The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

March, 1925 Making the Highways Real to Children 145 appeal. They touch the fundamentals of teaching. They command attention, hold it and give a strong stimulus. Five minutes with the eyes open are worth more than pages of written explanations. Most of the geographies are filled with a wonderful assortment of pictures and many a lesson can be taught by studying and discussing them and using the material of the printed page for reference only. Any method of visualizing class instruction carried on systematically will not only clear up hazy • ideas in the minds of the children but will also promote an increased teaching efficiency among teachers who are reluctant to adopt new teaching methods. Of all studies that are taken up in school there is none that deals more with the realities of life than does the study of geography. Here is a great opportunity afforded the teacher for making the school a real place for real boys and real girls. Here is a chance to break up the idea of instruction by the authority of the teacher handed down to a mass of uninterested children proceeding in lockstep fashion through a world of geographical facts. We teachers of geography are most fortunate in having such a wealth of material made available for our use ; let us not neglect our opportunity. Editorial (Concluded from page 135) horizon. It sweeps toward us like a four-mast clipper with all sails set. We hear the great winds of public discussion humming through the taut rigging. We see the strained, bellying sails, and the sailor folk scampering feverishly about their tasks. Then the great ship plows past, the bubbling wake quickly vanishes, and we are left with the silent sea. Some people call these rolling galleons 'Fads.' Others call them 'New Ideas,' and are rewarded with some portion of their shining cargo. "Visual Education has come with rich treasure-trove. There has been a widespread awakening as to the possibilities of improving teaching through a greater use of visual aids. The incredibly swift rise of the motion picture has accentuated this. All the world goes daily to school — to three colossal schools — Home, Street, and the Movie. The cinema has become a universal influence, like gravity or oxygen, profoundly affecting the human stuff on which it plays. "The wise school folk of today are utilizing, generously and effectively, a wide array of visual aids. Modern science, invention, industrialism, has made this possible. Motion pictures, lantern slides, opaque projection, picture postcards, stereoscopes, maps, charts. flat pictures, models, museum material, exhibits— a wealth of strikingly fine and beautiful material is at the disposal of the schools of this generous age. Children in a metropolitan school can see in action, as though transported on a magic rug of Bagdad, the sheep flocks of Australia, the cotton mills of New England, the shoe factory with its myriad machines; the Crusaders marching to the Holy Land ; the walruses playing on polar ice; the gangs of Filipino 'coolies' cutting sugar-cane in Hawaii. The world is brought to the classroom desk; all humanity is at beck and call. " 'To bring those whom we teach into an intelligent and appreciative understanding of the forces that contribute to their needs in an advancing civilization is our problem,' states Balcom of Newark, New Jersey, in his admirable manual, 'therefore we need to employ such methods of presentation as will give our teaching the stamp of realism.' Visual education has become a powerful tool, a wondrously flexible device, in the kit of the Modern School worker. Indeed, schools which lack this equipment and material belong to Yesterday. And schools should belong to Tomorrow."