The Moving picture world (November 1922-December 1922)

December 30, 1922 MOVING PICTURE WORLD 839 Federal Support Pledged by Harding to Hays' Plan President Indorses Development of Pedagogic Pictures UNQUALIFIED approval of the plans of Will H. Hays, working with the National Education Association, to develop pedagogic pictures for the classroom is expressed this week in a letter from President Warren G. Harding to the president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc. In which President Harding pledges the support of the federal government to the movement : My Dear Mr. Hays: Your most interesting letter concerning the plans for co-operation between the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc., and the educational leadership of the country, is received and I am pleased, of course, to note this progress and to assure you of the co-operation of the Federal Department of Education. I am mindful, too, of the efforts being made by your association for the general betterment of pictures which is distinct contribution to the general good. Your letter has prompted me to a little thinking-out-Ioud about the educational value and possibilities of the screen. Possibly in my inexperience and lack of technical information I shall sound extremely amateurish, so I apologize in advance for rushing in where wiser folks might fear to Your address to the National Educational Association has impressed me greatly; especially your conviction that the hlms represent an educational potentiality, despite that you are not quite sure how it is to be utilized. I have long been precisely of the same mind. Unquestionably, for the purpose of merely imparting information the most efiective approach to the mind is through the vision: "seeing is believing. Much of what we study rather mechanically and zestfully in youth and, therefore, rather futilely, might be made dramatically interesting if we could see it. Imagine how thrilling the study of geography would be if it meant actually touring the world, seeing countries, cities and peoples, and haying the essential facts about them explained by qualified persons with the gift of being truly interesting! i i w ^v-o Then imagine how inevitable would be the combination of studies in history and geography under such a plan! From rny earliest thumbings of the Primary Geography and the Elements of History it has seemed to me that geographv and history could not be taught properly in separate compartments. They naturally and inevitably belong to each other. Neither can be studied and assimilated properly without the other. This notion of the fundamental oneness ot these studies was, I think, impressed on almost everybody by the war. We were all compelled to be students of history and students of geography. We were made to realize how little we knew of either, and how absolutely necessary was a thorough understanding of both if we would truly understand the great things that were going on in the world. It seems to me that the screen could be made an effective medium for illuminating our studies in history and geography. Next to studying geography by seeing the world, its people and its institutions, would be studying it with the aid of the moving picture. Next to studying history by the procedure of living through its epochs, its areas and its periods, would be that of seeing its actors and evolutions presented before our eyes. These things, it has long seemed to me, might be accomplished by a proper use of the moving picture. 1 do not want to be understood as assuming that education can or ought to be made a mere pleasure, a titillation of the fancy, by making it too easy. I would not by any means turn the school room into a moving picture theatre and save the pupil from serious, hard, disciplining mental effort. On the other hand, I would use the picture as a means to enlist the pupil's interest in the real work that must be involved in acquiring any education worthy of the name. Let me hasten to say that I have no formula for effecting a co-ordination of the printed page and the picture screen, in the process of education. I have some general ideas, however. I remember when I was quite young, somebody put into my hands a copy of Thackery's "Henry Esmond." I read it not merely as an absorbing interesting story but as a revelation of the life, manners and institutions of the early eighteenth century. I found myself hunting for books to illumine further the history oi that period. I think the reading of that one novel did as much to give me a real interest in the study of history as any other experience of my boyhood years. I do not know whether anybody has presented "Henry Esmond" in a screen drama. I do not even know whether, as a commercial proposition, it could be thus dramatized. I should think it could. Likewise I should think that if it were done in a series of reels, and if these, gradually unfolding the story, were interspersed with studies and lectures on the history of the period, it would constitute an ideal method not merely of imparting knowledge, but of inspiring a desire for more of it, to be gained through further reading and study. Let me take another of my favorites among the historical novels. If we are to understand the present and attempt to conjecture the future of the world, we need to know a good deal about its backgrounds in the past. The Europe of the later middle ages, of the period just before and at the beginning of the Re'haissance, would be wonderfully portrayed in a similar series of pictures dramatizing "The Cloister and the Hearth." I do not know whether anybody reads "The Cloister and the Hearth" any more, but I am sure that one family with which I am pretty well acquainted would be glad to patronize a combination of picture serials and really intelligent talks, with this story as the basis, and with the purpose of giving a real conception and understanding of the Europe of that epoch. The other day there came into my hands a copy of Irving Bacheller's "In the Days of Poor Richard." You know what it is ; an historical novel of the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary period in our country. I think the author perhaps overcrowded its pages in the attempt to introduce about all the great figures of those times. We saw King George III, as the incognito spectator of a duel on the outskirts of London ; we were with Washington at the siege of Boston and during the campaigns in New York and New Jersey; we met Hamilton, and John Adams, and Benedict Arnold; we had a delightful picture of crossing the Atlantic in an old-time sailing ship; we saw the war between the Indians and the Whites in the great woods of what was then the Northwest; we listened to Mr. Adams' lectures on the political relations between the colonies and the mother country, and to General Washington's expressions of that wonderful, unswerving faith which he always maintained and which enabled him to lay the foundation of our republic. Now, it seems to me such a book, not slavishly reproduced on the screen, but used rather as inspiration and general theme, might be made the basis of a most inspiring and illuminating treatment, for educational purposes, of the revolutionary period. I may confess that ever since I read Mr. Trevelyan's History of the American Revolution, I have wondered if some genius of the movies might not arise who could take Trevelyan's History, Paul Leicester Ford's "Janice Meredith," Parkman's Histories of the Indians, and, now, this Bacheller book and various others of the same sort, and prepare out of them a combined screen and lecture presentation of the dramatic things in our country's history. Its succeeding chapters, or reels, or whatever you moving picture people call them, could be interspersed with studies and lectures and made to produce a wonderful impression upon the student's mind of the events and their meanings. It seems to me that I have read recently that somebody was movieizing Mr. Wells' "Outline of History." If I am mistaken I shall take the risk of saying, anyhow, that I think there must somewhere be a big enough genuis of the movies to accomplish this, and to make it an extremely useful work. Along with it I would like to see Mr. Van Loon's "Story of Mankind" handled in the same way. For the school room and the college, I would by no means confine the teaching of such subjects to the entertainment and incidental suggestion that the pictures would provide. I would supplement these with a great deal of very seriousj very earnest, and perhaps to some people uninteresting study of books, maps and charts; with lectures and a carefully organized line of collateral reading. If I have thus far confined myself to the possibilities of the screen in the study of geography and history, it is not because I doubt its usefulness in other directions. I cannot help believing that a properly directed corps of camera men might make a series of films, at, for example, the Bureau of Standards, which would be of the utmost assistance and inspiration in many scientific studies. That is just one suggestion; a score of others, more or less related, will readily enough occur to you. I suspect that a competent moving picture producer who chanced also to be a reasonably good amateur geologist would have no great difficulty devising a series of pictures that would wonderfully illuminate studies in that fascinating department of natural science. Again let me say, I would by no means eliminate the studying; I would at all times keep in mind that there cannot be real education without those efforts that train and discipline the mind and develop its powers of analysis and correlation. Perhaps these rambling suggestions are without any value at all in connection with your efforts. Perhaps they will be rather amusing than useful ; at any rate they represent the general notions of one who feels a real interest in the thing you are trying to do, and has a firm belief that somehow it can be done. I hope the co-operation of the moving picture people and the educators may find ways of producing the results which I know you have in mind.