The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

Page 2 50 The Educational Screen potential contribution of the motion picture to the cultural life of America," they doubtless had a strong feeling in their minds that an adequate ap- preciation of the effectiveness of the motion pic- ture as an educational aid. was not yet a part of the thinking of even the leaders of American education. Some might perhaps logically argue that the educational motion picture has made phenomenal progress in the 30 to 40 years since its inception. Unfortunately, it is difficult in the field of educational motion pictures to set up yard- sticks as to what the progress should have been. Nevertheless, I report it as my conviction, and that of scores of persons whom I have interviewed in connection with the proposed Film Institute, many of them educators, that the educational motion pic- ture deserves by its very contribution to have a much more significant and important place in the whole educational scheme. Ought we not be able to have here today exact statistical information concerning the actual prog- ress in the use of films and projectors in the schools? We cannot evaluate progress, nor can we do effective national planning in this field unless certain quantitative information about the number of projectors in use in the schools, the frequency of the use of films, the amounts of budgets, and so on is available. These data have, of course, been partially secured by investigators at various in- tervals of time, but we discover very quickly that these data are wholly inadequate. What propor- tion of the teachers in any particular field of study use films as often as once a week? What is the optimal number of films that good teachers will use under present conditions when they have access to an excellent library of school films within their own school? Is it one film a week? two? three? four? When does one reach a saturation point, assuming films of the type that we now have? Without such information no large company is go- ing to undertake a long-time fundamental program of producing projectors and films, especially the latter, unless there is an assurance of a continuous long-time and ])erhaps rapidly expanding market. Certain of this information, of course, does exist. You can get it from Cleveland, from Pittsburgh, the University of W'isconsin, in our State Library in Ohio. Some of it does not exist at all. I sug- gest, then, as a legitimate function of an American Film Institute that it collect and disseminate through bulletins, through news releases to the several hundred educational journals, important in- formation of this sort. Not only would the American Film Institute clear important statistical information of this type, but there would be other types of information in which it would act as a clearing house. Prelimi- nary interviews with a number of leading workers in the field of visual education have indicated that one of the important services to be rendered by the Film Institute will be the committee evaluation of educational motion pictures. Great Britain, as you doubtless know, already has more than 50 committees of this type at work. In this connec- tion the Institute, of course, does not assume that it would set' itself up as a body competent to pass on all educational films. Instead, it assumes that competence of this sort lies with various educa- tional and scientific societies, groups of teachers. The Film Institute would merely aid in organiz- ing such committees and give general guidance and assistance to them. As a matter of fact, some of these committees are already at work. The INIodern Language Association, for example, already has committees at work on lists of satisfactory foreign language talking films. Eventually we would ex- pect, for example, that a committee in the field of liiology would present reports which would sug- gest (a) films necessary for covering a subject with a fair degree of satisfactoriness, (b) a statement of those films which already meet the committee's criteria, and (c) a statement of films which are not yet available. I think it is clear that the opera- tion of approximately 100 such committees in these various subject-matter fields will do much to arouse interest in motion pictures and stimulate the pro- duction and use of motion pictures for educational ])urposes. One whole area of development in the field of motion pictures has been i)ractically untouched. I refer here to the production of films by educa- tional institutions. I hesitate to use the word "amateur" here, because many of these productions are by no means to be placed in this category. Our experience at Ohio State University may be briefly recounted. A\'e discovered in a recent survey that 22) departments were using films. However, of this number, 13 were making their own films. In- deed, one department, the Fine Arts Department, headed bv Dr. James Hojikins. has already made 20 films dealing with the following topics: farm ani- mals, animals at the zoo, dancing, men's athletic games, early American costumes, medieval armour, ])ottery making, puppetry and marionettes, portrait painting, and the like. Now just as an illustration of the lack of diffusion of this merely I)asic infor- mation. I may say that very few people even in Ohio State University knew of these films. In a motion ])icture news letter which T have sent out this vear to apj)roximately one thousand teach- ers who have cooperated either with me or Mr. Lewin in motion picture appreciation ivork, I made a brief reference to these Ohio State University films. .\s a result, Mr. Hoiikins has received a