World Film News and Television Progress (Apr 1936-Mar 1937)

Film in School — A Dialogue By RUSSELL FERGUSON Hell Unlimited Young Man : Will the film become an instrument of education? Old Man : I do not think so. I am prophesying rather from a knowledge of what the school is than from dreams of what it might be. The school has no books except the text books used in teaching the subjects prescribed. If the authorities have not had the wit to provide the school with a reference hbrary of books, how can we hope to persuade them to provide a reference hbrary of fihns? Y. M. : I grant that the school has no reference library of books. But many schools have circulating hbraries of fiction. O. M. : A few of them have circulating libraries provided by the pupils and chosen by the staff. But the official authorities are content to prescribe one work of fiction per pupil per year. I think that the utmost we can hope for is that some day the authorities may do as much with fihns, and see to it that each pupil sees one fUm per year for five years. If the authorities do not provide the pupils with book-fiction, how can we hope that they will provide film-fiction? Some schools have a magic lantern, usually without sUdes, and a gramophone, usually with about six records. The great majority have none, because such things are not part of the official equipment of any school. How can we expect authorities who missed the possibilities of the lantern and the gramophone, yes, and even the still photograph, to pay any attention to the cinema? Y. M.: But siurely things can't be as bad as that? O. M. : Things are a great deal worse. The authorities have not merely failed to provide these necessities. They have never awakened to the fact that they are necessities. Y. M. : But surely it is so obvious? The library, the photograph, the gramophone, the film, these are windows upon the world. Upon them we depend for almost all our knowledge of what things are, what they look like, how they soimd. Surely educators have reahsed that we must really try to prepare our children for life by enlarging their experience, by showing them things, by telling them about the world before they enter it? O. M. : They have realised no such thing. Y. M. : Then how, in goodness' name, do they spend their time? O. M.: Mainly in teaching technical subjects — language and mathematics and branches of them, for the most part. Y. M. : And what about English? O. M. : Enghsh at school is a technical subject. One third of it is History and Geography. The rest is Grammar and Figures of Rhetoric, and History of Literature. I grant that an Enghsh teacher can do more legitimate digressing and more real educating than most others, but he has a full programme of technicalities, without going off the beaten track to make more work. Y. M.: But don't the children get physical training and art and crafts? O. M. : Yes — about one-tenth of their time is devoted to this, to their great delight. But, in relation to the long hours spent on academic subjects, it doesn't amount to much. Y. M. : Why so much technical study? O. M. : For two main reasons : one, the teachers only know technical subjects, and the other, the Universities prescribe them for their entrance examination, which nearly every parent hopes his child will pass. Y. M.: And why do the Universities prescribe them? O. M. : Because the professors don't know any others. They are but teachers of a larger growth. Y. M. : And do you mean that the schools are so busy with purely technical education that they have no time for general education — preparation for life? O. M. : I mean that. Y. M. : But surely this technical education is itself a preparation for hfe? O. M.: So it is, in a kind of a way, for the three per cent who assunilate it. For the other ninety-seven per cent it is worse than useless, for it makes failures of them by keeping them for years at work for which they have no aptitude. From the actuarial point of view, secondary education is almost a complete failure. Y. M. : Do you tell me that the schools fail to teach French and Maths, for instance? O. M. : Yes, I mean that. Ask any headmaster how many pupils he has each year in first year French. Say, two hundred. Ask him how many will complete the course by scoring half-marks in a French exam, five years later. Say, twenty. Of the successful twenty, find out how many a year later can read a bit of French prose. About half-a-dozen. Only three per cent. This is failure, isn't it? Y. M. : I suppose so. And yet between times most of our teachers digressed and gave us a good deal of general knowledge. O. M. : If you just reflect : compare the time they spent in general topics with the time they spent on verbs and equations; compare the amoimt of general knowledge one ought to have with the amount you were given at school, and then tell me, is it not true that the schools are too busy faiUng to teach technical subjects to have time for real education? Y. M.: But will authorities not wake up to the state of affairs? O. M. : Why should they? Who is complaining? Not the pupils, for they have no voice. Not the parents, who think that their children ought to be able to learn mathematics and language. Not the inspectors, who are all recruited from the mandarin class. The Government has no ideas on the subject, the press is uidifierent and the Education Authorities are too busy with buildings and teachers to bother about what is taught in the one way by the other. Education proper is nobody's business. Y. M. : WeU, anyway, don't you think that even in this technical education which is all that is provided, films could be a great help? O. M. : I beUeve the film could be very useful. But I have aheady told you why I think it will not be used. Special films would have to be made, and I don't see anybody going to the trouble and expense of making them. After all, they can be done without. If authorities allow teachers to do without maps, as they very largely do, I don't see much chance of their providing films. Norman MacLaren and Helen Biggar — Glasgow amateurs — have produced an ambitious 16 mm. film running for 30 minutes. Norman MacLaren, known to many amateurs for his Camera Cocktails, has taken trick camera work to the limit. In fact, the film is the most ingenious example of its kind that I have yet seen. Unfortunately, form, cutting and content do not come up to scratch. If they had, these two directors would have put themselves at a single step in the forefront of producers, professional or amateur. Technical virtuosity has submerged everything else. The film seeks to tell the economic truth behind armaments and war. Disdaining titles, debarred from sound, the producers have turned to symbols, and it is often difficult to make out what is intended, so obscure are the metaphors, so shm the underlying logical processes. Not only is the film obscure, but the producers, delighted with their own powers, repeat and repeat and repeat. Every ingenious symbol and every pretty trick appears again and again, often in differing contexts, making one's task of disentangling the ideas even harder. One hopes that the producers will take the film back to the cutting bench and try to make a lucid job out of what is some of the best trick work yet to appear. The use of re-photographed war stills is telling. The cost was about £20. The film is an object lesson to amateur societies, not only in the possibilities of trick work, but in the terrifying results of lack of self-discipline. A. E. Y. M. : Our education reformers, like Russell and Neill — surely they must have some influence? O. M. : They make their appeal to a small section of the general pubhc, but they do not influence the great machine of state education in the shghtest. State education is a closed system. Machinery for social reform, even for education reform on general lines — hours of study, leaving age, salary scales — does exist, of course, in the parUamentary system. But the thing that matters, the choice of curriculum, is vested entirely in the mandarins. And the curriculum is the education provided. And the use of fihns depends upon the curriculum, which is much too full of French verbs and James II to have any use for the film, or for any other of your "windows upon the world." Y. M. : Then the case for using films properly in school is a hopeless case, and the cause of education reform is a hopeless cause? O. M. : I am afraid so. Y. M. : I am sorry about that. O. M. : So am I. 39