The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

Aspects of Visual Education mouths of its opponents who accept the validity of these psychological claims and see in them a demoraliza- tion of the whole educational regime, but more disastrously, it will consign the whole movement to an early and irrevocable doom be- cause of the swift disillusionment which is bound to follow eagerly accepted promises which prove in- capable of fulfillment. Popular psychology has much circumstantial evidence to support its dictum that what is seen makes the most vivid impression and hence persists longer in memory. This is what the poet seems to mean when he says: "I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth to me the show had brought; For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon the inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude." If by merely exposing the eye to pictures the storehouse of the sub- conscious could be filled with the treasure trove, this would be pain- less education indeed and the motion picture would replace the teacher as surely as machinery replaced hand labor. Mechanical difficulties in producing films and financial limi- tations in securing them would be dissipated as the mist in the sun- light. Educational methods would be revolutionized and school archi- tecture completely reconstructed. Impression and Expression There is, however, no unambig- uous psychological evidence that material presented through vision is "impressed" more vividly or re- membered more accurately, or even learned more rapidly than through any other separate sense avenue. Nor will a presentation in visual terms necessarily leave a sort of residue in the form of visual imagery. What is seen may be im- mediately converted into auditory or motor or visual images according to the idiosyncrasy of the learner, and the recall may be in a form which bears no resemblance to the original patterns. The screen picture can- not in and of itself guarantee the means of securing a more vivid or accurate impression. The psychol- ogist has in his "Aussage" experi- ments an interesting confirmation of the pedagogues' statement that children have little capacity for "see- ing" however much they may have for looking. The startlingly inac- curate and incomplete reports which children make of simple pictures which they have just "seen" show that something more is involved in vivid and accurate perception than merely opening the eyes to see. In- deed the whole trend of modern educational method is toward a re- reading of the old aphorism, "No impression without expression." It is now an accepted pedagogical com-- monplace that an impression must be carried out into some fulfillment in "expression" in order to become part and parcel of the child's intel- lectual capital, but more recently the emphasis has been on the other arc of the circle, namely, that in