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to subject-matter a logical and time-saving method of demonstration. The film and photograph can give a vivid and life-like reproduction of processes in a few minutes or hours, while the oral method will often require weeks to obtain the same results.
Fortunately, a large number of teachers, male and female, are now firm believers in this new method. My experience of a large number of Prussian schools tells me that great interest is being shown in educational cinematography and if this visible interest of teachers in cinematographic methods of demonstration has not yet crystallised in the forms advocated by the theorists, the fault is not only the teacher's. The advantage of occasional film demonstration is that it can at any time illustrate this or that feature or detail in a certain subject, but the disadvantages are many and great. The waste of time and interruption of class-work due to the pupil's having to shift his focus and concentrate upon new matter are serious drawbacks, which often cause teachers to restrict projection in the interests of work as a whole. Even when films and slides can be projected in the class-room, difficulties of all kinds still crop up. Sometimes the film is unsuited to the particular type of school or grade of pupil. Sometimes the subject-matter does not comply with the requirements of the curriculum. The teacher is compelled to give a long explanatory introduction, to make good omissions or even to promise explanations at a future opportunity. Occasional film-teaching is felt instinctively by teacher, pupil and layman alike to be a far from ideal means of visual demonstration in schools.
In order to achieve their real purpose, teaching films must be shown systematically and in accordance with a fixed programme, outside schoolhours or during the last school period. In nearly all Prussian schools teaching is confined to the morning hours and it would be an excellent thing to project an educational film before the whole school during the last period, say, twice a week. If care is exercised in the choice of films and if subjects are, as far as possible, systematically dealt with through a series of history, science or geography films, the pupils by the time they leave school will have acquired a large and valuable store of visual knowledge. At the same time, of course, class-work would regularly take due account of the films projected and develop and encourage individual effort by means of exercises and tests on what had been seen. Outside school hours regular film shows could be arranged in the afternoons or evenings for parents and others — educational films accompanied by lectures, musical interludes, etc., somewhat on the lines adopted in Switzerland. The large attendances I noted at these performances in Geneva are proof that, when well organised, such projections create real interest and enthusiasm. These activities will not cut across the work of the people's universities. On the contrary, the organisation of educational film shows by, if possible, one school in each school area will arouse the emulation of the people's university movement.