The talking machine world (Jan-Dec 1914)

32 THE TALKING MACHINE WORLD. MOTION PICTURE VIEWS OF VICTOR CO.'S PLANT— (Continued from page 31). business of the Victor Co. is built upon a foundation of progressiveness and efficiency, although with all the progress it has not kept pace with the enormous increase in the demand. Mrs. Frances E. Clark's Interesting Address. Before the presentation of the motion pictures Mrs. Frances E. Clark, head of the educational department of the Victor Co., delivered an address on the progress of the campaign to place the Victor in the schools during the three years she has been engaged in the work. Mrs. Clark's address, which was illustrated with an interesting series of slides showing the Victor in schools in various sections of the country, was as follows : Education is and has always been the highest function of the State. Of what that education shall consist has furnished material for controversy in all ages, and yet, the processes of learning, the methods of teaching, the subject matter for instruction, have remained more stable than any other phase of the evolution of government. Recent translations of ancient tablets, buried for eons of years, give their mute testimony of the learning of ancient people in the forgotten civilizations of Babylon and Nineveh. In the past decade our schools have been undergoing more' vital changes in the fundamental purposes of education than has taken place in hundreds of preceding years. Our colleges are based squarely on the traditions of Cambridge and Oxford; our medical and scientific schools largely on the great universities of Germany ; our law and theology on that of ancient Rome, by way of the wonderful schools of England. Our high schools were but modified, miniature colleges, and the grammar schools were forced to adapt their courses of study to serve the high schools in the latter's efforts to fit the entrance requirements of the colleges. As standards advanced, the entire cycle became enslaved to pedantic courses of study, growing more and more away from the real needs of life of a great majority of the people, and at the worst, artificial, stilted and inadequate. The great impetus given to industry and manufacture by the discovery of new methods of making iron and steel with anthracite, the discovery of gas and oil, the discovery of gold and silver and copper and other metals in commercial quantity, the invention of many labor-saving machines, and more than all these by the stupendous movement of immigrants from caste ridden Europe, rushing here to better their condition, demanded a revolution in educational methods. The schools were slow, frightfully slow, in responding, and so steeped were they in tradition that not until ten or fifteen years ago did the movement gain much headway. Then manual training was cautiously introduced, trade schools were established, a taste of domestic science, cooking and sewing were tried, for girls, and finally trade schools for these as well as for boys. Finally the whole educational world became intoxicated with the new idea, and went literally mad with zeal to introduce vocational training. Industrial topics filled the program of our conventions to the exclusion of other subjects. Out of it come a great awakening in our greatest asset, agriculture. Boys and girls' clubs were formed and two ears of corn were made to grow where one grew before. School gardens have taught a great art. The agricultural schools have brought scientific farming, which, with irrigation, has transformed millions of waste acres into homes. A healthful respect for manual labor has come, and in all the schools has arisen a desire to aggrandize real knowledge of real things. At one commencement a few weeks ago, all the graduation exercises were concrete illustrations of helpful things learned in the course. One girl with tubs and modern equipment, taught how washing should be done. One boy illustrated, with a real pony, the care of horses — another with block and cleaver, and a dressed veal calf, taught the science of meat cutting. This is an improve ment over the "Beyond the Alps lies Italy" stage, rnd argues well for the future. With all this much needed reform there has been a very grave danger of too radical a departure from time honored standards amounting in places to a sort of moblike cry for throwing away everything save a smattering of the sacred three R's. Leading educators are now counseling caution and pleading for a clinging to the cultural studies that must be taught if we would not subbordinate our schools wholly to the commercial, industrial and utilitarian. A program being given this week at the National Education Association in St. Paul has such titles as "Training For Social Responsibilities," "The Humanities, Old and New," "Vocational Education, its Menace," "Let Both Grow Together Until the Harvest." Some culture for the masses we must retain or forfeit utterly the respect of Europe's civilization and descend to the mere money grubbing of which we are accused. Next to reading and literature, music contains more elements of culture, refinement and beauty than any other one thing. It is universally innate and touches individual and community life in more places and in more ways than any other one branch taught in the schools. It possesses also remarkable powers in mental development, quickens the imagination, stirs and controls the emotions, and takes high rank in disciplinary, remedial and medicinal powers. It was not then wholly theory that led up to trie inauguration of this nation-wide movement of using "The Victor in the Schools" but a knowledge of conditions in the education world. Co-incident with the recent great awakening in music in all lines, the school people were discovering that music possessed intrinsic merit — at once cultural, delightful and strongly educational. How to get enough of it to do any good was the problem ; sight-singing was not enough ; rote songs were not adequate ; very occasional concerts by local artists only isolated cases in a great desert — and then — under Divine Providence — came the perfection of the Victor and Victor recording of the great music of the world which could be brought into every school, suburban or rural — and to the hearing of every child — not for amusement, not for entertainment (although it is entertainment of the highest order) but for a great and vital power in education. Lincoln once said, "You can fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time," and the great underlying fact which accounts for over 1,760 cities accepting our educational plan is, that it has in it inherent truth — it is oi real use and genuinely educational — it suits the needs of the school people everywhere and furnishes at a most opportune moment an acceptable diversion from the industrial craze, and, happily, one that is entirely democratic, /equally loved by all the children of all the people. While we have sought to furnish special records to fit in with the special activities of the school day, the great field lies in the realm of appreciation ofgreat music. Just what is meant by appreciation of music? It is a term being used and abused indiscriminately. Appreciation of anything means that one understands it or can assimilate it and make it one's own, or that one can compare things known and relate them to the like unknown ; or to estimate or judge of the merits; or to esteem and value highly. _ To appreciate an ideal thing, to build a vivid mental picture of things not ■ seen, or to create a tonal conception of things not heard requires an experience in like sights and sounds as material for evolving such ideals. Cur ideals are mirrored in our reals. No ideal is attained without having achieved many reals on the way. Aspiration is creating images of the ideal from the materials of the real things at hand. Dr. Winship says, "Appreciation is the real thingwhile aspiring to the ideal thing." Appreciation is picking a bale of cotton while aspiring to "Wear a white robe all over God's Heaven." Appreciation is building a home in a two acre lot full of beautiful trees while aspiring to walk down "Unter den Linden" or visit Westminster Abbey: One person can appreciate a great painting, because he has studied balance, tone, perspective, values and color. Another sees only a picture. One walks through a woods and finds beauty at every step — trees are recognized by bark, leaf, limb — here a medicinal plant — there an orchid — on that twig hangs an oriole's nest — in that hole a flicker's — in that tuft of grass a flock of quails — over on that swinging reed a red wing and on that thistle a gold finch ; here a trillium, or May apple, or a Judas tree, or a thorn apple. Another walks stumbling along, merely grateful for shade. "A primrose by the river brim, a yellow primrose was to him — and it was nothing more." One walked through the electrical display at the Buffalo Exposition and saw visions — another thought the lights pretty. One goes into a great machine shop and is thrilled and learns something from every bolt and screw — another is merely annoyed at the noise. To appreciate music, in one sense, means that one must know enough music to be able to judge correctly of relative values — in another sense, that one has heard enough to have created a love and desire for hearing more of it. A Victor in a school, properly used and sufficiently equipped with educational records, is a ".veil spring of Victor publicity, and an open sesame to every home in the community. The school Victor is only the Joshua who spies out the Victorland for the whole army of people, who hear of it through the children. We are proud of our 1,760 cities and the thousands of schools who have followed our plan. Without any doubt six or seven million children are now becoming Victor enthusiasts through the schools and considering the three years of effort, this is astonishing and most gratifying, but we have only just begun. The great field of the rural school is not yet touched. There are 212,000 one-room rural schools enrolling 6,700,000 children. In two or more room rural schools there are enrolled 4,466,000. We have only nicely started in the best of our States and cities. There are over 525,000 schools in this country enrolling 22,900,000 pupils, and we have as yet reached but a comparatively small per cent. In 1911 there were 10,234 public high schools and 1,781 private high schools, enrolling 1,115,326 pupils, in everyone of which should be a Victor. Since 1911 this number has been materially increased. This present year there were graduated from the elementary schools 1,600,000 pupils; from the high or secondary schools 160,000; from the norma! schools 35,000, and from the colleges 25,000. totaling 1,940,000. As each June sends out of the schools a new army of graduates to take their places in the world, each September " fills the broken ranks with many times as many more. Ir addition to these schools there are evening schools, continuation schools, business schools, music schools, the prison and reformatory schools and the entire list of Governmental Indian schools, totaling 1,300,000 pupils. Is it not plain that if 1,940,000 pupils graduating from the schools this year (and a like or greater number next year, and the next) may, by means of the Victor service, hear the music of the masters during their school life, that we shall have set in motion the greatest force ever known in the history of the world for the building of music appreciation — a love for and working knowledge of music in all forms? These pupils going out into life, forming homes and furnishing the most valuable addition to our labor quota, must, in the next ten years, form the most vital element in our body politics, for our schools are the melting pots which transform all elements into our composite civilization. If the 20,960,000 undergraduate pupils may have the same opportunity to learn to appreciate and know the music of all nations, in all ages, we have an immediate audience of startling proportions. Tf even 75 per cent, of all these pupils carry this enthusiasm and much of the actual music into the homes to three other persons, which is the average, our audience is multiplied to the astonishing number of 74,425,000. Here is missionary work worthy the devotion and consecration of our best efforts. A missionary brings good tidings to needy souls. The schools need good music — we have it. The Victor Co. is sending good music to the children of America and through the children to the homes. The desires, wants and needs of the, children are the most potent appeal that can be presented to fathers and mothers, relatives and all lovers of children. The Master knew this when he said, "And a little child shall lead them." Victor music in the hearts and on the lips of the children of America is not only the highest possible endorsement from a commercial standpoint, but it is far more and infinitely higher than that. It is our power for good under God's hands for the betterment of the race to each life touched. "The Victor in the Schools" brings "Light in dark places," carries joy, delight, and happiness to the children of whom Dickens said: They are idols of heart and of household; They are angels of God in disguise; His sunlight still sleeps in their tresses; His glory still gleams in their eyes. Oh those truants from home and from heaven, They have made me more manly and mild. And I know now how Jesus could liken The kingdom of Go4 to a child.