The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

March, 1943 Page 95 seems to have issued a directive, ordering three hours of visual instruction per week in each school system under his juris- diction. Failure to observe it would mean loss of pedagogical standing, or that in- volved teachers seeking change of situa- tion would be ol)liged to re-undergo their license examinations. However, the di- rective was not a law. The result appears to have been that tlicre was a temporary boom in projector sales, exhausting many slender local "visual" appropriations and leading u.sers there to the employment of "free" films rather than rented ones more specifically pedagogical. In city schools, where inter- pretations of State directives were pretty much matters for their own choice, there seems to have been little cliange from their earlier course; and generally the rural schools, unable to afford or obtain suitable reels, used whatever they could get. This anomalous, whol- ly unexpected state of affairs caused an abandonment of the plan and a very definite setback to the cause of visual education in Ohio, where visual educa- tion had been so auspiciously encour- aged at the start of the movement. However, as earlier described, the Ohio situation found a handsome read- justment through allocation of fees for the theatrical censorship. The present cooperation of superintendents in county, metropolitan, and "exempted" ullage schools joins to make Ohio a ranking American State in actual, practical use of visual aids. Thomas A. Edison, who surely was aware of some of the difficulties, be- lieved that the problem could be solved if the Government would take it over. A great force for education, such as the screen indubitably was, in his opinion was too vital to the national welfare for the development of this phase of it to be left to private initiative, especi- ally as private initiative had proved so capricious and ineffective. "A great film library of educational and indus- trial subjects should be built up in Washington," Edison said in an inter- view published by the Educational Film Magazine in January, 1919. "Then these films could be issued on the rental system to all institutions in the United States, even to the most remote schoolhouse, and the system could be so operated that it would pay its own way. would be on a self-supporting basis like the Pension Office or the Tost Office." I have always thought of the Pen- sion Office as being quite the reverse of self-supporting, but that is beside the point which I am about to make. A neces.sary service should be operated even at a deficit. From time to time that has been properly true of our in- dispensable Post Office. And. since Edison's time, the U. S. Government has laid plans, under Dr. William Zook, for a large-scale development of school films, although that is a proj- ect so recent as 1936 and therefore rather close to be judged on its merits. What we roii sec and judge on their merits, however, are the continuing private efforts at supply which, if not Since Dr. Leipziger's pioneer days the capable Rita Hochheimer has run the New York schools film service. wholly satisfactory, have uncovered weaknesses and set useful precedents. The chief objection of the school- men, themselves, to private efforts, has always been not that efficient service might not be rendered by such hands, but that education should always be kept free from commercial taint. This is all very well, but I may venture the tliought that education probably has more to fear from politics than from commerce, which, in America anyway, is steadily raising its ethical standards. I feel, too, that the educational sys- tem will always be stronger for paying directly for its equipment instead of receiving it thanklessly as an indefin- able boon from heaven, as they would if the national Government supplied it. Man receives his immortal soul from heaven, and just see how little he ap- preciates that gift from a source which he is unable to see or comprehend. Edison's idea, advanced by others before him and to a degree put into practise abroad, was actually urging the advantages of mass handling. There is much critical sensitiveness on that subject, for mass handling is none other than block booking. It is block booking when you subscribe a year in advance for a popular magazine. We have heard loud outcries about how unjust it is to expect a theatrical ex- hibitor to contract for a set of feature photoplays, ranging from thirteen to 104, sight unseen and quality merely presumed. But, with all of the possible evils of that system, its sheer weight of merit has proved it to be an im- portant factor in the business stabili- zation of a great industry, and in mak- ing possible also much of its techno- logical and artistic improvement. I heartily concur in the view, if I under- stand it aright, that a reasonable amount of block booking, not in schools alone but in the non-theatrical field generally, will be of benefit to all. Theatrical block booking, now ended by government action, was given its clean bill of health following the is- suance of an order by the Federal Trade Commission calling upon Para- mount (Famous Players-Lasky), to desist from the practice. In April, 1932, after long investigation of the facts, the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the order, and held that there is no coercion or intimidation in the practice of distributors when they offer exhibitors the alternative of booking in block or taking less than a block at higher prices. I urge those who have lingering doubts on the subject to read the published opinion of that court in full as rendered. The explana- tion is exceptionally clear. It was a kind of block booking which the engineering extension department of the Iowa State College of Agricul- ture recommended in its visual educa- tion bulletin in April, 1915, when it offered to supply each school consent- ing to provide proper equipment, by October 1, 1915, with at least twelve coni|)lete programs, of not less than two reels each, during the school year. It was a kind of block booking which was contracted for by the New York City public schools about 1922, when Ilslcy Boone and his Argonaut Pic- tures arranged to supply classroom films on various subjects. Argonaut held that contract for nearly a decade. What happened to it deserves a digres- sion to tell the very interesting story. Dr. E. E. Crandall, director of visual education for the New York School System, had closed the original con- tract. He had won considerable dis- tinction as a pioneer, himself. But, in January. 1932, Crandall retired be- cause of illness, and Dr. Eugene A. Colligan, his superior officer who took over Crandall's duties in addition to his own, could see no good reason for continuing the arrangement. Even the name of the office was changed. It was now called the Bureau of Lectures and Visual Instruction. That made no difference, though, to Miss Rita Hochheimer; that faithful servant continued as before, destined to outlast them all. For approximately a year a survey and an inventory of the New York film system had been going on. Dr. Colligan shook his head disapprovingly upon noticing that Ar- gonaut had been allotted five dollars per reel per day, and that a projection- ist was paid $1.75 to two dollars per screening. .About 240 of the 750 city schools received regular service, and the annual bill for rentals amounted to approximately $40,000, with $10,000 more for appliances. The life of a reel, until it had to be replaced, was estimated to be from 200 to 500 show- ings. Dr. Colligan believed that the Bureau could assemble its own sub- jects, store and repair its own films and employ its own operators much more economically. He had been es- pecially convinced of this by a study of the visual instruction service main- tained by the American Museum of Natural History which also heavily