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26 Visual Education
make education easier for all concerned, and so less efficient. If this surface judgment is to be replaced by a more favorable opinion, it must be through the actual results made manifest. The thorough grounding of a group of boys and girls in the fundamentals of the common schools would be one of the best of arguments. Far, far better would be the development of the group so that, emerging from the school, they would both desire to build upon that foundation, and know how to apply themselves to the work of building. Knowledge is a little, the desire for knowledge much, the ability to acquire it most of all. To such high goal as this the new education must tend, if it is to meet the objections of the "practical" man, the parent who demands results.
And what of the pupil, for by the result upon him the whole fabric stands or falls ? He is not merely the passive object upon which educational theories may be tried. He is not plastic as clay ; he is not unyielding as marble. He is something far more difficult to handle than either — an individual, a personality. His response to visual education will prove or disprove its value. His participation will determine its effectiveness or its failure. t
For the child of the present already knows the motion picture only too well. He is fed daily on serial thriller, on erotic romance, on the rough and tumble scenes of violence and vulgarity denominated comedy. Some of his reactions to this mass of crude sensations will be helpful; more will be decidedly otherwise. Insofar as he has learned to observe and enjoy, he will be helped to observe and enjoy still further; but there has been created a craving for excitement that is a stumbling-block indeed.
When an "educational picture" is shown at a commercial picture house the change in the temper of the audience is immediate. It is the signal for leaving, or for the bustle and inattention that mark the restless endurance until the next "photoplay" begins. In a juvenile gathering the effect is even more marked. Educational movies are "slow," just as school is "slow" ; young America demands gun-play. Some concession will undoubtedly have to be made to this craving for violent action; and how to make the concession without yielding the detail and the patience necessary to the imparting of real information is a serious problem.
Even more serious, though apparently but a small consideration, is the fact that the movie has created in the child a distrust of itself. The wonder and credulity that are supposed to be essentially childlike characteristics are fastdisappearing phenomena. The boy or girl who has seen a man run over by an automobile, thrown off a cliff into the sea, caught in the jaws of huge machinery, only to spring up unharmed and vigorous, is not credulous enough to think that the picture records fact. He learns quickly enough that these are but illusions fabricated for his sight. He will be apt to reach the same conclusion whenever anything is presented that seems marvelous, or without an adequate explanation from his daily experience. Show in a schoolroom a chemical reaction, and the undertone will be "Aw, it's only a fake !"
Suppose the teacher is presenting the story of the Revolutionary soldiers at Valley Forge. The scene has been worked out with fidelity to fact and reality,