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

COMBATTING THE PROVINCIAL MIND WITH FILMS THE GREATER PARI ot humanity has grown up and is continuing to grow uj) ini- der conditions which foster a narrow, provincial set of attitudes toward other cultural groups and their unique ways of life It is a common- place of social anthropology that one cultural group or subgroup tends over a period of time to develop certain unique customs, institutions, and systems of value. To the person who grows up in the culture—these customs, institutions, and values rep- resent the "right" way to do things. There is a "right" way to worship, there is a "right" way to organize political affairs, there is a "right" way to dress, to eat, to marry, to rear children, and so on. Members of other cultural groups who do not subscribe to these "right" ways of doing things are at best the objects of suspicion and at worst the objects of virulent hatred. Throughout his- tory cultural groups have rarely re- frained from using strong means, in- cluding organized violence, to im- pose their "right" ways of doing things on other groups. The provincial mind created enough serious problems when the world was less closely knit than it now is, but with the advent of mod- by G. Max Wingo University of Michigan cm means of transportation and connnunication the strain has be- come intolerable. Many sober social thinkers are convinced that unless we can break down this provincial- ism, which is still typical in one de- gree or another of all peoples, there is doubt about the actual sun'ival of humanity, not to mention the more refined segments of what we are pleased to call civilization. That the problem is of the utmost urgency cannot be doubted by even the casual observer. The late war apparently did nothing to resolve the almost unbearable tension. If it did anything, it only heightened it. Our own national life is plagued by hostility, suspicion, hatred, and fear among religious, racial, and even political groups. Real issues are ob- scured by the repetition of ancient prejudices, and propagandists play skillfully on our atavistic fear of those who are unlike ourselves in certain respects. The hallmark of the provincial mind is not its intolerance or its sus- picion, although these qualities are always found in it. The real hall- mark of the provincial mind is ig- norance. The ignorant mind does not have knowledge as one of its properties, much less wisdom. Its owner may not be unlettered, but he is certainh unaware of the \ast com- plexity of human society the world over. He does not know that other peoples may have found satisfying ways to pursue values and aspirations which are unlike his own. Because his intellectual horizoJi is bounded by the borders of his own little cul- tural, religious, or political group, he cannot understand how human beings could possibly reject his in- stitutions and his values and substi- tute some "outlandish" thing iyi their place. The ignorance of the provincial mind is a sad thing to contemplate, but when ignorance is coupled with an unwillingness to learn, the pic- ture becomes, at least in our own world, terrifying. So powerful are the effects of childhood experience, the provincial mind of an adult can be a marvelously resistant thing. It can be proof against inquiry and against the consideration of evidence. To a somewhat more limited extent, it can even be proof against emo- tional appeal, unless this appeal is FILTER THE FACT