Documentary News Letter (1940)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER NOVEMBER 1940 17 blacked out, though fairly good pictures for a small audience may be obtained in a half-light. The screen need not necessarily be an expensive one. We obtain excellent results on a wall colourwashed pale yellow, though still better ones on an ordinary school blackboard which has had one or two coats of "flat-white" paint, and a finishing coat of ivory enamel. We are fortunate in having a spare classroom. Here the blackboard is now a whiteboard, the teacher's desk is screwed down to the floor at a suitable distance from the screen, and the spare films and other fittings are stored in a cabinet (a very small one is quite large enough) in a corner of the room. The seating accommodation consists of a few of the old-fashioned long desks, given to us by a very generous and helpful L.E.A. which has watched our experiment with benevolent interest. The room is by no means palatial, but it is entirely adequate, and the children's appreciation of the facilities provided for them is very evident. We have experimented with film strip illustration of various lessons. With history and geography, and to a less extent with nature study and Scripture, the apparatus has been a godsend. In one or two other subjects it has not proved so successful. In literature, we found that display of the pictures tended rather to divert attention from the text than to illuminate it. But with the three ' ' oral" subjects above mentioned the method has proved in practice to be almost ideal. We have found also an admirable series of Scripture strips, perfectly adapted to the use of young children who cannot possibly use a school Bible (almost invariably the worst printed, bound and illustrated book one finds in any school), and who would probably gain very little from it if they could. The babies too have a small but growing collection of strips illustrating nursery rhymes and fairy tales, with a few line pictures, and simple captions in plain black capitals. (The fact that such captions are generally printed from positives done on a typewriter makes it quite easy for infant and sub-normal children to make out the general gist of the wording. In fact the typewriter type is so plain and legible that we are hoping in the next session to try further experiments in the use of such captions in teaching reading to young and backward children, the captions being the main object of study, and the pictures being used as jam round the pill). It is a delightful experience to give the youngest children an occasional unexpected show, and to see and hear their frantic enthusiasm over The Prodigal Son, The Three Bears, or A Visit to the Zoo. At first we fancied that the children might prove hypercritical, and compare adversely our modest eff"orts in picture production with the product of the elaborate apparatus in the local cinemas. We find, however, that since the lantern does not pretend to be a cinema, and is clearly an instrument on its own, not merely a cheap substitute for something else, this difficulty has not arisen. (Not but what we should be very glad to have a film projector too, if we could afford one, though even if we had, its function would be quite different from that of the lantern now being described.) With the older children (though our school is merely "Infants and Juniors", so that we lose our youngsters before they are twelve) we are finding it possible gradually to encourage the children themselves to give simple lecturettes, having looked out the matter beforehand and used the school reference books to clear up points upon which they are rather hazy. Still another advantage of the film strip which we have found in practice in this matter of lecturing is that the captions serve as lecture notes if the film strip is a really well-planned one, so that even the most woolly-headed lecturer finds it possible to keep to the point, without having constantly to interrupt his discourse to turn up his lecture notes. As against all these advantages the main disadvantage of the film strip (apart of course from the fact that the pictures are "stills," not "living"), is that unless one is wealthy enough to have one's strip specially made, one has to take a ready-made series, some of the items in which will probably not be exactly what is wanted. This, however, can be met in a manner indicated below. And, naturally, for addressing really largeaudiences, the quality of the picture given by a film strip can never approach that of the largescale cinematograph machine or that of the lecture lantern. Even so it is much better than that obtainable from most commercial episcopes, though not, of course, comparable with that to be had from a really good diascope. But in any case, even in wartime conditions few classes, we hope, are likely to exceed a couple of hundred in number, so the disadvantage is rather apparent than real. So far as we have been able to ascertain there are several German and American concerns manufacturing film strips commercially. We believe there are but three English ones — Messrs. Newton of Wigmore Street, Messrs. Cinescopic Instruments & Services Ltd., of Paternoster Row (whose catalogue seems to be word for word identical with that of Messrs. Newton), and Messrs. the Visual Information Service, of Battersea Bridge Road. Each of these firms issues a catalogue, and with a little ingenuity it is possible to build up from these at a very modest cost a stock of film strips which will suffice to illustrate all the ordinary lessons in a primary school, unless its syllabuses be quite unusual in their range. Schools better circumstanced than ourselves may perhaps care to have their film strips specially made at a cost of threepence a picture! We have found the ready-made films at a penny a picture quite satisfactory. After all, every school in the country which teaches history will somewhere or other in its syllabus include the Norman Conquest, so a ready-made strip of the Bayeux Tapestry cannot fail to be useful : similarly every school doing world geography cannot but mention the hot deserts, so will be able to use a strip on the Sahara, and every school having nature study lessons must surely somewhere or other have a series of lessons on the wild animals of our own country. Strips — ready made and therefore cheap — on these and a variety of other similar subjects are to be readily obtained. In history especially a tremendous range of strips is available. Messrs. V.I.S. cover in great detail the ordinary range of school history lessons up to say A. D. 1600. They have also an admirable series of social history films, based upon Hartley and Elliot's work, and an exceptionally welldesigned series upon the Industrial Revolution, evidently planned by someone who is not only a competent historian, but also a skilled teacher. Messrs. C.I.S. and Newton have several excellent series upon technical and geographical subjects. Messrs. Newton, particularly, have reproduced in film strip form many of the sets of illustrations originally prepared for glass slides, and issue these complete with lecture notes in print. Messrs. V.I.S. on the other hand, have generally followed the plan of including on the strip itself at any rate an outline of the matter to be dealt with by the lecturer. There are evident advantages in either method, and the reader may well be left to take his choice. Both Messrs. Newton and Messrs. V.I.S. will supply at a very modest cost their standard strips with the omission, insertion or substitution of specified pictures in the ready made article. Coloured film strips cost about 2,\d. a picture extra. A number of religious and political organisations have issued film strips for propagandist purposes, usually some years ago before the commercial cinema was so highly developed as it is now. Prominent among these are the League of Nations Union, which has two or three excellent strips, and the Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations, which has issued a strip entitled A Day in the Life of an M.P. Despite the obvious danger of introducing anything even remotely savouring of party propaganda into the schools which belong to us all, I think this strip is well worth a place in any school collection. The parties of the Left have made much more use of the film strip. The Co-operative Union has a series of five or six strips, some of which are very good indeed, concerning the social history of the early nineteenth century, and that most energetic body, the National Council of Labour Colleges (N.C.L.C), has had produced for it by Messrs. V.I.S. severalwell-thought-out strips upon foreign policy, colonial issues, social history, etc. These have their value still further increased (or utterly destroyed, according to one's point of view) by a highly Marxian commentary. They are mentioned here as perhaps the best film strips available from the standpoint of technical quality. The recent issue by N.C.L.C. in its series, of the whole of the illustrations in H. G. Wells's Outline of History was an excellent piece of work, and it is to be regretted that the other major working-class educational organisation, the W.E.A. has not produced for its students strips equally well done, but without the rather tendentious captions which make it quite impossible to use the N.C.L.C. films in general school work. Probably its principal contribution to film-strip work has been in the films made to the order of individual members and friends in the Departments of Adult Education in various Universities and University Colleges. But this article is supposed to be concerned with the use of the film strip in the education of children of school age, so I had better reserve for future treatment the equally important question of the use of the film strip in adult education.