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The Educational Screen
Telling the Educator
Edward Mayer Secretary, Department of Visual Instruction, University of California
ONE of the greatest draw-backs to the use of educational motion pictures in schools has been the fact that the educator has been unable to find material to correlate with school studies. The blame for this draw-back may be attributed to the distributor of motion pictures. In making a survey of the schools of California and coming in contact with hundreds of teachers it was quite a shock to me to find how few educators really knew about the vast number of educational motion pictures that were available for their use. Why not tell the teacher what you have?
"Catalogues"
Before me lie more than a dozen catalogues of motion pictures, including my own for 1920-21. Two of these were published by commercial concerns and the rest by universities. The university catalogues consist of nothing but lists of titles of the motion pictures available for distribution. There is not one word regarding the contents of the films, although every one who deals with motion pictures realizes that mere titles cannot be trusted. We were all guilty at one time of not telling the educator specifically what we would offer; and most of us are still guilty.
The two catalogues published by the commercial organizations are beautiful shelf ornaments. In one is listed about twenty educational films. These may be obtained by schools probably when they have had their runs in theatres or when local theatre managers give permission. The rest of the catalogues, some fifty pages, is devoted exclusively to photo dramas, comedies and
"wild westers." The other catalogue is also a work of art. But it is worthless from the educator's point of view.
Kind of Catalogues Needed
Realizing that something had to be done in order to make the educator use the splendid material that was available in motion pictures, I catalogued the films of the University of California Extension Division by subjects beginning with Agriculture and going right through to Zoology. This required careful thought and study. It was necessary to know the exact contents of every reel in our vaults. As soon as any such subject is received by us it is immediately reviewed and summarized. The summary or synopsis may consist of a list of titles and a short explanatory paragraph. In listing agriculture films we went through our entire lot and jotted down all of those pictures pertaining to agriculture. We did the same with Americanization, Biology, etc. Many motion pictures can be and should be listed under three or four headings. For instance, a nature study may also be listed under biology and zoology; it should be listed under nature study and given its proper number and then cross referenced into biology and zoology. The motion picture TOADS is a nature study film. In our catalogue this subject was given number 14-4. Under Biology it is listed TOADS (See Nature Study 14-4). It is also listed under ZOOLOGY— TOADS (see Nature Study 14-4).
Following the title under its main heading in the catalogue is a short synopsis. The information cont-ained in the synopses will \ give teachers an idea of the contents of fhe