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

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AV in the Church Field by William S. Hockman AV and Church Architects With construction costs in the church field pushing up to the bilUon dollar mark for 1961, at least 400 million of that must be going for new and remodeled educational facilities. This is encouraging to us, having given more than three decades to Christian education as carried forward in the local church. But, in aU of this there is much cause for discouragement. As one who has used every kind and sort of audio and visual aid coming over the horizon since 1924, the absence on the part of many architects of an awareness of the need for audio and visual facilities is very depressing. Alert to so many things and doing such a fine job in other areas, many of them are blind and deaf to the AV movement within the chiuch. At the 21st annual meeting of the Church Architectural Guild of America in Pittsburgh in April we looked and listened for evidence that this great craft was on the ball. By and large there was no or little evidence. Once I heard this: "I put in some conduits if they ask me. Beyond that 1 don't bother." I coiJdn't attend every conference, of course, but I took the fifth in a list of seven— Christian Education. Certainly we would get down to some practical things here. When a showof-hands analysis of the audience revealed a high percentage of building committee chairmen (looking for real help) and quite a few clergy (who always need help), I assumed that we would get right to some of the PIXMOBILE ® 54-INCH TELEVISION TABLE The new, taller TV table improved for classroom use • All-steel construction • 25"x30" shelves # Matching gray hard-rubber ribbed pad # 4'' quality casters ADVANCE PRODUCTS COMPANY 2310 East Douglas Ave. / ^Vichita, Kansas practical questions turned in on the cards and that some of them would have to do with basic facilities for the employment of modern materials. My hopes were doomed. We got a 'paper' on the architect as a prophet. Of all things for this group! Then no practical questions were selected for answers from among the great number turned in. ( I sent up one; so there was one, I am certain) We got more of the same: generalizations; cliches; warmed over insights as limp as daybefore-yesterday's asparagus. No oral questions were allowed. And we held to the general subject of the sanctuary as much or more than to basic facilities for education although these 8090 people had chosen the conference on 'Christian Education' and architure. That we got down to nothing as vital and as educational as audio and visual facilities was tragic and a waste of time for a lot of interested people. But if this was tragic, the comedy was even more so. Before the whole meeting we had a slide lecture tvith otit slides! that little game of 'who's got the projector; where are the slides; can some one find an extension cord; low power projector for big screen' was played to the amusement of some, the disgust of others and the consternation of the few AV-conscious people in attendance. Surely more than one person said what I happened to hear: "Audiovisual aids? Nothing but gadgetry!" So this 30-minute comedy conveyed the idea to architects and pastors and building committee chairmen alike that audiovisual aids were for the birds. There is need to pinpoint blame, but surely the electrical engineer whose topic was "Use of Light In The Church" earned some sort of award for being less than half buttoned up when trying to illustrate a part of his address with slides. It will probably take years to overcome the adverse fallout from this inexcusable mishandling of a fine and useful medium— the slide. Films Bring The Worid Travel is fine. We all know that. Travel is for the individual not the classroom or the department or the whole church. But films can bring the world to you. How often we are willing to sit through endless slides and droning comments when a film could have brought more and brought it more vividly and with as little or less bother! Besides, films can do more in the way of depth. They can get into social and sociological dimensions. That's 350 Educational Screen and Audiovisual Guide — July, 1961