Visual Education (Jan 1923-Dec 1924)

106 Visual Education The Opportunities of the Specialist in Visual Education Editorial Contribution by WILLIAM C. BAGLEY COMPELLING evidence of the importance of visual education is furnished by the increasingfrequency with which State departments of education and city school systems are employing specialists to direct work in this field. One of the most effective means of insuring" rapid progress in a new field is to employ men and women to give their entire time to its development. Sixty years ago there was no real science of agriculture; but there was a clear need for such a science. The Federal government, through the famous Morrill Act of 1862, succeeded in having established in each state an agricultural college. Teachers were employed to teach agriculture — although at that time there was little to teach beyond the farm skills, and in these the farm-boys who attended the colleges were as a rule already adept. The very fact, however, that men were employed to teach the science of agriculture led to the development of the science. It was a slow growth at first, but it gained momentum with each succeeding year, until today the teacher of agriculture has at his disposal a substantial body of well-tested facts and principles, and the practical art of fanning has been placed on a scientific basis. THE specialists in visual education are now in somewhat the same position as were the specialists in agriculture two generations ago. There is a recognized need for supplementing and complementing verbal instruction. The "universal language" of the picture and the diagram, it is generally agreed, can and must be made to serve educational purposes in a measure that has not been approached in the past. It is the business of this new group of specialists in visual education to find the way. They will be helped — and greatly helped, we are sure — by such investigations as that which Professor Freeman is now making; but upon the "full-time" specialists in the field must rest the chief responsibility, and from them, if the analogy of agriculture is lo he trusted, the most significant contributions will ( nine. Till'', possibilities, loo, arc alluring. As has previously been pointed oul in these articles, the great "turning points" in human progress have been correlated with improved means of disseminating ideas. In the final analysis, education means the expansion pi individual experience; it means, perhaps, something more than "enlightenment," hut it surely means no less; ,-md enlightenment is a good word with a big meaning. Our educational discussions tend not infrequently to obscure this important function of education; quite properly they call attention to the fact that teaching is more than imparting facts, and that education is more than acquiring knowledge ; but in pointing out these limitations, they sometimes go too far and encourage the notion that information is not important. We may recognize other purposes in education, but the moment we forget that it is the outstanding task of the school to bring light to minds that would otherwise dwell in darkness, our school work will resemble Plamlet with Hamlet left out. THE significance of visual education lies in its promise to help the school in the discharge of this transcendent function. There are some very important ideas that can be grasped or comprehended only when pictured. There are few ideas the comprehension of which is not greatly facilitated by graphic representation. To explore these possibilities ; to devise types of representation that will clearly convey the desired meanings ; to adapt these types to different levels of learning-ability; to discover the kinds of ideas that are best clarified by "still" photographs, by line drawings, by "still" diagrams, by stereoscopic slides, by moving pictures, by moving diagrams ; to learn through experiment how much detail is necessary, at what point an overabundance of detail confuses, at what point reduced detail becomes meaningless ; to learn how visual methods can best be combined with textbook methods, with construction-work, with oral presentation, with project-teaching; to plan ways in which visual instruction may be so organized as to enlist the active and aggressive effort of the learner ; to work out graded exercises that may increase the learner's ability to "observe and report," his ability to form for himself mental images and to manipulate these in his thinking, his ability to grasp abstractions that are progressively refined, and see essential things in larger and larger units : these are some of the specific problems that this new group of specialists will face and try to solve. WHAT we have it in mind especially to emphasize is both the very practical and the very important service that these men and women will render. If the problems that confront them were easy to solve, these problems would have been solved longsince and without delegating them to a special group. That a special field is now recognized is the best of proof both that its problems are difficult and that the possibilities of their solution are rich with promise.