The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

November, 1942 Page 339 /Ae J^e£5ute/u J^ace in Education — An Editorial FORMAL education has always been a slow-moving process. Leisurely pace has been one of its proudest traditions, and there is basis for the pride. Down through the centuries and up to the twentieth, formal education has consisted essentially of absorption and meditation, concerned more with the abstract than the concrete. The primary end sought was the attainment of an able and cultured mind, not the achievement of any tangible result or product. Time is the essence of such a process, "time to think." The longer the process, the finer the outcome. The deliber- ate tempo of traditional education was logical. This characteristic pace befitted the study, the class- room, the lecture hall, the library. Acquisition of truth and reflexion thereon, not experiential reality and re- action thereto, were the ends desired. There is no time pressure upon seekers after these goals. It is educa- tion of this kind that produced the poets, thinkers and philosophers of all the ages in all the nations. From it has come the total literature of the world and that literature is the supreme, almost the only, source of all our knowledge of the world's past. Without that knowledge our present world would have been im- possible. Such education is still essential if there are to be such things as art, philosophy and literature in civilization's future. Yet education, at the start of the twentieth century, had vastly to expand its range and multiply its aspects if it was to serve the modern day. This change in education is well begun, but it is by no means completed. At the turn of the century marked transformations in the world way of life were in full swing. Advances in communication and transportation were taking place which are steadily shrinking the world into a single neighborhood. Increase in material production, in be- wildering variety and staggering amount, was bringing about a vastly more com])lex. efficient and comfortable way of life for all mankind (and the present achieve- ment is small to what lies just ahead). The older educa- tion, at its established pace, could not have kept the nation even conscious of this new day and age. It could not have given the rising generation any adequate understanding of the new world it must meet and master for a happy and eflfective living. But at the turn of the century also came so-called "visual education," the priceless means for speeding, expanding and enriching educational procedure so as to keep man in touch with his own achievements, in harmony with his fellows in all lands, fully aware, in short, of the marvel and magnitude of twentieth cen- tury progress. The picture opened the way to nearly instantaneous communication between informant and informed, be- tween builder and buyer, between teacher and pupil. Commerce and industry recognized it promptly as a supplementary tool in their great task of production and merchandising. Later, haltingly and gradually, edu- cation began to use the picture but without recognizing it, even yet, as the primary tool for its great task in lower education. Slowly, over three decades, the edu- cational field achieved visual equipment—some tens of thousands of stereopticons and motion picture pro- jectors (but several hundred thousand should have been acquired in the same time). The leisurely pace still functioned! What moves slowly can change only slowly. But then came Pearl Harbor! The country faced the greatest educational challenge of all time. The educational meander had to become a torrent. Millions must be taught countless things in briefest possible time. Speed and efTectiveness must supplant deliberation and routine.. And the means to that end? The picture! The nation seized upon it unanimously. The screen began its mighty work for Government, Army, Navy, Business, School and Com- munity. Dusty, rusty projectors were brought out of hiding, cleaned, repaired, set to work. Bed sheets, backs of maps, blank plaster walls are ekeing out the screen shortage. Visual teaching seethes today. Production, distribution, projection of slides, film-slides and motion pictures are many fold greater than ever before. Yet the full possibilities are still choked by lack of equip- ment that could have been ready. It is the same old "too little and too late". But we are catching up fast. The democratic hare has not slept too long to catch the tortoise. Projectors are keeping hot throughout the length and breadth of the land. Picures are pouring from the studios—American, British, Canadian—in an unprecedented stream. An awakening educational field is digging more and wider and deeper channels to bring to the eyes of a nation what it needs to see and know in such times as these. Thousands of schools are doing it now for themselves and their communities. Many more are starting. Let the remaining schools—large or small, in towns, vil- lages, or at rural crossroads—get into action to com- plete the national distribution. It will be a record in the swift enlightenment of a nation and what a spectacle for totalitarian eyes! The job will be done, and the picture will have done it. N. L. G.