Moving Picture Age (Jan-Dec 1922)

Vol. V No. 2 Moving Picture Age FEBRUARY 1922 VISUAL INSTRUCTION in UTAH Hazel B. Stevens Executive Secretary, Bureau of Visual Instruction, University of Utah, Salt Lake City THOSE who know Utah best agree that one of her greatest sources of strength, in pushing to success any movement for the common good, lies in a certain close-knit community organization that is permeated with an admirable spirit of enthusiasm. Both the organization and the spirit hark back to pioneer days, that period of timbre-proving stress; but neither is confined t^day to the descendants of those first comers about the year 1847, or to any one church. An outstanding tenet of the social-religious organization referred to is that the young people are the greatest asset of the community ; no trouble is too great to take to protect the community's young people from wrong influences, to supply them with all available incentives for growth and progress. The Extension Division of the University of Utah has accepted the commission to. disseminate, throughout the state, information concerning visual education, and to demonstrate its statements by practical proof. This acceptance of responsibility is in accord with the recommendation of the National Academy of Visual Instruction — of which organization Director F. W. Reynolds of the University of Utah Extension Division is president — that extension divisions throughout the country serve as distribution centers for educational films and so protect the visual-education movement from exploitation. Experience has indicated that the people of this state need only to have demonstrated to them the power of the film as an educational agency in order to become motion-picture advocates and users. To be sure, demonstration includes much more than just presenting arguments; it includes assisting community projects in visual education by supplying proper films, giving information about choice and installation of projection machines, helping to solve mechanical problems of projection, suggesting methods of raising funds for film rentals, demonstrating actual classroom instruction by use of the film, and furnishing advice concerning the proper balance of recreational programs. Answers to questionnaires sent out by the extension devision at the beginning of the present school year disclosed the fact that the two chief difficulties encountered by schools and community organizations using visual methods were: (1) Difficulty in securing enough proper films at a price non-theatrical users could pay; (2) mechanical difficulties, including the difficulty of secur A spectacular scene ing from exchanges films suitable for their purpose in satisfactory physical condition. The Extension Division took the following steps to remove the difficulty of supply : It increased materially its own educational library (a) by purchase and (b) by lease ; it made satisfactory arrangements with exchanges within and without the state so that films could be supplied through the University to school and community patrons ; and it solved the problem of mechanical difficulties by adding enough expert help to the force of its Bureau of Visual Instruction so that all films passing through the hands of the Bureau could be inspected and guaranteed to be physically fit. The Bureau has recently had constructed for its film library, at considerable expense, an underground fireproof vault with capacity to keep 2,000 films cool and moist— in the best of physical condition. The Results Are Justifying the Expenditure The Bureau is serving a circle of patrons that now reaches into Idaho, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. Enthusiasm is growing gratifyingly as people learn that community use of visual materials for cultural ends is not mere theory, but may be adequately and efficiently carried out. Mechanical details of distribution and physical condition of films are essential — so believe those in charge of the Bureau — but above and beyond this is the greater responsibility to regard the problem of each community patron as an individual problem, to advise adequately, and, above all, to keep paramount before the eyes of each community the educational possibilities of worthwhile films. Two Ends in Visual Education I believe there are two distinct educational ends to be furthered by use of the motion picture, and that much dismay has been caused in the past by confusing the two. The first end is represented by the strictly instructional "classroom" film ; the second, by the carefully chosen feature program for recreational purposes. It appears to the writer a marked step in advance that visual-instruction pioneers are coming to realize that the classroom film need not be "thinned down" by entertainment elements, but needs only to be accurate, clear, and — above all — scholarly, and that the recreational program not only need not, it must not, be didactic and heavy with instructional reels. We must recognize the health in a "Know Utah" Film of Bryce canyon in southeastern Utah