The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

March, 194) Page 109 Famed "Dr. Christian" Features in 16 MM Sound No Location Approval Required! Titles are: "MEET DR. CHRISTIAN" "COURAGEOUS DR. CHRISTIAN" "DR. CHRISTIAN MEETS THE WOMEN" "REMEDY FOR RICHES" "MELODY FOR THREE" "THEY MEET AGAIN" Send for catalog of 1200 entertainment and Educational Subjects. SWANK MOTION PICTURES 620 North Skinker Blvd. St. Louis. Mo. tlic physical sciences, iiiiglit have altered the complexion of later education had it not been for the fact that the literatures of Greece and Rome had already been un- covered. A vital factor in spreading and making secure the stress which Humanists placed upon classical authori- ties was the invention of the printing press about the year 1440. .'Xn unhealthy reverence for words had been created by the barren arguments of the Scholastics, for which the Renaissance classicists did little more than substitute the fruitless study of philology. Literary values were em- phasized almost to the point of reverence with the result that the schools have inherited a tradition of empty verbalism. 'J"he literary spirit of the si,\tecnth century prevailed over "educated" Europe until challenged by the scientific spirit of the following century. But by this time, however, the school curriculum had become settled, the rapid spread of printing and the increasing use of the mother-tongues helping to seal its fate. The critical atmosphere of the Reformation helped to crystallize the earlier opinions ex- pressed by Roger Bacon, Telesio, and Campanella regard- ing the importance of observing realities through the senses. The pioneers of educational realism, like Vives, Rabelais, Mulcaster. Luther, and Montaigne, helped to stir up op- position to education dominated entirely by humanistic principles. The transition from classical humanism to educational realism took the form of a movement attacking |)urcly verbal abstractions to a deeper concern for things in con- crete form. It was Francis Bacon who first showed the world that investigation must proceed upwards from observed facts instead of downward from arbitrary premises. In so doing, he opened a vast new realm for education in which opportunities for dealing with real things would be substituted for the worthless preoccupa- tion with mere words. He realized that instruments other than books were needed to aid comprehension. Comenius put many Baconian jirinciplcs into educational form by reducing the essence of realism to a classroom basis. He recognized the basic role of sense perception in learning. In his scheme of instruction, language was al- ways to go hand in hand with reality, words being taught with and through things because they symbolized these same things. His Orbis Pictus gave the first real impetus to the pictorial method of presentation. The first attempt to formulate a theory of perception as an orderly process in learning was made by Locke. The empiricism in Locke's teachings led him to proceed on the assumption that all knowledge came through the senses acting as intermediaries between the individual and the outside world. The philo.sophy of Berkeley adhered closely to sense perception as the basis for thinking. In his view, the process of perception can be explained only in terms of what is actually perceived. Berkeley's chief contri- bution to educational realism was his insistence upon concrete experience as a means of delivering us from de- ception of words. Most schools in the seventeenth century were little