The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

Page 108 The Educational Screen MOVIES • 16MM SOUND FEATURES • "THIS IS THE EIVEMY!" Epic drama of the embattled people of 'conauered' areas Jugoslavia, Poland, Ulcraine, etc. "11^ THE REAR OF THE E^EMY!" Powerful sfory of -Russian guerrillas and the Red Army in action. ALSO HITCHOCKS FAMOUS THRILLER ■■39 STEPS" BRnnnon Hims 1600 BROADWAY NEW YORK CITY School-Made Motion Pictures (Concluded from pa()c 100) shots, calculation of footasc and the liko. Advise a con- centrated study of sections of manuals such as those pub- lished by the Amateur Cinema League (list furnislied on request addressed to them at 420 Lexington Avenue, New York City), and recommend a critical pcru.sal of sample copies of magazines on amateur jjliotography. 8—Devote a good two hours to testing the students on various general and specific procedures, requiring them to demonstrate their answers. 9—Give the trainees a 50-foot roll of black and white film and all the necessary equipment for a week-end of shooting, with the instruction to "make the most of it." The instruction given in point 9 sounds over-simple, perhaps, but if your "course" has been really effective, it will be a challenge. The result will indicate how well prepared your students are. If they have, without specific recommendation from you, devised some thread of con- tinuity for their fifty feet, if they have incorporated various types of shots, preferably both indoor and outdoor scenes, if the exposure and focus are correct in most of them, and the pictures steady and well conceived, you have nothing henceforth to worry about. But until this stage has been reached, you cannot turn over the responsibilities for production to the students. Obviously, the degree and intensity of training and practice will depend on the students' intelligence and apti- tudes, and some of them will make better cameraiuen and directors tlian others. In any event, you will have provided a real educational experience to the two or tliree persons involved, and you may rest assured that they will pass on much of their knowledge to others in their group. They will also be instilled with a sense of resjionsibility for the results. Thus, by concentrating your time and effort in a brief period, you should ultimately be almost entirely re- lieved for a long period in the future, particularly if one of the students you train is a junior who will be around next year to break in a successor or two. You will want to check progress and results. By all means see the "rushes," which will take practically no time, but will give a conclusive idea of what is going on. You will also want to be available for consultation before scenes involving special problems are photographed. You will probably want to reserve your judgment and advice until it is sought by the students. By the time tlie picture is ready for editing, it is certain that you'll have no dearth of qualified editors. Yes, high school pupils actuall}' can be trained to carry out a film production, from conception to completion. They have done so in numerous instances, with excellent results, where the foundations were well laid. Experimental Research in Audio-Visual Education By DAVID GOODMAN, Ph.D. Title: THE PRINCIPLES, ORIGIN, AND EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATIONAL REALISM Investigator: Louis S.-vn-dford Goodman For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, completed 1942 —Boston I'niversity Graduate School. Purpose of Study This study analyzed the principles and traced the origin and early development of educational realism. In order to accomplish this task, it was neccs.sary to discover the basic tenets underlying the "visual education" movement. The investigation endeavored to show how the theoretical foundations of this movement arc rooted in the educational thought which attended the intellectual awakening of the Renaissance and Reformation periods. Analysis Ihe function of education is one of creating, clarifying, and transmitting experience. Thus, education attempts to guide the student to a realistic understanding of the world. The schools of today need to recognize more fully the place of recently developed materials and devices in communi- cating experience and in interpreting modern life. The learning situation in the schools embraces three primary factors: 1) tlie student, 2) the teaclier, and 3) the subject-matter. Learning is the result of appropriate inter- action between tliese factors, a process which requires secondary factors to act as catalytic agents. They consist of various methods, techniques, devices, and materials of in- struction. Both primary and secondary factors become an intrinsic part of the total educative process. Closer analysis of available source materials for learning reveals two extremes: 1) experience with actual things or in real situations, and 2) verbal transfer of such experience. The meaning derived from language symbols is dependent very largely upon the comparative richness of sensory ex- perience. All the senses help in building experience, each new iicrception being a blend of past and present exper- iences. .Acquiring concepts may be regarded as a higher function of assimilating many sense perceptions. Meaning is given to the concept through interpretation of previous sensory data in configural patterns which function for the learner as a unit. Perception, then, is viewed as a funda- mental stage in the process of learning. The term per- ceptual aids is applied in this study to the many types of materials, devices, and techniques which afford basic sense experiences for adequate comprehension. Modern educational psychology supports this viewpoint. .'\n experience in school life may range from personal participation in an event in its normal setting to reading about an unfamiliar situation in highly compact technical language. Intermediate rejiresentations of actual, direct ex- periences furnish the learner with a meaningful background. This is the role of perceptual aids, each and every type of wliich possess a degree of reality for the percipient. Educational realism is the name given to that viewpoint which regards the above process as the worthy function of the school. This theory stresses the need of bringing the work of the school into closer contact with the world out- side. It is founded upon principles which bear a distinct re- lationship to the ideas of certain educational, philosophical and psychological reformers in the past. In so far as the Revival of Learning during the fifteenth century had an effect upon the development of educational method, it did much to channelize and harden school procedures into a formula of literary and linguistic routine. By the time the spokesmen for realism were able to make them- selves heard and to demonstrate the principles of their teachings in a practical way, the literary tradition in education had become firmly entrenched. It is not improbable that the exploration of the earth, leading to further study of the material world through