s not much of a future. And there is little incentive for those people to come and spend money learning about the past when no one around them sees any value in that.
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