Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER 27 TELEPEDAGOGICS should one congratulate University College, Exeter, for having been so enterprising as to found a Visual Education Centre, or condole with them for hatching out such a very academic chick? With its four years' start over all other institutions in Britain and most institutions in other parts of the world Exeter can yet become a focus for information and experiment about every kind of visual technique in education. It can yet make decisive contributions to the theory and practice of the subject. It can help teachers to make the best use of such materials as already exist. It can help them to formulate policy. It can help them to procure the kinds of visual equipment, including films, they need. It can help producers to overcome the technical and psychological problems at present inseparable from the production of teaching films. If Exeter does not do these things, someone else will take the job over, and Exeter will have thrown away an opportunity to contribute to the cultural and educational life of the globe. It is still uncertain whether Exeter will be able to profit from its enterprise in spite of its four years' lead. The Visual Education Centre seems to be attempting to establish theory without an adequate groundwork of practice and observation in the classroom; windy generalisations, overdressed with words, come pouring out when one wants simple statements of principle; Exeter is taking what can be the fatal path of being interested in the organisation of educational organisations for its own sake. All this is a pity, for somewhere in the verbosity, confusion of categories, muddled thinking, heresy hunting and dogmatics, there is sometimes to be found good sense. For example, the insistence that the film must not be separated from other visual techniques, and that these in turn must be considered in relation to "the totality of education techniques" is sound. Pleas that teachers must not only understand but command the making of films for the classroom cannot be repeated too often. Claims that the work of the private film maker — the "amateur" — must be considered alongside that of the professional will be endorsed by everyone who believes that the film can and must become a handy instrument of public expression. These grains of good sense have to be separated from a deal of chaff. Examine, for instance, the recent Exeter publication — Visual Education and the New Teacher, by G. P. Meredith.* Typographically hideous (should not visual education begin at home?), this booklet seeks to orientate the teacher towards the new visual media which are coming tumbling into his classroom. It also attempts to establish the necessity of introducing a universal system of schooling based on the Dalton plan. What may be called the Exeter touch is revealed on page 9 where is introduced the term telepedagogics (Oh, Semantics! Oh, Linguistics! Oh, Fiddlestics!) After giving Scotland a drubbing for whittling down the film till it has scarcely any function to perform other than to illustrate a lesson, Meredith enters into an interesting consideration of the "freedom" of the teacher. He comes to the con * Visual Education and the New Teacher. A Study of Children and Machines, of Organisations and Men. G. Patrick Meredith. A Daily Mail School Aid Publication for the Visual Education Centre. Exeter. 1946. Pp. 64. elusion that "freedom" in the classroom, however desirable, is rarely or never attained. The teacher's work is consciously or unconsciously determined by the textbook which is "the oldest form of prefabricated instruction". Indeed, Meredith argues that it is not the teacher but the textbook writer and the textbook publisher who largely determine the curriculum. Meredith drops this interesting argument on page 19 and does not return to it till page 47, where he asks the fundamental question, are teachers going to command the visual media which will presently come flooding into their classrooms, or are they going to repeat the mistake of their Victorian and Edwardian forbears and hand over their prerogative to the publishers — that is, in this case, to the speculative film producers and Wardour Street? Though Meredith makes it clear that he is on the side of the teachers every time, his attempts to describe an organisation by which they shall get what they want is both timid and obscure. What lies between pages 19 and 47? It is a little difficult to say, for Meredith rides several hobby horses, loses himself in history and confuses his categories in a way which would make Immanuel Kant turn twice in his grave and sneeze. Seeking to show that mechanisation and standardisation have been an inseparable part of educational technique at least since the invention of movable type and that, far from mechanising teaching, machines can help to humanise it, Meredith gives up a page and a half to listing important inventions which have influenced the technique of teaching. What might have been an interesting paragraph in the present book or an interesting monograph by itself is expanded to a chapter in which justice cannot be done to the subject and which robs the book as a whole both of continuity and perspective. Dropping history Meredith then worries away at the Dalton plan, where again he has interesting things to say, but by now the structure of his book has become overloaded and malformed. From page 47 or so the book meanders on to the end, expiring less with a bang than with a whimper in a couple of pages of summary which make this wordy, inconclusive and misty book even more wordy, inconclusive and misty than it might otherwise have been. The London Scientific Film Society showed a series of films on Asdic on Sunday, February 17th. Geoffrey Bell's most recent film Personnel Selection — Officers, had its premiere at the Society on March 17th. A new Danish film, Tudsen (The Toad) was also screened. announce further films completed Fro : " The Technique of Anaesthesia Intravenous Anaesthesia Part 2. Signs and Stages of Anaesthesia. Carbon Dioxide Absorption Technique. Respiratory and Cardiac Arrest. Operative Shock. Handling and Care of the Patient. (Available to approved medical audiences only.) Series From: " The Health of Dairy Cattle Hygiene on the Farm. From the " Soil Fertility " Series Factors of Soil Fertility. Lime. Land Drainage. PENICILLIN The story of its discovery and development, and the use of penicillin on war casualties. Series Other films in production will be announced when completed. Applications for the loan of these films should be made to the Central Film Library, Imperial Institute, London, S.W.7