Visual Education (Jan 1923-Dec 1924)

Visual Education Can Moving Pictures Stimulate Mental Growth? Editorial Contribution by WILLIAM C. BAGLEY IN DISCUSSING the educational influence of moving pictures, an important principle is frequently overlooked; namely, the prime importance of the activity of the learner. Merely looking at pictures may be a diversion, but it does not necessarily contribute anything to mental growth. Generally speaking, such growth comes from effort — from "stretching" one's mental grasp to grip and hold something just beyond one's present apparent power to grip and hold. IF THE moving picture is to become anything more than a supplemental educative agent, it must be made to stimulate the learner to this type of effort. The skepticism that many good teachers have expressed regarding the educational possibilities of moving pictures doubtless rests upon their belief that an overplus of "looking at pictures" will still further encourage passivity rather than promote the activity that they so well know to be essential. Good teachers have little faith in "royal roads to learning" — and, as a rule, their attitude in this respect is thoroughly justified. THE firm belief in the value of effort, however, may easily lead one to extreme and futile practices. Not infrequently, pupils of moderate ability are set tasks that are quite beyond them ; they are expected to "grip and hold" something that no amount of mental "stretching" will enable them to grasp. The "doctrine of effort" ruthlessly applied to such cases often results in failure and consequent discouragement or even despair. PERHAPS the most important element in the art of teaching is to know how to adjust the necessity for "stretch" to the individual capacity of each learner. The problem may be represented diagrammatically as follows : Let A represent the point from which the members of a class start in the attempt to master a new principle or to gain a broader and more comprehensive conception. Let Z represent the terminus of the learning-process — the new principle now firmly "gripped and held." With the merest suggestion on the part of the teacher, the very bright learner may leap at once to the conclusion. His passage from A to Z may be pictured thus: A Z A pupil not quite so bright but still far above the average may require an intermediate step, but once furnished with this, he, too, quickly reaches the terminus: A M Z Pupils of average or moderate ability, however, must proceed gradually: A D G / M P 5* V Z The slow learners will be still further handicapped, and for them a more finely graduated series of steps or "stretches" must be provided: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ Finally, there may be a very few pupils who, because of general mental weakness or of special disability in the particular subject, may never be able to learn the lesson in question. WITHIN the past ten years, studies of individual differences have pointed conclusively toward the need of adjusting the processes of teaching and learning in accord with these variations in learningcapacity, but the development of a technique of teaching that will meet this need has progressed very slowly. Some educators, indeed, have been so oppressed by the magnitude of the differences revealed by the mental tests that they have been tempted to deny the possibility of a truly universal education, and, in a few cases, have urged the restriction especially of secondary and higher schooling to those pupils who are most generously endowed by nature with learning-capacity. THIS method of cutting the Gordian knot, however, runs squarely against the clear tendencies of modern social and political development. These tendencies are all toward the assumption of more and more power by the great masses of the people — by the "common man." To adopt a policy that would leave the common mind on a relatively untrained and uninstructed level is now impossible; even if it could be done, it would merely invite disaster. Whatever the difficulties of the task may be, the needs of modern life demand mass education— they demand, in terms of our diagram, that as many people as possible be brought into possession of as many common Z's as possible. THE interest of the present writer in visual education is based upon the possibility that the means which visual education affords may be made to contribute something to this all-important end. Of particular significance is the possibility that visual agencies will be developed which will supply some of the intermediate steps in the grasping of large conceptions. In a preceding article of this series we have called attention to the way in which the addition of the ele