Educational screen & audio-visual guide (c1956-1971])

editorial Cliche Blocks To Progress Paul C. Reed We doubt that there's an audiovisual administrator anywhere u hasn't at one time or another been frustrated by the chch^ bid of his "superior." You know that kind of boss man who says tl your proposed idea cannot be used because "We tried it once, a it doesn't work." Or, "There isn't enough money." Or, "The peo: aren't ready for an idea like that." Or, "We just don't do thii that way." In a recent talk. Dr. Don Williams of the University Kansas City, listed a whole file catalog of such cliches and discuss them as major blocks to progress. Certainly it's a trying and baffling situation when an AV directc plans and ideas are turned down for such reasons. But it's even mu worse when he blocks his own progress by that same kind of < lusive reasoning. Take the case of the Director of Instructional V' terials in Northeast City, for example. He thought he had an insoluble problem in the distribution filmstrips. His own cliche block to reasonable action was the noti "You have to treat all schools alike." Or he sometimes told himsi "What you do for one school in the system, you have to do for al Who said so, and upon what authority? Maybe like schools shot be treated alike, but schools aren't alike just because they're in t same school system. This Director had trapped himself and block' his own program. But let's be more specific. There was a good centralized film library and motion pictu distribution system in Northeast City. When filmstrips began to available in quantity and quality, it was simple enough, and logic too, to add these to the existing film distribution system. Filmstri' being much cheaper than motion pictures, you could even buy fi or six copies to serve Northeast's fifty-some schools. But the ec nomics of this method of distribution bothered the director. True, a filmstrip cost only a few dollars, but in a few years would cost several times that to distribute it. Each one had to 1 listed, and ordered, and delivered, and picked up, and inspecte and shelved over and over again while distribution costs mounte On the other hand, if Northeast Director were to have to buy fif copies of one filmstrip title, his current budget would be nowhei near adequate. The clue that permitted him to break free from his cliche created block came when he was reviewing the statistics of filmstr usage. The figures made clear that all schools were not alike. Tl top school had used more than three times as many filmstrips as tl school at the bottom of the list. Maybe filmstrips collections shou be provided for some schools, and not for all, at least not all at one . Why not start decentralized collections for those schools th made most use of filmstrips? Five schools first. Five more next yea Then half the schools had their own filmstrip libraries. If you a: going to serve schools best, maybe they should never all be treate alike. The solution for one school is not the solution for all school There was another fallacy Northeast Director discovered in h thinking about filmstrips. When he really thought the proble: through, he knew that in terms of unit cost, methods of use, and tl way they should be distributed, filmstrips were much more HI books than like motion pictures. One of these days in Northea City, those individual school collections will become decentralizei and there'll be filmstrips in every classroom just as there should b 218 Educational Screen and Audiovisual Guide — May, 19('