Moving Picture Age (Jan-Dec 1922)

JAM 18 1922 c/ ©CI.B51971G Vol. V No. 1 Moving Picture Age JANUARY 1922 JAPAN via the SLIDE ROUTE James N. Emery Supervising Principal, Potter District, Pazvtucket, R. I. HOW real an impression does the mere reading about people and places make upon the average unimaginative workaday boy or girl ? I am not referring to the exceptional dreamer, the creative genius-to-be, the youngster who is building youth's air-castles and whose imagination outleaps the suggestion of the text ; but to the normal, average, humdrum boy or girl who later develops into Mr. or Mrs. Common People, who holds with more or less degree of credit the average place in the working world — who becomes the grocer's clerk, the girl at the glove counter, the machinist, the truckman's wife. Asia, for example, is the usual subject for at least half of the last year in geography. It is a far-off land whose people few if any of us will ever see, whose pulsing life and splendid temples, and squalor and poverty of everyday existence, are veritably that of another world. Vague shadows, these strange folk — not even remotely connected with Sam Kee, the laundryman, or Paul Kashigawa, the curio dealer. Nor is the impression gained from the text always as consecutive and logical as its author would desire. Is This Your Johnny Jones? Johnny Jones studies the printed page with a queer jumble of thoughts. "The two principal islands of Japan are — Nippon and Yezo; but the — but the empire extends as far south as Formosa, which was captured from the Chinese in the war of 1894. On the north it includes the Kurile Islands. . . Gee, it's hot in here. Bet those girls would holler if a feller opened a window. Wonder if the ice at Slater Park'll be strong enough to skate on tonight? . . . The island of Sakhalin was ceded to Japan by Russia . . . Billy McGuire's gotta get that high jump at the Y. M. C. A. meet 'f we're goin' to beat Slater in the meet. . . There's a peach of a film at the Imperial tonight — Bill Hart 'n Larry Semon ! 'F I can only work Dad for a quarter. . . Gotta get this. . . The position of this empire, a short distance from the mainland, has secured to the Japanese some of the same advantages". . . And so on. Hardly to Be Denied! Johnny is studying one of the best, most modern, and most widely used geographies on the market today. But no book can make the life of the people of faraway lands more than a shadowy and incomplete sketch of the real thing. Here the slide comes in to bridge the gap. Take Japan, for instance, at the point where our boy is drowsing over the pages of his book. The slight of a slant-eyed Japanese grinning at him from the wall, a Japanese with the straight black hair and Oriental features of the race, in his cotton kimono and wooden clogs ; the Japanese pottery-maker, squatting on the ground before his crude wheel, his long, lean hands fashioning with master cunning the finished product; the yama-kago or mountain litter, slung upon the shoulders of two stout porters ; two travelers stopping to exchange a bit of idle gossip in the village street; the stooping farmer and his family, knee-deep in thick muck, setting out rice-plants — all these sights bring with clarity to Johnny and his fellows the feeling that these people on the other side of the world are "real folks," whose life is just as real as our own. This impression the textbook, unassisted, rarely makes on the pupil's mind, as far as my own observation goes. The pupil studies the facts in the textbook because his teacher has given the order. He may be temporarily interested in the odd customs of these people and some of their struggles for existence, but they seem very nebulous and distant to him. But when he sees a group of Japanese river drivers piloting the course of a log raft down one of the mountain streams, a crowd of Japanese schoolboys engaged in sport in the yard, or the lean and long-legged jinrikisha runner with his human burden, he absorbs the fact that the Japanese are "regular fellers" like ourselves. Our classes run large. Temporarily deprived of an assembly hall for the rest of this year, owing to the construction of an addition to the building, we have been working in the classrooms with sometimes 100 pupils in a room that normally should hold about 40. With classes of this size the use of the stereograph is out of question. A means that will enable the entire class to see the picture at the same time becomes imperative. For this purpose the slide is the only means of visual instruction available. For classroom use the reverse side of a large map or even a section of white wall works well, with the curtains drawn, provided an attempt is not made to project too large a picture. The geography to which I have just referred* contains about three pages of material on Japan. The geographical reader we use to supplement the regular text** contains about 30 pages on this country, extremely interesting after the slides have been shown, or sandwiched in after the pupils have seen sufficient slides to get some real acquaintance with the country. There is a marked difference in the eagerness with which the text is read after some of the Japan slides have been flashed on the screen. We have available approximately 150 slides on this country, an Underwood travel set of 100 slides, and about 50 from the Keystone set. There is only slight duplication of material, and that in only two or three slides. Map Study Our work, just as at the beginning of the study of any country, starts with the map slide of eastern Asia, and of Japan itself. These slides may be obtained from several firms, including Williams, Brown and Earle of Philadelphia and the Mcintosh Stereopticon Company of Chicago. Several firms, including the Beseler Lantern Slide Company of New York, will make to your order almost any map slide you wish, at reasonable prices. While we have map slides both of eastern Asia and of the islands of Japan themselves, I find that the slide that gives the general idea of the chain of islands extending along the eastern coast of the continent gives a better impression than the closeup slide of the larger islands alone. From the map the idea of the chain •of islands along the coast, drowned mountain-tops with their irregular coastline, is brought out. The influence of the Japan current on the southern portion and the Arctic current on the northern portion are indicated, as are the winds from the continent of Asia across the narrow sea that separates it from the mainland, the mountainous character of the islands, the excellent harbors, the location of the principal mountains on the western side of the islands, and the most fertile sections on the eastern shores. A danger against which the orthodox teacher will have to guard in the use of the map slide, just as with the use of any map, is the tendency to dwell too much on location al geography, the names of islands, cities, bays, rivers. Less and less emphasis is being placed in these days on locational geography except -for a very few specific purposes, and it will be sufficient for our purpose if we remember only two or three of the larger cities and one or two of the principal islands. Now we are ready for views of the surface. A few slides establish vividly the mountainous character of the country. Included 11 * Tarr and McMurray's Geography, book II, part II. ** Asia, a Geography Reader; Huntington (Rand, McNally & Co.).