Movie Makers (Jan-May 1928)

city boards of education lacking a department of visual education, either for the handling of actual work or of othe for investigation communities. The motion picture, presenting opportunities of bringing before the eyes of the class manifestations of animal and plant life, reconstructing phases of history, physical features of the earth's surface and demonstrations in chemistry and physics, was a subject too powerful in appeal among educators to be set aside by a few early disappointments. Some of the older teachers remained cool as to any disturbing changes, but the majority in whose departments the films would be of help kept the vehicle of visual education rolling, and much was accomplished during the next ten years. The old bugaboo, elimination of text-books, was thoroughly thrashed out. It was generally decided that the broad adoption of visual education would not interfere with the use of books but would, on the contrary, stimulate a keener interest in books, and that printed details were necessary to the student to supplement visual aids. This has been broadly and clearly demonstrated. The value HIGHWAYS OF ANTVILLE All the Marvels of Community Life Among the Ants Are Revealed by Tolhurst's Microscope greatly reduce the cost over past mechanism, and at the same time eliminate the danger from fire. Of even greater importance is the perfecting of small, motor-driven projectors to run narrow-gauge film, also non-inflammable. Machines have been produced that transfer and print, by "BRINGING HOME THE BACON" The Tolhurst Films Prove That the Comparative Strength of Ants Would Put the Strongest Men to Shame of the printed page, to be studied at leisure, is in little danger of further dispute. In the last two years more has happened to advance visual education than in the whole previous period. Another wave of interest has come from the manufacturers of motion picture equipment. Portable apparatus has been designed for classroom use and non-inflammable film has been perfected — innovations that reduction process, motion pictures on the narrow film, from negatives of the standard width. The narrow-gauge projectors throw a clear and brilliant picture of more than ample size for classroom use. Particularly encouraging has been the bringing together and re-editing in systematic order of valuable existing material and the insertion of suitable academic titles by competent authorities, who are also arranging this material for courses of study. This development has especially inspired the workers for up-to-date educational measures with new confidence, and there is no educational conference that does not discuss visual instruction. A number of our larger educational institutions, desiring to broaden their work, are drawing on income from their invested funds to establish film libraries for free distribution to the schools, reels being circulated very much as books are. The writer has charge of the film library owned by the New York Zoological Society, which contains close to 100,000 feet of film, arranged in the sequence of zoological classification and presenting a course on animal biology. The American Museum of Natural History has an extensive projection library of subjects covering American history, natural science and geography, which is in use daily in schools. Institutions in a number of other cities are doing similar work. But the schools are not yet quite out of the woods. Despite the long struggle for visual education a comparatively small number of schools are only fairly well equipped, and probably less than a dozen colleges are utilizing the instructional material and apparatus now available. Confidence in systematically arranged material and accessories is too recent to have brought about appropriations for purchase. The nation-wide consideration given to these revised methods of teaching still encounters a lack of provision for properly trying them out. Still another development may have much to do with education in (Continued on page 118) Eighty-seven