The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

142 Making the Highways Real to Children The Educational Screen related elements as are already well known. A child can visualize the above things only to the extent that he has become acquainted with rivers, streets, palaces, manufacturing regions, farms and fine views. Success in geography rests entirely upon this foundation of past experiences. "Text-books in geography have never sufficiently provided for this foundation. They have not to any great extent recalled and refined first hand experiences of children, and carefully put these together so as to arrive at others. They have always pre-supposed this foundation, rather than supplied it." When we have made the highways and byways of the world real to children we shall have put them in the attitude of wanting to know more about their daily studies in geography. Children by nature use well their keen powers of observation. If this quality is rightly directed what a medium of education is there! There is much concrete objective material that serves as excellent aids in geography teaching. Exhibits that are put out by many of the State Universities and industrial concerns throughout the country, maps, pictures, stereographs and lantern slides are all to be highly commended. The child beginning the study of geography needs to visualize most of what he learns the first year. How much more he appreciates a map when he has measured the school-yard and made a plan of it fronr his own experiences! How much more he appreciates what is meant by people obtaining their shelter when he has watched a house in course of construction ! The student who can go through a steel mill and watch the iron from the time it goes into the furnace as pig iron until it comes out a steel rod or a nail has a much greater appreciation of the place iron takes in the life of man. We cannot all take our pupils to the steel mill, or the cotton mill or to the coffee planta tion, or to the rubber region so we need to bring these various places to the children and it is with stereographs and lantern slides that I have been able to do this best. Through the use of these we can take the children to the most remote places of interest. No text or verbal description can give to the child such clear, strong concepts of sea coasts, deserts, miners going into a slope mine, the spinning room of a cotton factory, the Grand Canyon and countless other things as does the stereograph. No set of artificial conditions set up in the recitation can contribute so much to spontaneous self-expression and class discussion as can the lantern slide when properly prepared for. If a class is studying say the industries of New England States and the one to discuss it studies the stereographs showing these industries thoroughly with the aim in view of explaining to his classmates what he has learned of the industries, the pouring-in process would be eliminated, the child would be doing his own thinking, using his eyes and teaching others while he, himself, is learning. In using all visual aids two things are of fundamental importance (1) Teachers must have a clear conception of the definite relationship of the visual aids in use to the subject matter in the curriculum (2) They should have a definite conception of how the various types of visual aids available, each m its own peculiar way help most in attaining desirable educational objectives. Most of the stereographs and lantern slide sets put out by various companies have excellent reference systems — the reference chapters on geography, for instance, outlined in detail and references given by number to the stereographs or slides that are definitely helpful in developing various phases of the subject. The use of the stereograph is essentially an individual matter. It is a very vivid representation and one that makes a very strong impression on the pupil especially when it is definitely related to the subject the child is