Cinema Progress (1935 - 1937)

CINEMA PROGRESS Wanted: A Coordination of Audio-Visual Forces Can audio-visual instruction assume its rightful place in the nation's educational system if it continues along its present disconnected lines? Does the blame for its slow growth lie with the administrator or with the teacher? How much should motion picture appreciation enter into the curriculum, and how should it be taught? These were a few of the many questions raised when nearly 400 teachers from 48 states gathered in Los Angeles this summer for the fourth annual convention of the Cinema Appreciation League, held at the University of Southern California under the auspices of the American Institute of Cinematography. Speaking for the school heads, J. Warren Ayer, superintendent of the Monrovia, California, schools, declared : "What we administrators need is a key teacher who can be a chairman of teachers and help train others — one who can point out things that are needed and can bring this idea into a concrete plan and proposal — one who will say, 'You can buy such and such that you n?erl here, and it will cost you so much,' etc." But according to Ayer, many teachers do not have any adequate comprehension of the importance of understanding right-sound instruction. To provide a perspective and sense of cost that is woefully lacking at present, the Monrovia superintendent advocates that universities offer teachers more training in audio-visual education. "We need to oversee the whole field to discover possibilities," he said. "We should have board members, laymen, and students in conference to get a broad cross-section of views." Not only do teachers need such training, but it should also extend to administrators, contends Fred Orth, principal of a Los Angeles elementary school. "Visual education is most important from the supervisor's standpoint," he said. "He is the deciding factor as to whether the district is progressive. The first function of the principal is to improve instruction in the school. The superintendent decides whether the principal is improving the instruction. It depends upon the principal whether visual education will be successful. He must teach teachers how to use it. If we had principals interesting themselves in it, the problem would be solved — through the training of principals." Also deploring the lack of a central plan to coordinate the use of visual education in the schools, William B. Brown, assistant supervisor of secondary curriculum for Los Angeles, advocates the setting of national standards as to the amount to be spent for it in proportion to other expenditures. "I see individual teachers pioneering, and outside groups helping, and I am conscious that we have no center principle guiding the entire effort," he said. Just such a pioneer is Miss Marjorie Brown, a Los Angeles high school teacher, who developed one of the first units in the city's secondary field of molion picture appreciation. Miss Brown's system of instruction has a three-fold objective: 1. To make boys and girls realize the sources from which they can select motion pictures intelligently. 2. To show them how to interpret what they see, to tell the false from the 19