Film and Radio Guide (Oct 1945-Jun 1946)

12 FILM AND RADIO GUIDE Volume XII, No. 7 Sponsored Films for Schools BY STEPHEN M. COREY In October the J. Walter Thompson Company gave limited distribution to a 67-page mimeographed memorandum entitled “The Educational Motion Picture Field.” The author was Mr. W. F. Howard, who spent the greater part of five or six months conferring with representatives of the armed services, of education, and f)f business in an attempt to find out what promise the educational motion picture field held for commercial exploitation. In this report Mr. Howard estimates that the foreseeable maximum annual expenditure for visual education in the United States is approximately $20,000,000, or $0.84 per pupil. This estimate represents the “ultimate potential” and is approximately 75% of the present public-school expenditure for textbooks. This over-all figure of $20,000,000 is broken down into items, one of which is a $10,000,000 annual expenditure for educational films and motion picture projection equipment. The J. Walter Thompson study discusses intelligently the role in public education of the “sponsored” film — the film produced and paid for by a commercial concern and distributed to schools gratis or for a very small fee. “Sponsored films, in the opinion of many educators, will have a real place in tomorrow’s motion picture program in schools,” Mr. Howard believes, and he adds: “If manufacturers Reprinted from “The School Review," March, 1946, pages 126-30. Stephen M. Corey, Professor of Educational Psychology and Director of the Audio-Visual Center at the University of Chicago. can accept their responsibilities and obligations, it would seem likely that they would find an opportunity for showing sponsored films to an extent equal to the showing of non-sponsored films.” There is little doubt that within the next few years a large number of motion pictures will be made by American industrial concerns and that teachers and adminstrators will be urged to use these motion pictures in schools. There is no reasonable objection to this practice if the pictures are appropriate. The same standards should be employed to evaluate sponsored pictures as are employed to evaluate any other kind of instructional material that is used in schools. The fact that sponsored pictures are free, or almost free, should per se be no argument against their use. In the past many sponsored pictures have been subject to serious limitations as instructional materials. First, they were usually designed for a very heterogeneous audience. The point in the production of these pictures seems to have been to reach as large an audience as possible. This characteristic has disposed teachers and administrators to use these pictures in auditorium situations only. Most students of the use of audiovisual materials are in agreement that showing motion pictures to a heterogeneous group of boys and girls in an auditorium falls far short of exploiting the real educational potentialities of this medium. Motion pictures that are designed expressly for classroom use, in contrast with sponsored pictures, are produced for a homogeneous audience. This homogeneity pertains to developmental level, interest, background, and as many other factors as can be taken into consideration. These films are made so as to bring about a maximum of learning rather than to be shown to the largest number of people at one viewing. A second weakness of many sponsored films is that they have been titled in clever but misleading ways. This practice is partly the consequence of a suspicion on the part of the sponsors that their pictures may not be chosen for use in instructional situations purely on their merits. For example. Scrub Game is a picture o n personal cleanliness, which advertises Procter and Gamble products ; Jerry Pulls