Moving Picture Age (Jan-Dec 1922)

THE MECHANICAL DEPARTMENT now conducted in this publication by Austin C. Lescarboura, Managing Editor of the Scientific American, is of such importance as to warrant editorial comment. Users of projection equipment in the field of visual instruction are rarely skilled mechanically. The pastor, the teacher, the social worker, the county agent, all of them find that their initiation into the mechanics of visualization includes the appearance of a host of technical problems for which they are of course generally unprepared. What type of projector is best under stated conditions ? Is a regulation screen essential, or can one obtain satisfactory results with a white curtain or wall for the screen? My projector, a , tears almost every film it runs ; how can this trouble be remedied ? These questions, and similar ones, readily answered by one who has had considerable experience with implements of projection, are stumbling-blocks to the initiate, and he wisely, though mayhap unsuccessfully, searches for assistance that is authoritative and impartial. Many such inquiries have been received by the Moving Picture Age Research Department, and have been propounded to be answered through the Department by persons we considered best fitted to give an opinion on each particular problem. Personally we have always believed that such service should be conducted by one individual who is recognized nationally for his position in the scientific world, who has had sufficient technical training and years of practical experience in the field whose mechanical illnesses he is to diagnose, and who maintains the strong personal interest in visual instruction that will impel him to render far more than merely routine assistance to Moving Picture Age subscribers. We believe that no better choice than Mr. Lescarboura could have been made for this all-important service. His position with the Scientific American is reassuring as to his integrity, impartiality, and scientific qualifications ; for a long period of time he has conducted experiments with various types of cameras and projectors, and at present conducts non-theatrical exhibitions in his home community ; and his desire for the more rapid growth of the field of visual instruction, coupled with his faith in the constructive efforts of this publication, is sufficient to assure that Mr. Lescarboura's department will be as helpful as could be desired. Information is now being compiled in regard to the standard makes of projection equipment, such as projectors, stereopticons, film, and screens. In each issue one specific item of equipment will be discussed as to its characteristics ; but the department for that month will also contain lesser discussions on other mechanical topics, so that the reader may never lack for a quantity and variety of practical information. Also, we have arranged that particular problems of subscribers may be discussed through correspondence by Mr. Lescarboura. Such questions will be answered only when submitted to him at the office of Moving Picture Age, and when accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Moving Picture Age and Mr. Lescarboura are happy to serve your needs and thus help to perfect your exhibitions. EDITORIALS BEFORE US IS a communication from an educator who employs visual aids and who is watching the progress of this supplementary method with some satisfaction arid occasionally with solicitude. The latter emotion is evident in the following excerpt from his letter : Many new schools being erected throughout the country have no provision for projection equipment in the construction of the buildings. No space is left for a booth ; no wiring is installed ; no provision is made for compliance with the ordinances of the community. Then when the school board decides to institute visual instruction the implements of projection are installed at considerable expense and under unnecessary difficulties. The writer goes on to state in very explicit terms his opinion of such extravagance and lack of foresight, and in closing expresses the hope that among the delegates to the N. E. A. convention at Chicago will be included certain educators, skilled in the use of visual aids and frank of speech, who will protest this willingness to waste public funds because those in charge could not or would not see that visual instruction in their institutions was as inevitable as was manual training for the city school a few years ago. It happens that a contribution used in this issue touches upon the very thought before us. In the article entitled "Costs and Results," Mr. Marsh states the proposition with satisfying succinctness : "School officials should apply to visual instruction the lessons learned by bitter experience in the development of other ideas in our schools." As a matter of fact, Moving Picture Age is not advocating the installation of a new supplement to general education — for visual instruction is not new, and provision has been made for certain phases of it in every schoolhouse ever built in this country. What of the books that the children use? How about the blackboards that are always built in, and used for diagrams and illustrations as well as words and figures? And the map rolls, and the suspended charts, and the inevitable globe upon its pedestal — is not this instruction visual ? And, to mention the initial step in the child's education, does not the kindergarten equipment of wooden cubes and triangles and cylinders, and color charts, and sand piles, function with but one end — to educate visually ? We advocate merely an extension of a method that has proved so absolutely indispensable that it is never questioned now; we claim that every newly constructed educational institution in this land should be able to avail itself of the more highly developed forms of visual instruction without the necessity of tearing out partitions, ripping up floors, lowering the carefully planned seating capacities of certain rooms, and throwing further expense upon a budget that is just recovering from the payment of initial construction costs. The day is past when advocacy of visual instruction is taken to indicate that the speaker is bored with usual methods of instruction and wishes to install motion pictures for the amusement of himself and the class. Slides and films possess broader possibilities for instruction than do some of the more prosaic visual aids now employed unquestioningly by every teacher. But this in no sense implies that the more limited forms of visual instruction are to be discarded ; does a man with a $5 bank account withdraw this sum as soon as he has saved an additional $25, or does he combine his assets ?.nd use all in earning interest? Neither does the instructional worth of these aids mean that the miscellaneous projection of films or slides without a definite instructional program constitutes genuine visual instruction. The issue is not obscure. The school man in every instance determines what the plans and equipment of the new school building shall be. Is he to compress his lips and say, "No, sir ! My father taught his classes without motion pictures or slides, and I guess I can !" and then lay out a structure of the 1900-A. D. model ; or is he to exercise a foresight for which, whether that year or ten years later, the pupils and the taxpayers shall bless him? WE WERE DISTINCTLY disappointed to note recently in two different educational publications the appearance of an enthusiastic but grossly erroneous assertion by H. G. Wells concerning motion pictures in education. We commented editorially upon this same material in our issue of October, 1921, but it would seem that this particular bit of fallacy, perhaps because of its source, dies hard. Probably the simplest and yet keenest refutation of such footless generalizations is found in the recent (December, 1921) contribution of F. Dean McClusky, a visual educator who seeks more sanity and less blind enthusiasm in visual instruction : "There is no royal road to learning!" Textbooks will continue to provide the groundwork for every school course; the teacher will still conduct her class, and is not to be supplanted by a stereopticon lecturer or by a member of the local projector operators' union; certain pupils will continue to be indifferent or intractable — this, notwithstanding recent publicity regarding the elimination of misbehavior and truancy by the institution of motion pictures in the school ; and earnest, consistent effort, on the part of teacher as well as pupil, will still be productive of the worthiest results. Motion pictures can be made to supplement school courses to excellent effect, as can slides and museum exhibits and other visual aids ; but the true visual instruction is advocated only to strengthen present pedagogical efforts. "T X THAT DIRE STRAITS are the mo\\ tion pictures headed for?" declaim the various publications, in dramatic tones ranging in strength from a mild 18-point type to a blustering 42; and metaphorically we behold each, head thrown back,