International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1931)

— 354 — EDUCATIONAL CINEMATOGRAPHY It is now nearly fifteen years since I first realised the importance of the film in education. The occasion was a lecture on hygiene given in 1914 at the Fribourg Training College. For an hour the lecturer had poured forth a steady stream of impeccable French and the even flow of his music had lulled many of his listeners to sleep. Then the time came to show the film. The latter, silent but luminous, awoke the audience and firmly gripped and held its attention. The film was far more persuasive than the lecturer himself and I dare say that it was more instrumental in attracting foreign visitors than the name of the distinguished speaker. That lecture won one fresh adherent to the cause of educational cinematography. During the last twenty years every civilised country has watched the development within its midst of a new and most important industry and trade — the construction and projection of films — in a word, the cinema. Unfortunately, the commercial cinema, being a business, is concerned first of all with profits. Sometimes it may incidentally deal a little in education and instruction, and in morals (or immorals). We need not waste time over those absurd and on many grounds harmful films, in which revolvers and apaches play the chief part. It is a deplorable state of affairs and, in my humble opinion, twentieth century society has been successfully inoculated with a virulent moral poison, but I would not be thought to condemn the cinema wholesale. It is like the human tongue in the fable and stands for what is best as well as for what is worst. In opposition to this cinema created to serve pecuniary interests, flattering human passions, often intellectually and morally degrading, we should, nay must promote a cinema disinterested and noble, a cinema to develop religious and social education, a cinema of goodness, truth and beauty, a cinema providing instruction in every form. This duty devolves first and foremost upon the school, whose sole mission it is to instruct and educate, but the school is not the only educator of society or even of children. Therefore I prefer the term educational to school cinematography. The wonderful power of the motion picture as an instrument of teaching and propaganda makes it a priceless aid to teachers in schools and for a variety of propaganda work, industrial, economic and even religious. M. Laureys, Director of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales, to quote but one example, certainly appreciated its value when the other day he had a propaganda film made about his school. Let us now study the opinions of a few eminent representatives of the educational world. Value of the cinema in school. A distinction must first be made between four modern teaching methods, each with its own qualities and defects and each closely akin to the other. All four form an integral part of the teaching in the schools of many European countries, preeminently, in Germany and Switzerland. They are: 1. The Cinema proper, used to-day as an aid in all subjects of teaching. 2. Fixed projections on glass or on special paper, specially used for history, geography and science. 3. Micro-projection, or the projection of very small objects (a fly's leg, a drop of water, living cells) through a microscope. This method is very useful in natural science, physics and chemistry. 4. The radio or wireless, used in several schools, more especially for the study of languages. Of these four instruments, all worthy of our notice, I propose to deal with two only — the cinema and the fixed projection and my references to the latter will be more or less incidental.