The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

Page 10 The Educational Screen Learning at a Glance UNDER the program of the Works Progress Ad- ministration, thousands of white collar workers have been given remunerative employment on projects which produce visual educaton aids for schools and museums. These visual education aids are designed primarily to make the world in which chil- dren live seem less remote They are opening up a fer- tile field for educational advancement and pointing the way to new occupational possibilties. To help schools obtain needed educational aids is the purpose of the museum extension and school cur- riculum projects set up under the WPA. Educational aids produced on WPA projects often deal with the historical and cultural background, as well as the economic resources, of the various States. Many leading educators believe that only upon such a founda- tion can the schools build a curriculum in keeping with the accepted philosophy that education begins with the known and intimate contacts of the pupil and ex- pands from these focal points to the broader and more complicated outside world. When the child under- stands and interprets his own community and the social life of which he is a part, his experiences may be continuously expanded to increase his conception of other times, of other peoples, of other ])laces. When factual pictures fail to register with the chil- dren, the Project carries its message to the schools through three-dimensional objects. Pictures of dams and early transportation. Colonial rooms and historical settings, are oftentimes eflfective, but dioramas and models are admittedly better. No charts of levers, screws, or pulleys can demonstrate the fundamental principles of mechanics as clearly as working models. No drawing of an automobile motor can impress the child-mind so eflfectively as the four-cylinder engine that really works—even if it is a replica in wood and moves only upon cranking. Clay models of men and women who have figured in our own history, plaster casts of zoo animals, ships carved in wood, modeled people of foreign lands, mounted specimens of shellfish from the beaches, and shrubs, plants and flowers from the back country— things with bulk which children can feel and look at from all sides—are some of the articles produced by Project specialists. These visual aids are prepared in response to care- fully evaluated requests from the various schools themselves for material in specific fields. Such leading educators as Dr. Paul Hanna of Stanford University believe that they meet the demands of progressive educational philosophy—that the child's intimate world of today is the proper starting point for all educational experience and interpretation. "You are blazing a How the WPA museum extension projects provide schools with visual teaching aids. By ELLEN S. WOODWARD Director of Women's and Professional Projects. trail which others will follow," Dr. Hanna told the Supervisor of the San Diego project. California, Kansas, Pennsylvania and New York are among the States jiresenting outstanding examples of the use of WPA labor by local educational agencies to produce maps, charts, three-dimensional models, projection slides, moving j^ictures, and other devices for bringing within a child's sensory experience those things about which he reads and studies. Most extensive of all such activities is Pennsylvan- ia's Museum Extension Project at Pittsburgh, where as many as 600 white collar workers at a time have found use for handicraft skills in the production of visual aids. As a result of the work performed on this project, such materials as relief maps, architectural models, costume plates, marionettes and other articles are now available to all schools (including one-room rural schools), libraries, and museums in the State of Pennsylvania. A set of miniature architectural models which the Pittsburgh project sends out is believed to be one of the most complete and authentic of any such sets ever produced. By making three-dimensional copies of typi- cal human habitats, architects and craftsmen on the project have completely recorded the "History of the tlome." Beginning with a replica of the "Hyena Den" —a prehistoric cave dwelling excavated in 1850 near Wells, England—the series illustrates architectural de- velopments up to the present day. The group of prim- itive houses includes an Eskimo igloo, an African thatched hut, an Indian cliff dwelling, a bark covered wagon, a pueblo, and numerous other examples of the simple dwellings of primitive peoples. Another set of models portrays the elaborate archi- tecture developed by various European countries. They depict a Romanesque house of the twelfth century, an Italian Gothic of the fourteenth century, the French Renaissance type of the seventeenth century and nu- merous other structures. Project craftsmen have fash- ioned these miniatures to scale and added every au- thentical detail from a study of actual examples of each type of domicile. A fascinating tale in itself is the story of how the colonists built their homes in a strange, new country and how their ideas in architecture were influenced by various European modes. The study of housing also lends new interest to history, geography and other related subjects. In recording the "History of American Homes" project artists and sculptors followed blue prints of such typical dwellings as Capon House, early New England ; Bacon's Castle, early Virginia country house; Pringle House at Charleston, South Carolina—Geor-