The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

Page 228 The Educational Screen Systematic Visual Education in the Average School ^ WILLIAM H. DUDLEY Visual Education Service, Chicago, Illinois FOR thirty years, interest in visual education has been growing in this country and through- out the civilized world. In spots, much has been accomplished; but when we contemplate the enormous field of education, and realize,—accord- ing to the report submitted at the Rome conference a year ago,—that fewer than ten per cent of the schools in America are doing anything in the em- ployment of present day illustrative devices and equipment as an aid to better teaching, we must be convinced that the average teacher is still in the dark so far as visual aids are concerned; that, no matter how much of idle seeing they may do, in the words of Emerson, "the step from the knowing to the doing is all too rarely taken." Indeed, the vast majority is still content with the east wind of authority,—the authority of the teacher, the author- ity of the textbook. In the realm of visual education there are many things all teachers could do and many aids they could employ; aids involving no financial cost or hindrance; but of these I shall not attempt to speak, preferring in the few minutes at my disposal to restrict my discussion to the least attainable of all visual aids, the educational motion picture, and viewing the possibility of bringing it, in a constant and systematic way, into the average schoolroom as a help to better teaching. There are two factors which explain why the motion picture, in spite of the universal recognition of its most vitalizing contribution to education, has actually come to be used in comparatively so few classrooms today; the first is the cost of equipment and films, and the second is inertia on the part of the teacher—a willingness to let well enough alone —to regard all visual education activity as the work of specialists who have a job to hold, or of dealers who have something to sell. Furthermore, the school, or the teacher in that school is at once confronted with a series of prob- lems that must be solved if the project is worth- while, and if efifective results are to be accom- plished. There is 1. The prol)Iem of what films to tise and where they are to be ol^tained. 2. Should they be employed in the classroom or in the auditorium? 3. Should the teacher operate the projector as she would any other piece of school apparatus? Or should the principal or science teacher, the janitor or a bright boy l)c called on to help teach the class? 4. Must the film be used as a direct correlation with a topic or text book lesson at the time such lesson is being taught? Or can it be used at some other time and yet with adequate values? 5. Must the school own its films, or rent them from some commercial source, as a university, a state department or a company specializing in such rental service? 6. Should the films be of the 35 mm. type or 16 mm? 7. Should such classroom or teaching films be silent or sound? 8. What projector to use and how to get it? 9. How can a room be darkened? 10. How can the whole project be financed in the average school? 11. How can the teacher acquire a knowledge of contents of a film and its various, sometimes nu- merous, teaching values? 12. What teaching technique must the classroom teacher have before setting forth on this chartless sea? These are some of the problems that must con- front the average school; and in the aggregate they seem insurmountable. But if we consider them, one at a time, the difficulties rather melt away: 1. The average teacher cannot select from the multitude of sources the films she is to use through- out a given school year. She does not have the time, nor has she usually the ability. This work must l)e done by one who knows both the contents of the films and how they contribute most effec- tively to the needs of a class: then such a series or course of films, covering the school year, should be adopted by a school just as a textbook is adopted. 2. Is the proper place for educational films in the classroom or the auditorium? By all means in the classroom. This is not to say that a school should not have an auditorium equipment for the showing of films to large groups, the films partly educational and partly recreational in their value. But if hon- est-to-goodness teaching is to be done, with due preparation, presentation and follow-up, the inti- macy and ])eculiar psychology of the classroom is essential. There the element of a "show" is ban- ished. \ 3. Must the films be used only when the subject involved is being presented in the regular course of study? A would-be authoritj- on visual educa- tion in a neighboring universitv, with a good deal