THE MOVIE AS A PEDAGOGUE
THE utilitarian evolution of the movie has been as remarkable as the
recreational—though much less spectacular. The screen seems to have come
like a poultice to heal the blows of ignorance, of worn-out methods in
schools, hospitals and laboratories, and to act as a tonic upon all the
movements and enterprises that make for the betterment of the race.
Modern scientists, philanthropists, statesmen, educators, sociologists,
uplifters of all kinds, may appropriately paraphrase Robert Burns by
exclaiming “a screen’s amang ye takin’ notes.”
Visual education—that is, intellectual stimulus through motion
pictures—has made amazing progress in our schools and colleges during
the past few years. It has been proved by statistics, based upon the
results of examinations, that students instructed by screen-pictures
obtain higher marks than those who have been seeking knowledge on a
given subject only through text-books.
Evidence upon this point has become of late cumulative and conclusive.
Data to show that the Esperanto of the Eye is a more efficient
instructor than either the spoken or the printed word is ours in
abundance, but only one or two striking proofs of the proposition will
suffice for our present purposes. Two years ago Professor Joseph J.
Weber, of the University of Kansas, conducted a series of enlightening
tests in Public School No. 62, New York City, with the following
results:
Four hundred and eighty-five pupils in the school were examined as to
their knowledge of geography. It was found that their average rating as
a class was only 31.8. Oral teaching, without the aid of correlated
motion picture films, raised this average presently to 45.5, a gain of
13.7. The films were then used after the oral lessons and an average of
49.9 was obtained, a gain of 18.1. By the employment of the films before
instead of after the oral instructions the average percentage was
increased to 52.7, a gain of 20.9.
At about the same time, Professor J. W. Sheppard, of the University of
Oklahoma, made an experiment in visual education at a high-school in
Madison, Wis. Abstract and concrete subjects were taught to a group of
pupils of ordinary intelligence by means of the films only, to a second
group by a superior instructor only, and to a third group by an average
instructor only. In a searching examination subsequently the pupils
taught by the films scored an average of 74.5, those taught by the
superior instructor an average of 66.9, and those by the inferior
instructor an average of 61.3. In this game of twenty questions the
screen had won the pot by a safe margin.
The significance of the above is revealed in its entirety when we
realize that even the movie as a purveyor of amusement has not wholly
neglected its obligations as a pedagogue. The millions of Americans who
daily watch the screen in quest of recreation are, willy nilly, obliged
to absorb something in the way of added knowledge. Geography,
history—both ancient and contemporary,—botany, astronomy, physics,
ethnology, archæology and other educational sources are tapped, even in
the least pretentious movie theatres, to stir the imaginations and
enlarge the general knowledge of their patrons. It is safe to say that
the American people, even though our schools and colleges had not
welcomed the film as an aid to education, would have vastly increased
their information regarding our planet and the history and achievements
of the human race merely through the homage that the amusement screen
has paid, perforce, to erudition.
But what the recreational screen has done casually and inadequately for
the dissemination of general knowledge, is, of course, negligible
compared with the influence that has been exerted by the educational
films whose use in the class-rooms of our schools and colleges has been
for some years past constantly on the increase. The growing importance
of the film as an adjunct to instruction is shown by the fact that its
progress has not been left to chance, as was the evolution of the
recreational movie. The realm of visual education has been taken over by
men and organizations whose qualifications for the task they have
assumed assure to the screen in the class-room a great and splendid
future. Concerning this matter, Will H. Hays recently said:
The Society of Visual Education contains thirteen presidents of
colleges, six of normal schools, three representatives of large
foundations, seventy-six professors and instructors in colleges
and universities, nine state superintendents of public
instruction and seventy-one city superintendents of schools.
There are other groups of educators in the motion picture
field—notably the National Academy of Visual Instruction and the
Visual Instruction Association of America. An incomplete list
shows twenty-eight colleges and universities which have
organized departments for the distribution of films. At least
seventeen of our largest educational institutions are giving
courses to their students on the use of the motion picture for
visual instruction. Columbia has courses which teach photoplay
writing and the mechanics of production. The University of
Nebraska has erected a film studio on its campus, and the
Universities of Yale, Chicago, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan,
Oklahoma, Illinois and Utah have started the production of their
own motion pictures.
Let us confine ourselves for the moment to what the educational films
are doing in the realm of history, leaving their achievements as
pictorial aids to the study of astronomy, physics, ethnology,
palæeontology, geology, and other sciences, for later consideration. If
the Esperanto of the Eye is to be instrumental in giving to this and
coming generations an accurate picture of our race’s past, it is
essential that our films dealing with history should be accurate in
detail. A falsehood exploited by the screen can do more damage than a
misrepresentation imbedded in a text-book. It is encouraging, therefore,
to those of us who believe that educational films are destined
eventually to exercise an influence for good upon mankind that may save
it from a return to barbarism to realize that the screen as an adjunct
to the teaching of history is receiving valuable assistance from our
most eminent professors in this field of study.
There is much data at our disposal to prove that the Olympian heights of
erudition are deeply impressed by the obligations which the enlightened
gods owe to films fashioned to instruct lesser and more ignorant
mortals. It will suffice for our present purpose, however, to prove the
existence of a general and praiseworthy trend in visual instruction by
giving, in some detail, an account of an enterprise, sponsored by the
Department of History of Yale University, that is of importance in
itself, but, more than that, significant in the promise it gives of a
splendid future for the educational film.
In a despatch from Chicago, Ill., under date of Tuesday, August 1, 1922,
a correspondent of the New York _Evening Post_ says:
History was rewritten here to-day, shorn of its romance and
amplified by facts, by the Yale University Press. To do this,
mediæval sailors, dressed in gayly colored tights and jerkins,
with huge knives in their belts, clambered through the rigging
of the Santa Maria off Jackson Park, and Christopher Columbus
leaned over the rail, crucifix in hand, and gazed at the
receding shores, while two camera men kept grinding away at
their machines. All this was done that the popular idea of
history might be revised and the school children of America
might have accurate information, uncontaminated by the legends
and myths which have grown around the discovery of America
during the last 400 years.... The Yale University Press is
making a series of historical pictures for school use which the
History Department of the University asserts will be as accurate
as research and study can make them. On board the Santa Maria
there were mutinies and troublesome times. Martin Alonzo Pinzon,
a Spanish gentleman who owned the Santa Maria, commanded the
Pinta, and furnished the cash for the expedition. Much more is
made of Pinzon in the film than of Queen Isabella, the
Professors of History at Yale being inclined to doubt the legend
that Her Majesty ever patronized a pawn-shop to give assistance
to the dare-deviltry of Columbus.
What visual instruction in history is to become presently is a
fascinating subject in dwelling upon which the imaginative optimist,
reading the signs of the times, can not but take keen delight. The past
is to be to the student no longer a graveyard, in which he rambles
confusedly, reading ridiculous epitaphs upon monuments whose comparative
impressiveness is misleading, but a series of dramatic performances,
appealing to the senses, the mind and the soul, in which the _dramatis
personæ_ will present history as a serial-play in which the latest act
is one in which he himself is taking a minor part.
Never before, in the history of the race, has mankind taken so deep and
wide-spread an interest in the past of mankind as it exhibits to-day.
There appears to be a world-wide feeling that, unless the race can learn
the lessons that the great catastrophes that have repeatedly overtaken
civilization teach, the outlook for the future is appallingly dark. On
New Year’s Day, 1923, a body of prominent American educators issued an
appeal to the public in which the following striking sentences occur:
The present situation in international affairs, involving as it
does the imminent peril of war, must give concern to every
thoughtful observer. After a devastating conflict which has cost
millions of lives, created immeasurable hatred and piled up a
debt of $50 for every minute of time since Christ was born, the
nations of the earth, apparently having learned nothing and
forgotten nothing, are once more playing the old game of
competitive imperialism and competitive armament.
The above, startling but unanswerable as it is, has a direct bearing
upon the subject we have just had under discussion, namely, the teaching
of history through visual instruction. The advantages of this method for
schools and colleges, conclusively proven though it has been, will be of
no permanent and uplifting value to coming generations unless the screen
as a pedagogue finds a way to give to a race that is constantly
repeating old and fatal errors a message and a warning that shall
influence the young men and women who are to mould the world’s future to
avoid the disastrous errors of their progenitors. From this point of
view it becomes apparent that to those into whose hands has been placed
the dissemination of educational films has been vouchsafed a great
opportunity to benefit a race that is in sore need of guidance, of some
impetus that shall make its future less deplorable than its
blood-stained past.
------------------------------------------------------------------------