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tions unnecessary. On the contrary, visual and oral instruction are mutually complementary. The cinema must step in when the teacher cannot impart colour, form or life to his subject. Obviously, the film and its captions cannot satisfy the whole of a pupil's awakened curiosity; even the best of" talkies " could not fulfil all the requirements of a lesson, for children, even more than adolescents, need the teacher's comments and the text-book to explain their difficulties. The teacher, moreover, must see to it that the film has been understood. The cinema, in fact, is an auxiliary in teaching, a supplementary method, not one satisfying of itself all the conditions necessary to good teaching.
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Influence of the cinema on the formation of character.
The second point to which the attention of teachers was drawn was the potential influence of films on the formation of the child's character, distinguishing, as far as possible, between ages and sex. 90 % of the teachers asked (3000) expressed an opinion on this point.
Although nearly all of them acknowledge the cinema's strong powers of suggestion, teachers are far from unanimous in admitting that films exercise an influence on character-formation. On this point opinion inclines towards the negative or is, at the least, doubtful. Teachers' preoccupations take different forms, but they tend to stress the necessity of a serious control over films lest, under the influence of the screen, the young are encouraged in the direction of evil rather than good.
The views of the teachers in respect of the entertainment film are in strong contrast with those expressed about the teaching-film. They are in favour of the latter, but on the whole opposed to the former, even when they are qualified.
Teachers evidently feel that they are authorised to pass judgment upon school films to an extent that does not apply to commercial films. Nevertheless, teachers are in daily contact with their pupils, they follow their mental development step by step, are able to analyse their sensations and reactions, get to know their feelings as expressed by word and action or manifested indirectly. The teacher is therefore in a position to say whether the theatrical film, which often exaggerates the truth or reproduces aspects of life beyond the child's horizon, may exercise a harmful influence over the latter's moral and intellectual development.
The answers are remarkably categorical. They turn largely upon assiduity of cinema attendance. The cinema, many of them say, is not a danger in itself, because the very frequency of contact with the artificial world of the screen enables children and adolescents to differentiate between that world and their own. Many of the reactions to cinema shows reveal a process of selection quite unconscious, no doubt, but protective in its effects.