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374 Editorial ^^'^ Educational Screen
The "novelty" days are over and two thousand theatre-fulls are gone. The theatres remaining are filled by ''habit". There is still a large fraction of the public who have never gone at all, and who never will go except for "merit" in the films. Nothing but better films — and these must be made by better men — can bring back the lost audiences and win the new ones. The heyday of the movies as they are is past. There will be another heyday, however, for the movies as they can be.
The One Percent
THE chief difficulty with the "visual movement" is that there is hardly enough of it to move. It is a safe statement that not one teacher in a hundred in this country is using the visual appeal, consciously and systematically in the teaching process, to anything like its full value.
Can one per cent be said to constitute a "movement" ? It can. Great movements always start with the merest fraction of one per cent. The first one per cent is the hardest, and when that one per cent begins active operations on the other ninety-nine, the movement is under way. This is the present status of the movement for visual education. The one per cent comprises thousands of teachers. They know the values they are advocating, and they are going after their colleagues vigorously. There is now a genuine "visual movement."
Education by declamation and audition should thank its lucky stars that pupils have eyes. Those eyes, even without rational direction from the talking teacher, steadily through all the centuries have been furnishing a large proportion of the results credited to the educational system. What these eyes can do when scientifically set to work upon the brains behind them, can only be guessed at now. (We are beginning to find out, and one of these days we shall know.)
This professional backwardness of visual instruction is due to just one primary cause — the ignorance of the ninety-nine per cent. It is not due to the high cost of visual equipment or lack of funds in schools; it is not due to the crowded curriculum or overloaded teachers ; it is not due to lack of evidence from . learned theory or actual practice. All these are but secondary and minor causes, as we expect to show in succeeding issues. The fundamental reason for the lagging progress of visual instruction in the United States is the pure ignorance throughout the teaching profession as a whole regarding visual aids, their potentialities and their use.
This magazine was founded to let the one per cent reach the ninety-nine. The performance is going on steadily. One of these days we shall be able to announce in these pages that two per cent are after the ninety-eight. Such is progress.
"1001"
THIS is a word to the scores of readers who have been writing to us since September 1st, asking for the new edition of the booklet, "1001 Films." Naturally you are impatient. So are we. The forthcoming edition (the third) is a more elaborate piece of work than has yet been attempted in this field. Over 6,000 films have been individually carded,