See and hear : the journal on audio-visual learning (1945)

won •"--^^M ^ A'^ mm<* Members of the Gary, Indiana, Film Council held a recent ijifornintiotial film frstivnt. ity and general implications in them — but above all, because I wish to suggest how intensively agencies like ours have gone into the problem of film utilization. The ADL is deeply concerned also with film evaluation. Many of our offices typically have a body of consultants from public schools, imiversitics, and other institutions in their respective areas. The Metropolitan \ew York Regional Office of the ADL, to take but one instance, has helped set up a teachers council, which had an audio-visual workshop a couple of months ago as a kind of dress rehearsal for the audio-visual workshops which this office is organizing in cooperation with personnel from the New York City public schools. Do You "Think" or "Feel" About Films? At this workship a panel consisting of a high school principal and a well known book editor examined one of our films — never mind which one — and here some of the criticisms: "Very difficult to appraise this in terms of age level." "Whoever wrote the text has done so without reference to the Thorndike Scale, because it has a completely mixed vocabulary count." "This filmstrip lectures — something we try to get away from in the classroom. It doesn't tell a story from which a moral can be derived — hut repeats a moral and uses pictures in connection with the repetition." "You are trying to reach everyone in an over-all age level attempt — and you reach no-one." "Socrates himself could not have done this job in a forty-ntinute classroom period." Again, I mention this as an illustration of the objectivity with which our personnel attempt to evaluate our own materials. Perhaps it should also be said at this point that the field of evaluation in general, and audio-visual evaluation in particular, seems to be such that the same film described in the above paragraph had received the enthusiastic approval of leading educators, who had seen fit to set forth their approval in print; and an audio-visual workshop held in the Chicago area several months before that in New York, had come to the general conclusion that this same filmstrip was an admirable teaching medium in every way. "De gustibus. . . " From the above, one can see what some of the areas are where cooperative work is necessary, desirable, fruitful. On the local level the ADL regional offices— more than twenty as of this writing — are keenly interested in (ili'ii liiirch. Film Council of America national secretary, spcahs to the Gary council. getting assistance from qualified people in the audiovisual field. Such people can help our regional offices in going over ideas with a view to possible production. They can help us work out auxiliary materials which can be of aid to a more effective utilization of human relations films. The experts can be of real assistance in helping us to set up workshops in audio-visual education, so that we can get an increasing body of qualified people who know a good film when they see it, and know what to do with it. They can serve as consultants for institutes, conferences, and especially workshops in intercultural and intergroup education, where audiovisual consultants arc coming to have more and more important roles as members of workshop staffs. Universities and school systems ask us time and again for audio-visual consultants who can be of help in analyzing the materials in intergroup relations, and in discussing matters of film utilization and evaluation. In a word, audio-visual personnel crfn help us in our regional operations — and I am fairly well convinced that we can. help them. On the national level, there are at least four aspects which deserve mention. First, in the area of publications. We would like to see a publication which makes thoroughly clear how to set up a good audio-visual conference in human relations. What makes a good conference of this kind? What are the necessary ingredients? What is the best way of bringing this kind of publication to the attention of various groups all over the country, both in the school and in the community? This might well adapt some of the excellent Film Council of America materials. We are certainly very much interested in having some bibliographic aids which give systematically the kinds of materials that are availal)le, and for what purposes and for .which groups. I say "systematically" with malice aforethought, and I mean the kind of systematic bibliography that one thinks of in connection with names like H. B. \'an Hoescn, Ernst Bcrnheim, the Union Catalog, the Union List of Serials, and so on. We are a long way from systematic bibliography in the audio-visual field, and people working in the community feel the lack as much as people in the schools. There is an acute need, too, for something more "Our World Neighbors" 15