Education in the Museum of the Slovak National Uprising provides opportunities to educate a wider range of target groups, from pre-primary, primary, secondary and high school pupils to university students, as well as pedagogues and seniors. Education focuses on activities that aim to educate not only about the specific, critical moments of the Second World War, but can also shape attitudes and educate for a tolerant society.
Pupils of the last year of pre-primary education in kindergartens and primary schools are offered the educational programme “Getting to Know the Museum”. In its content and form, this programme cooperates with the State Educational Programme in the framework of pre-primary education, especially in the thematic areas of Culture and People. The aim of this education is to get acquainted in a fun way with the environment of the Museum itself, the ways of its functioning, to get acquainted with the individual working professions of the people who work here (simulation of the work of a conservator, etc.). By explaining the overall role and place of the Museum in society as a very important cultural and heritage institution, it is possible to educate about cultural values, ethical principles, freedom as well as human rights from an early age.
For secondary and high school pupils, the educational activities of the Museum of the SNU are carried out mainly through the educational programmes: “The Slovak National Uprising Through My Eyes” and “Suitcase Number…”, which cover the issues of the resistance and the Jewish question in Slovakia in 1938-1945. The educational programmes are a combination of experiential learning in the Museum’s exhibition, the use of “tactile” collection objects set aside to illustrate the topic, lecturer’s interpretation and group work of pupils. By using the space of the Museum as an authentic facilitator of education with elements of experiential learning “outside the classroom”, we are able to create historical awareness of the Slovak National Uprising as an important part of our national history among young people. Moreover, by educating young people about the Holocaust, they can also address the moral issues of genocide as such. Working with testimonies, visual material and photographs helps to understand the danger of stereotyping, which can flow into prejudices attached to different minority communities, and to identify and avoid these manifestations in time. It is for this purpose that the museum educators are given the space to supplement their educational activities outside the classroom, especially with activities where the preponderance of facts is replaced by powerful stories of individuals, moral dilemmas, crises of humanity, and the development of empathy. Furthermore, the outlined fates of the Jews used in an educational programme are a source of historical instruction and a suitable motive for the educational content of informal education in the Museum of the SNU. This necessity is particularly relevant in the current climate of increasing various kinds of phobias and racial intolerance, which also benefit from historical ignorance or distorted interpretations, or even various attempts to deny the Holocaust on the scale on which it took place.