International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1934)

42 THE CINEMA IN TEACHING them in this moment, and the movement and phenomena succeed one another on the screen with such rapidity that they cannot stop to observe them slowly if they do not want to lose an interesting part of them. This constitutes a very useful mental exercise for children, whose mental faculties act slowly when they are tired or distracted but quickly when they are interested. Their spirit of initiative is thus strengthened, and the mental exercise is good for them. In this way, the boy creates within himself unconscious reflexes of perception. These reflexes, fixed in his subconscious mind, will afterwards function automatically. They will not only manifest themselves, but will be simultaneous with the reproduction of the object or scene that aroused them for the first time. An association of ideas will thus be formed that will call up the conception as soon as the visual image is presented before him in fact, and the mental exercise will develop the liveliness of his perceptions. The Faculties of Ob Children do not pay servation and Pre mucn attention to the cision. passing of the seasons, even in the country. Rain, clouds, wind, differences of temperature make little impression on them. They know very little of the earth, the woods, the animals that surround them, or the stars that shine in the sky. And this is even more noticeably the case in towns. It is just in this that the film can be so useful, for it develops the faculty of observation. Children do not observe the phenomena of nature because they are distracted by their games, by the details of their daily tasks, by their habits, which follow a regular cycle ; and they do not learn, therefore, to use their primordial faculties. The film eliminates these outside distractions. When the life of the bee is shown on the screen, for instance, the child's attention is drawn to what is happening there. It sees the bee pass from flower to flower, collect the pollen, separate the wax and set it aside, form the cells with it, fill them with honey, cover them with a uniform layer of wax, and then begin its work all over again. All this manifestation of life arouses the child's interest, takes his fancy, teaches him how to observe, that is, how to look at a phenomenon of fact and to analyse it apart from all its exterior contingencies. The cinema is therefore of great use to the student, because, far from suppressing the direct observation of things, it teaches him to observe them of his own initiative. When he is alone, if he sees a bee, he will remember the whole interesting life of this insect, its work and the organization of its hive. He will instinctively note, then, the details he may have missed on the screen ; he will try to look at the bee's operations more closely, and the spirit of observation aroused in him by the cinema will thus be developed. The pupil will learn to observe the germination and growth of a plant, the opening of a flower, the life of animals in water, in the air, in the fields. In his daily life he will compare what he sees with what he observed on the screen, and he will inevitably become interested when he realizes that he had not examined these things before with the necessary attention, being distracted by everything around him. Having thus acquired the habit of distinguishing the special attributes of one animal from those of another, and so on, he will henceforward look for these differences unconsciously, and so will continue to develop his faculty of observation. ' There are people who pass through life with open eyes, seeing nothing " (Blakie). How many adults there are who suddenly discover with amazement that for years they have been seeing an infinity of things which they have never noticed ! This happens because, although they possess the organs of sense, they have never sufficiently exercised them. The child must therefore be taught to understand what he sees, and to see everything that lives around him and may interest him. To this end, the several senses must be so developed that they yield the utmost of which