Visual Education (Jan-Nov 1920)

Scope and Outlook of Visual Education 7 And because we are motor minded and because it is a good investment in education to enlist other senses than that of sight, the museum has been developed. Every museum is an investment in popular education, the value of which now is generally conceded. And the museum has here and there been put to work in the interest of school education. Perhaps the best development in America has been achieved by the Philadelphia Commercial Museum. As an aid in the teaching of geography, but especially of Commercial Geography, this museum has prepared many traveling collections with sets of articles, which are sent gratis to the schools, to be used for a specific time in classroom instruction. The exhibits are made up of samples of various commodities of commerce, such as textiles, raw and manufactured, cabinet woods, grains, ores, metals and other materials, which have in them a little bit of the reality of the world about which the pupil is reading and studying. Very early also the geographer introduced the picture as an aid in the presentation of his subject. But it is only in recent decades that the value of the picture has been demonstrated in many other lines as well as geography. A reading book in the lower grades nowadays is unthinkable without generous illustration. All the sciences and arts use the picture and the diagram in increasing measure in texts and in articles for general reading. Botany, zoology, anthropology and geography would be crippled beyond measure without the prolific picture. The growing generosity of illustration by the current magazine and certain daily papers has been a godsend to the schools wherever live teachers have undertaken to collect and use these pictures as an aid in classroom instruction. One of the best services rendered by any periodical in this country has been that of the lavishly illustrated National Geographic Magazine. Its collection of pictures now runs to over fifty thousand and they are being reprinted and made available at cost for individual pupil's use. The success of this picture phase of visual education has been marked. But it has required some genius to get best results. The pictures are as a rule too small for class use. They may be studied individually, but it is difficult to get a class discussion without having a picture large enough for ^use before the class entire. This early led to the use of the projection lantern. But the lantern of early days was a cumbersome thing. It called for a darkened room, which has been always somewhat difficult to manage. Then the illuminant was a messy affair, with tanks of oxygen and hydrogen and candles of lime, always slacking into dust; the whole outfit dangerous in the hands of a novice and requiring a skillful operator. Thus the lantern could he used only by the school entire and largely for entertainment, not instruction. The coming of electricity gave much more freedom, but even here the danger of open circuits, and the attention to the open arc, have kept the equipment out of common use. The coming of the Mazda filament lamp, however, has thrown all barriers down. Now little projection lanterns are available at small cost, and every school building may have one or more such lanterns. The lantern is coupled into any lamp socket, it can be safely managed by any child, the light is so intense that the darkening of the room is not a serious matter. The lantern now may be