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screen's lesson is often more intelligible and profitable than the words of an intelligent and conscientious teacher.
The importance of such a statement is more than theoretical. It must be borne in mind that these replies emanate from persons in daily contact with the young who are in a position to appreciate the value of new methods. The quotation of a passage from a ministerial circular is of especial importance in this connection.
The spoken word, however eloquent and persuasive, is wearisome in the long run. It is also not strong on detail. Mural diagrams and fixed projections have the static value of lifeless matter. The cinema has all that they lack — movement, illusion of real life, with a wealth of technique beyond the reach of any other art; its mastery of detail makes it especially effective as a means of communicating knowledge. Further the cinema, unlike these older instruments of teaching, amuses at the same time that it instructs. The mind of children and adolescents requires distraction and the teacher's work is greatly facilitated by this mixing of the powder with the sugar.
Those teachers who hold a contrary opinion are few. Even they are not diametrically opposed, but advance a psychological argument of some force. School films, they say, do not altogether fulfil their function, because by their instructional aim and purpose they arouse an instinctive opposition in the child and thus have less effect than they should.
To a large extent this criticism only applies .o old teaching films. Today when the production of school films follows a more enlightened policy, the danger alluded to hardly exists. Science and culture are today in rapid evolution and the cinema must adapt itself to circumstances and be able to count upon competent experts to ensure that teaching films for children are suited for their purpose. The following are the few definitely unfavourable replies:
" The cinema is more useful as entertainment than as an instrument for teaching ".
" School films bore children if their educational purpose is too patent, if the pupil sees at once that he is being given examples to imitate or shun ".
" With a few rare exceptions, the cinema has retained its power to amuse; as a source of culture and science its success is confined within very narrow limits ".
" If the film is to be of utility in teaching and culture, it must follow different
criteria and must transcend the purely commercial and only rarely artistic aims of the cinema of to-day ".
"As an instrument of teaching, science and culture, the school cinema is still no more than a distant hope and a remote possibility ".
Apart from these unfavourable or sceptical opinions regarding the utility of the cinema in teaching, educationists are unanimous in rejecting the idea that the screen can replace the teacher and make oral explana