The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

152 Education and the Movies The Educational Screen a classroom and not likely to compete with the entertainment film commonly exhibited in theatres. The committee is gathering material for some reports on pedagogical films, and these reports, it is hoped, will in due time throw light on the difficult problem of using moving pictures for purposes of school instruction. In the meantime, this invitation for discussion is sent out in the hope of opening up a line of inquiry which unfortunately, as it seems to the present writer, the producers prefer not to have the educators follow, at least at present. It is a deliberate effort to call the attention of educators and producers to an important fact, namely, the fact that the entertainment which is being offered to the young people of this country today as their chief amusement is essentially unsound in character and certain to produce all of the unfavorable results of intellectual dissipation if it is not radically reformed. The teacher who thinks that the effects of the movies do not reach into her classroom unless she uses a lantern and brings in films is very shortsighted. The fact is that young people and old are getting a type of mental training at the movingpicture theatre which is fixing mental habits to a degree which we have not been recognizing as we should. Let us put as pointedly as we can the antithesis between the ordinary moving picture and those forms of thinking which the school tries to cultivate. The school teaches the child that he must control his imagination so that the things, which he builds up in his mind conform to reality. In school two and two always make four. In school the law of gravity always operates. In school one learns that a garden must always be planted before it can grow. In school one learns that skill is acquired by application. In school one learns that health depends on sound habits of life. In short, one learns in school that reality is rigid and regular. What does one learn at the ordinary movie? One becomes accustomed to the most extravagant modes of life, to the most improbable happenings, to unearned success, and to every possible escapefrom natural law. Let it be noted that we are not discussing at all what is ordinarily spoken of as the moral aspect of the movie. The prodigality and the disregard for custom and social law are not at the moment in our minds. We are discussing the ordinary happenings. The matter can be put in psychological terms. The human mind has the greatest freedom and flexibility in the management of its ideas. One may think of one's self as floating through the air, or as immensely rich or powerful, although one knows that all of these things are only in one's mind. The technical psychologist calls this freedom and flexibility of ideas imagination. One can imagine anything one likes. Not only so. but there is a kind of relaxation in letting one's mind go and letting ideas fit together in kaleidoscopic variety. Untrammeled imagination as recreation may be legitimate, but the process of education is devoted to the task of developing self possession of one's ideas. One may fit ideas together as one will, but in the long run one's imagination will be constructive and useful only when one's imaginations issue in effect on reality. One may, if we will, imagine a Utopia, but the constructive erection of a new plan of housing the people of a cit\ requires a higher type of trained imagination. The school takes the advantage of thr flexibility of ideas. In the biology class the mind follows the migration of the