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.
-366
" In carrying out this task, which is one of universal interest, the Institute is supported by the cooperation of all institutions and organisations which, and all individuals who, either by reason of their office or spontaneously, are responsible for the guardianship of childhood and youth.
" Without wishing to formulate for the teachers an actual questionnaire of a hardand-fast kind, the I. E. C. I. has limited itself to suggesting certain questions to them, while leaving it to their own initiative to add to their answers any further suggestions, indications or remarks which their experience of life and teaching and their knowledge of the special psychology of the young may suggest ".
Here, as in tbe case of the questionnaire to schoolchildren, success exceeded the most favourable estimates, Italy alone furnishing more than 3000 individual or collective replies. An enthusiastic response was evoked from teachers, male and female, of all classes and kinds of schools, rural and urban, elementary, vocational and secondary. Whether the answers were for or against the cinema is of no importance. Criticism and approval are both useful, criticism perhaps more so than unqualified agreement.' The point is that the replies gave information of all the more value for being based upon daily practice and first-hand contact with children's minds. Some of the answers are in the form of studies which it will be possible to publish as such in the International Review. The rest have been examined and grouped together in the order of the various points in the questionnaire.
The I. E. C. I. was particularly anxious that the teacher's answer should not be confined to a mere affirmation or negation of the question asked. For the purposes of the enquiry it was hoped that each would feel free to express his opinion about the cinema problem as a whole, whether scholastic or recreational, at whatever length he might desire.
This wish of ours has been amply fulfilled and the Institute is grateful to all those who have already submitted their contribution and to those who still intend to do so.
* * *
1. Utility of the cinema.
a) As a means of entertainment.
The first question asked related to the real utility of the cinema whether regarded as a means of entertainment pure and simple or as an instrument of teaching, science and culture.
Among the answers received by the Institute, omitting those which testify to the value of the cinema as a general source of pleasure, the following are deserving of particular mention:
" As a means of mere recreation the cinema comes next to the theatre and is an effective substitute for it, especially in remoter parts ".
" The cinema as a recreation has an undoubted influence on young minds, but this influence is limited to boys and girls between 10 and 18. It is relative and is modified by the educational guidance derived from the family ".