We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
FILM AND RADIO GUIDE
WILLIAM LEWIN, EDITOR
May, 1946 Volume XM, No. 8
How Old is "Old" in Educational Motion Pictures ?
BY B. A. AUGHINBAUGH
Director, Slide & Film Exchange, Ohio State Department of Education
Now and then we hear teachers assert that a film is “old.” In the thirty-six zone meetings we recently held in Ohio we endeavored to discover what was an “old” film and how “old” it was. We harbored a suspicion that in this case “old” was akin to the use of “old” in the phrase “old man.” An old man has been defined as one who likes babies — especially those born about twenty years ago. This brings us around to the viewpoint that a man is as old as he feels, and a woman is as old as she feels — that is, feels like admitting. Another aspect of the same idea is found in the description of an old-fashioned girl as one who formerly stayed home because she had “nothing to wear.” After completing our investigations, we concluded that these critics were not only confusing the meanings of the words “old” and “obsolete” but that they possessed no satisfactory yardstick for measuring the object of their displeasure. They had a vauge notion that the copyright date on a film would be a satisfactory measure. Such personages are not confined to the teaching profession ; in fact, we know of some of them who edit magazines directed to this field.
It is evident that some of ye editors of aforementioned publications, have neither been near this particular stream of knowledge nor found a hickory limb on which to hang their editorial clothes. They never used a picture in a classroom, and when such philosophy as they purvey is sifted down, we find that they are mere fronts for some commercial interest. Praising their brand of “dignified” rhetoric is akin to mistaking biliousness for piety or stagnation for serenity.
But back to our firing line. When pressed for an example of an “old” film, one person stated that he had visited a classroom where the children were laughing uproariously at a strangelooking locomotive appearing on the screen. A boy said to him, “Look at that crazy engine; we do not have such railroad engines as that.” Investigation disclosed that the picture in which the offending locomotive appeared was “Steam Power” and that the disgraceful iron horse was the historic Claremont! The revelation brought a wave of laughter much to the discomfort of the objector. By the same criterion all history is obsolescent and so are all books and all pictures which relate to history.
Another objector cited the out-of-style dresses worn by women in some pictures, which is an objection worthy of the consideration of both text-book and text-picture makers other than those who are devoting their efforts to historical material. Of course homo sapiens is introduced into both still and motion pictures because the sap is found wherever animal life abounds, especially in cities, and landscapes would be “lifeless” without a him, or her, or both.