International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1934)

170 THE CINEMA IN EDUCATION habits and the dangers which can derive from certain forms of carelessness or neglect (spitting, drinking from unclean recceptacles, food, physical exercise, the use and abuse of alcohol and tobacco). We can show the advantages of thrift and insurance, but all must be done with tact and prudence. A subject which can be treated for adolescents and requires tactful handling refers to sex questions which are directly bound up with the health and vigour of the race. As the President of the ONMI of Turin points out, it is by no means an easy task to address young people on sex matters. A better solution of the difficult may be found in the use of the motion picture. Proper films can be prepared by competent persons. Such pictures must be severe and simple in form and substance. They must be easily comprehensible to all mentalities, and at the same time they must not in any way risk offending modesty or chastity. They should inform young people of all those things which can be a source of danger to their health and welfare. The old custom of hiding sexual matters from young people is hypocritical, while we all know the harm caused to our young folk with the tradition that it is more scandalous to talk of immorality than to be immoral, and that it is not moral to discuss and unmask immoral situations and facts. Generally speaking, many useful items of information and knowledge can be supplied to young children and youths by means of the cinema, but tact and intuition are necessary if we are to attain the desired results. Educating Certain Categories of Young Children. — The motion picture can be a most useful means of educating certain categories of abnormal children such as weak-minded, depraved, and deaf and dumb children. " Motion picture shows have a powerful e0ect on the imagination of abnormal and vitiated children, in whom it is desirable to arouse sentiments of courage, heroism, patriotism, emulation, desire to work., and loyalty. Pictures containing scenes of violence and love, intrigues, fraud and crime should be omitted ". {Royal Reformatory, of S. Maria Capua Vetere). In the case of psychically abnormal children, experience has shown that the cinema has already been used in some institutions for a number of years. In the Trieste Institute, the inmates derive advantages of a moral and educational nature from witnessing comic pictures calculated to cheer up depressed persons, and also sentimental films. Pictures showing technical, geographical, industrial and ethnological matter can also interest and benefit. Films of a violent or passionate character or detective and gangster pictures, where the worst instincts of mankind are placed in evidence, are to be considered absolutely taboo. " There is no doubt of the beneficent result of such spectacles, apart from the fact that permission to attend constitutes a reward for the young offenders or a most efficacious stimulus to do Well, while the deprivation of such shows for badly behaved children provides a moral form of punishment which is very effective . (Royal Reformatory, of Bologna). The cinema, moreover, it is hardly necessary to say, has a very great importance for persons deprived of the sense of hearing. They can in this way acquire a great numbers of perceptions through the sense of sight. We attribute great importance to the cinema in the educational and especially in the correctional field. It is only to be hoped that the educational film becomes more widely spread and easier of access so as to make a choice of programmes easier for the inmates of reformatories ". (Royal Reformatory, of Parma). For the deaf and dumb it constitutes a factor of the greatest utility, which proves especially instructive in the case of silent films where the plot and story are developed with plenty of gesture and miming, accompanied by sub-titles. Now that the sound and talking film have replaced almost entirely the silent pictures, the cinema has lost a great deal of the special instructional value it had for the deaf and dumb. If all schools for the deaf and dumb were furnished with first class motion picture apparatus, the education and instruction of the pupils would benefit enormously. Projections should be made specially for the deaf and dumb children who have finished the first two or three years of school. Thus pupils could also improve their knowledge and perceptions by means of views and aspects of the life of near and distant cities and their surroundings, and modes of dress. In various modern institutes like those of Milan, Rome and Turin, there are cinema halls where the deaf and dumb children can not only be amused with the projections, but can also learn much. They can relate their impressions afterwards to the teacher, writing essays on it in their exercise books. Hygienic Social Education in General. — Up to now we have referred to what may be done by