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stition arid word-fetichism pale into insignificance] To-day, as I read it again in my notes, I am as shocked as ever. This is film-worship of the worst possible kind. It means the complete throwing overboard of all thought, feeling and observation.''
The remark also betrays ignorance of facts. Even in a large city like Berlin only half the schools have any photographic equipment. Merely statistically, therefore, the words are untrue.
Further, they are false from the point of view of the history of teaching and we should have cause to despair, if they were true. The fact, however, that they could be uttered as the opinion of one who thought that he was saying something pleasant and gratifying is a warning to us to cease running after fashion and to try for all we are worth to see things straight. The remark, if true, proves that it does not apply to the person who uttered it. He has formed such an inadequate conception of the world about him that he has not noticed that it is a false one.
As soon as we begin to believe that external aids, like films and photographs, make us richer, see more, know more, give us a view of the universe, when we cease to regard ourselves as the raw material, cease to test and control, and accept pictures as convenient realities instead of signposts on the road Truth, then it is time to abolish them from our schools and educational institutions. And if we teachers employ films and photographs as ends in themselves, we in our turn should be abolished.
And yet there is no more wonderful means — a means, be it noted — of capturing the whole world, revealing its splendours to our schools and persuading them to absorb its contents than pictures and films — provided, that is, that we remain the masters, and do not become the slaves, of our medium.