International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1934)

48 THE CINEMA IN TEACHING Nervous states are shown by the intensity of the character reactions, and unfavourable impressions last longer in nervous than in normal children. The reactions of the character are often paradoxical : a thing which produces a pleasant impression on an abnormal child may be unpleasant for a nervous one. We find this happen in the field we are interested in, the case of colours and noises. Care must be taken to avoid exaggerations of the more emotional reactions to laughter and weeping seen on the screen, which may give rise to regular crises or attacks of rage. Nervous children may be frightened into fits in this way. Cinematograph projections may give rise to a form of delirium in children with a predisposition that way, to night terrors, to talking in their sleep, to impulsive outbreaks, insomnia, extravagant talk, obsessions, uncontrollable agitation, fits of trembling, paltitation, headache and forms of hypersensitiveness of the optic nerves. These phenomena are manifested only in exceptional cases, and we therefore merely mention them in passing, but the conscientious teacher must always be on his guard and repress them as soon as they appear. Projections, and Ex There is not the sligh cessive Brain Fa test joubt that brain gue' fatigue exists and be comes more and more frequent during school courses, and it is quite useless to try to deny this fact. We see evidences of it every day in our consulting rooms. It is due first of all to the excessively heavy school curricula, to methods of teaching which are based too much on the study of books, to lack of variety in intellectual effort, to lessons that are too long, to the difficulty of the subjects that have to be assimilated and their too great condensation. It is not only the pupil who suffers from this form of fatigue ; the master also is a victim to it. The evil is shown by an excessive irritability, by a form of boredom at the very thought of studying, by physical instability, a difficulty in fixing the attention, a weakening of the memory and an incapacity to acquire and retain ideas. And these states are followed by ill-temper and a feeling of discontent and incompleteness. If not attended to in time, these symptoms may lead to nervous exhaustion, and, finally, to mental symptoms that approach precocious dementia, characterised by what is usually called " lack of will power ", but is rather the unconscious refusal of the will to assimilate any new mental equipment. Laziness is often nothing but a fortunate reaction of the tired organism, which refuses to work any longer. A physiologist once gave voice to this paradox : ' happy are the idle ". This, however, is quite comprehensible, since a too zealous child does not react by refusing to make an effort, but goes on from effort to effort, from fatigue to fatigue until it is exhausted, and in this way reaches a state of intellectual disaster which is often irremediable. There may still be some anchor of safety, but only on condition that the child enjoys a period of complete rest together with a medical treatment that must be rigidly followed. In this field, the cinema might be a valuable ally of the educator and teacher, with the variations it can bring to the methods of education and instruction, its inherent fascination, which has such a cheering effect on the child's mind, and the facility it affords the teacher in expounding his ideas and the child in understanding and assimilating them. What a difference there is, for instance, between a badly printed and badly expressed, unillustrated text-book and one that is well printed on good paper, with the subject carefully explained, and illustrated by engravings that arouse interest and assist the understanding of the text ! f~( In the same way, a lesson illustrated by suitable projections completes and facilitates the work of instruction and education. Conclusion. The screen, therefore is a powerful aid to the educator and teacher. Perhaps we may be permitted to add one