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LARRY EDMUNDS 


MOTION PICTURES 

IN 

EDUCATION 


MOTION PICTURES 
IN EDUCATION 

A PRACTICAL HANDBOOK FOR 
USERS OF VISUAL AIDS 

BY 

DON CARLOS ELLIS 

AND 

LAURA THORNBOROUGH 


WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
PHILANDER P. CLAXTON 

PROVOST, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA. 
FORMER U. S. COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION 


NEW YORK 
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright, 1923, 
BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 

Second Printing 


Printed in the United States of America. 


INTRODUCTION 

SCHOOLS are old, but the effort to adapt them to the 
interests and needs of all children and of adult men and 
women as well and to make them take hold on the life 
and work of the world in which we now live is new. 
The more sincere this effort becomes and the wider and 
Clearer the vision of the purposes and possibilities of 
education, the keener becomes the search for more effec- 
tive methods of teaching and the more willing are we 
to pay the cost of satisfactory results, whatever the cost 
may be. It is for this reason that we are now paying 
twenty times as much for education in the United States 
as we paid fifty years ago, more than six times as much 
in proportion to population, and are paying far more 
willingly than we formerly paid the smaller amount. 

The increase in expenditures for education is not 
more remarkable, however, than the enrichment of 
courses of study, changes in methods, and extension of 
equipment for teaching. In these fifty years the work 
and play of the kindergarten, nature study, the physical 
sciences, literature, sociological subjects, agriculture, 
home economics, trades and industries, commercial sub- 
jects, music, physical training, hygiene and sanitation, 
have become essential parts of the curriculum. Labo- 
ratories, shops, playgrounds, libraries, maps and charts 
in abundance and large variety, museum collections, 
plats of ground, plants and animals, pictures, both in 


vi Introduction 

prints and slides, and films for projection have been 
added to the meagre equipment of textbook, desk and 
blackboard, and the rod and other instruments of pun- 
ishment far more numerous then than now. The chief 
value of all this added equipment is to provide an 
abundance of helpful concrete material and opportunity 
for self -activity in analyzing, organizing, and interpre- 
ting it. 

Among these additions to equipment for the increase 
of interest and the assurance of success in teaching, the 
most recent and probably the most valuable is the mo- 
tion picture. Certainly the use of no other means of 
teaching has ever increased so rapidly, nor has any 
other ever gained at the same time such popularity with 
all classes of people, in school and out. Though the 
first motion picture machine using films was exhibited 
at the World's Fair at Chicago just thirty years ago, 
the production, distribution and exhibition of motion 
pictures has for several years been one of our largest 
industries. The commercial use of motion pictures for 
entertainment still overshadows their educational use, 
but their value in schools of all grades, especially in 
high schools, colleges, professional and technical schools, 
and in extension classes, farmers' institutes, women's 
clubs, and commercial, civic and social organizations of 
all kinds, is gaining recognition rapidly. Many hun- 
dreds of high schools and college lecture rooms are now 
equipped with films and projecting machines. When 
the results in more effective teaching and in time sav- 
ing are considered, the pictures are not costly. If they 
were in general use in all schools, the cost would be 
only a very small percent of the total cost of education. 
When their value is fully understood and the means of 
supplying pictures adapted to school use have been bet- 


Introduction vii 

ter worked out, they will, no doubt, be considered as 
necessary a part of school equipment as are textbooks, 
maps, charts and blackboards. The perfection of the 
means of producing color films, stereoscopic films, and 
talking films will hasten this. 

Toward this more effective and more general use of 
motion pictures in education this book should prove a 
valuable aid. Its publication at this time is opportune 
in a high degree. The wide experience of the authors 
and their knowledge of the principles of education and 
of school room practice have enabled them to make a 
book sound in principle, practical in application, and 
readable. For these qualities I commend it to all who 
are interested in this subject. It is fortunate that the 
pioneer book in this field is of so high a standard. 

The authors are experienced in both teaching teach- 
ers and in selecting and preparing films for educational 
use. Mr. Ellis' experience as instructor in preparatory 
school, as Chief of the Education Section of the United 
States Forest Service and as organizer and director of 
the motion picture section of the United States Depart- 
ment of Agriculture and Miss Thornborough's expe- 
rience as film editor for the U. S. Government and as 
a newspaper writer and editor have also added to their 
equipment for this work. 

All the twelve chapters are interesting and valuable, 
and it is good to have brought together in one book a 
discussion of the history and principles of visual edu- 
cation, the story of the origin and growth of motion 
pictures and their use in education, a critical discussion 
of their value and of different methods of using them, 
directions for installing apparatus, the kinds of films 
now available and where and how they can be had; 
but it is quite possible that most readers of the book 


viii Introduction 

will find chapters six, seven, eight and nine on the 
time, place and methods of using motion picture films 
the most interesting and helpful. I would like to call 
special attention to the thirteen principles listed and 
practically applied in chapter nine. 

P. P. CLAXTON. 

UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA, 
March 10, 1923. 


FOREWORD 

THIS handbook has been written in response to an 
obvious and pressing need. Teachers intent upon keep- 
ing abreast of advanced pedagogical practice are seeking 
concrete, definite information as to the use, for instruc- 
tional purposes, of the newest and least tried of visual 
aids, the cinema. A book seems in demand which offers 
a solution to the very practical problem being constantly 
presented: What educational films are available, and 
where and how they should be used in teaching. 

A demand no less evident is manifested by producers 
of educational films, who need to be kept apprised of 
the requirements of the school world, in order that 
correct pedagogy be reflected in their productions. One 
of the factors which has delayed the growth of the 
educational film has been the scarcity of producers quali- 
fied both in teaching and in motion picture technique. 

A carefully prepared handbook, written by investi- 
gators, possessed of the twofold point of view of the 
film technician and the teacher, can not help but aid in 
bringing together the two divergent points of view and 
in assisting both elements to attain their common pur- 
pose. Such a book should fully discuss the problem 
and its difficulties, the shortcomings and limitations as 
well as the advantages of the proposed methods, what 
others have found out concerning it, and then make 
direct recommendations, based upon accepted principles 
of pedagogy, correct reasoning, sound investigation, 
observation and experiment, as to the methods consid- 

ix 


x Foreword 

ered best. In presenting this work to the educators of 
the country, it is our hope that we may be found, in 
some small measure, to fulfill the requirements which 
we have had the temerity to set down. 

Schools in many parts of the land are using films 
for purposes of instruction. Such films are growing 
in number and improving in quality. Their effective- 
ness as teaching material is being investigated under 
competent supervision. Producers and users are ac- 
cording sincere cooperation to one another in their 
respective fields. And standards of production and 
utilization are being evolved. 

This book is dedicated to the motion picture alone, 
not in any sense to the disparagement of the slide, the 
stereograph, or other form of visual aid, but only be- 
cause the film is newest and least used, the methods for 
its use least developed, the need of definite suggestions 
concerning its use greatest, and the subject large and 
important enough in itself to justify a separate treat- 
ment. 

The motion picture has been accepted by educators 
as an important factor in instruction. It remains now 
to perfect the methods of their application to school 
needs. We hope that this handbook will succeed in 
contributing something toward this end, that it will 
prove helpful to teachers in their efforts to use this new 
medium correctly, and that it will add something of 
definite even though modest value to the growth and 
standardization of the cinema as a visual aid. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION WITH REGARD 
TO VISUAL AIDS (Growth of the pictorial 
idea. History of motion pictures. Mo- 
tion pictures and education meet.) . . 1 

The Photographic Art A New Art First Motion 
Pictures Educational. 

II. GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE IN- 
STRUCTIONAL MOTION PICTURE IN THE 
UNITED STATES 17 

Educational Film Production Films Made Dur- 
ing the World War Private Production Non- 
theatrical Companies Production in Educational 
Institutions Distribution Problems Retarding 
Factors Visual Instruction Associations Educa- 
tional Film Magazines Growth of the Movement. 

III. OBJECTIONS TO THE USE OF MOTION PIC- 

TURES IN EDUCATION 36 

Objections Mechanical Difficulties Fire Hazard 
The Question of Expense Films Make Learn- 
ing Too Easy Films Make Superficial Thinkers 
Films Reduce Reading Films Cause Distraction 
Films versus Teacher and Text "Still" Pic- 
tures are Better Proper Films are Not Available 
Films are Inaccurate Films are Too Rapid 
Benefits Uncertain and Unproven No Established 
Method of Use. 

IV. ADVANTAGES OF USING FILMS FOR INSTRUC- 

TION 58 

Positive Benefits Objections Considered. 

V ADVANTAGES OF USING FILMS FOR INSTRUC- 
TION (Continued) 78 

Further Objections Considered Tests Cited and 
Discussed Evolution of Motion Pictures. 
xi 


xii Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VI. WHERE FILMS SHOULD BE USED IN TEACH- 
ING 99 

In the Primary Grades In Advanced Grades 
In Secondary Schools In Higher Education 
Literature, History and Mathematics Chemistry 
Dramatic Art Drawing In Professional and Vo- 
cational Schools Specialized Study In Religious 
Education. 

VII. FILMS AVAILABLE FOR INSTRUCTION . . .117 

Theatrical Films Suitable for School Use^Lit- 
erature Films History Films Other Instructional 
Subjects Non-Theatrical Distribution Industrial 
Films. 

VIII. FILMS AVAILABLE FOR INSTRUCTION (Con- 
tinued) 134 

Pedagogical Films School Films of the Society 
for Visual Education, Inc., Chicago Text Films 
Distributed by National Non-Theatrical Motion 
Pictures, Inc. Religious Subjects Chronicles of 
American History Films Shown to the N. E. A. 
Films in Biology Films in Domestic Science 
and Home Economics Films in Physical Geog- 
raphy Films in United States Geography Courses 
in New York Schools for Which Films are Avail- 
able Domestic Science Civics. 

IX. How TO USE FILMS IN TEACHING (In ele- 
mentary, secondary and higher education) 159 

Methods Recommended Pedagogical Principles 
A Lesson with Films in Kindergarten Teaching 
Biology ivith Films Teaching Nature Study with 
Films A Civics Lesson A Health Lesson An 
Entomology Lesson A Few Don'ts. 

X. SOME SUCCESSFULLY APPLIED METHODS . 195 

In New York Schools In the Newark Schools 
In the Chicago Schools In the Detroit Schools 
In a Philadelphia School A Journey Geography 
Lesson In a Texas School In a Hackensack 
School 


Contents xiii 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XL TECHNIQUE OF INSTALLATION AND OPERA- 
TION 212 

The Ideal Equipment Different Kinds of Film 
Laws and Regulations Architects' Plans Types 
of Projectors Electric Current Screens Acces- 
sories Principles of Projection How to Patch 
Broken Film. 

XII. LATE DEVELOPMENTS AND FUTURE POSSI- 
BILITIES 242 

Stereoscopic Films Films in Color Talking 
Pictures Movies by Radio Animated Drawings 
Use of the Cinema in Schools of Europe Con- 
clusions. 

APPENDIX 261 

INDEX , . 275 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

THE CORRECT WAY TO TEACH WITH MOTION 

PICTURES Frontispiece 

A projector in the classroom is operated by one of the pupils. 
A large wall map reversed is used as a screen. The teacher 
is in the rear of the room watching the picture and occasion- 
ally drawing attention to some particular point. (Courtesy 
of State Street School, Hackensack, N. /.) 

STUDIES OF INSECT LIFE Page 14 

(1) From a film entitled "The Alder Bug," suitable for 
biology and nature study classes. (Community Motion Pic- 
ture Service, Inc.} 

(2) From a film showing the wonderful life history of the 
ant. Valuable in nature study and biology work. (Pathe.) 

(3) The prismatic eye of the fly, magnified many times in 
the film, "Our Common Enemy." This is of course enlarged 
again many times on the screen. (Pictorial Clubs, Inc.) 


A FLOCK OF WILD DUCKS ... . . Page 30 

As shown in the film, "The Witchita National Forest and 
Game Preserve," produced by the U. S. Department of Agri- 
culture, useful in teaching civics, biology, geography, and 
nature study. 

MOTOR OF AN AUTOMOBILE IN ANIMATION . Page 42 

From "The Elements of the Automobile," a ten-reel produc- 
tion made by a film company, in cooperation with the War 
Department, for instruction work during the World War. 
The picture shows every essential part of the motor car in 
actual operation, mostly through the medium of the animated 
mechanical drawing. (Bray Studios.) 

STUDIES OF ESKIMO LIFE . .,.,.. Page 56 

The motion picture, "Nanook of the North," gives the stu- 
dent a marvelous insight into the life of the Eskimo and the 
Far North. (P attic.) 

xv 


xvi Illustrations 

A LESSON IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY . . . Page 74 

An eclipse of the moon, from the film on "The Earth and 
the Moon," one of the series of Park Popular Science films 
on physical geography. The series develops from cause to 
effect through physical geography to the geography of com- 
merce. (National Non-Theatrical Motion Pictures, Inc.) 

WORKING MODEL OF A TURBINE .... Page 88 

Mechanigraph model used in the film, "White Coal the Fuel 
of the Future." The model is nearly five feet high. On the 
screen the water is seen rushing down the pipe or "pen- 
stock," through the turbine, which of course turns, and out 
through the tail pipe. The shaft turns and the dynamo arma- 
ture revolves. This picture, made for the Westinghouse Elec- 
tric Co., by the Harry Levey Service Corporation, required 
something more than 4,000 exposures. 

How MOTORS AND GENERATORS ARE MADE . Page 106 

This great aisle in the Westinghouse factory at East Pitts- 
burgh, where motors and generators are made, is typical of 
the subject matter in some industrial films, of great use in 
teaching commercial geography and shop work. (Harry 
Levey Service Corporation.) 

CONSERVATION LUMBERING Page 124 

From the film of the Forest Service of the U. S. Department 
of Agriculture entitled "Logging Yellow Western Pine." It 
shows the methods of logging in vogue in the National For- 
ests of Arizona and New Mexico, where the timber is cut 
under the rules of forestry and conservation. 

BIBLE STORIES IN MOTION PICTURES . . : ., Page 142 

(1) Solomon's Court, and (2) The Deluge, as depicted in 
"The Holy Bible in Motion Pictures," a fifty-two reel pro- 
duction made in Palestine and Egypt, and distributed by 
National Non-Theatrical Motion Pictures, Inc. This is an 
excellent example of the type of film available for religious 
instruction, which makes the stories of the Bible live again. 

MODERN DAIRYING Page 156 

From a rural romance entitled "Milk and Honey." It shows 
the various steps of modern, up-to-date, sanitary dairying, the 
cement floor barns, sterilizing the vessels, and cooling and 
handling the milk. A Department of Agriculture film. 


Illustrations xvii 

STORKS IN THEIR NEST . .... Page 178 

On the roof of a farmhouse in Sweden. The mother stork is 
watching the sparrows beneath. (From a highly educational 
film, "The Home Life of the Storks," produced by Bengt 
Berg.) 

THREE TYPES OF FILM , ... Page 214 

(1) The Pathescope type, interchangeable with the "safety 
standard" (28 mm.), and used only with slow-burning stock. 

(2) The professional standard size (35 mm.), used in theatres 
and in most non-theatrical installations. Made in both inflam- 
mable and slow-burning stock. 

(3) A strip of the DeForest "phonofilm," on which the 
music and the dance are registered side by side on the same 
piece of celluloid. The sound, which has been converted into 
light waves, is recorded on the shaded portion of the film to 
the left of the picture and measures 3/32 of an inch. 

IMPROVED PROFESSIONAL PROJECTOR . . . Page 220 

Professional standard type as used in large theatres. Suitable 
for school auditoriums, but not for classroom use. This type 
is essential for distances of one hundred feet or more and 
desirable for shorter distances. 

SEMI-PROFESSIONAL PROJECTORS .... Page 230 

(1) Semi-professional projector having the same mechanism 
as the professional projector of the same make. Suitable for 
both auditorium and classroom. Where moderate portability 
is a factor it can easily be picked up in one assembly by two 
men or boys, or by removing a few screws, can be carried 
in two parts by one person. This type can also be equipped 
with full professional mazda lighting equipment for throws 
of one hundred feet or over. 

(2) A type of semi-professional projector, with lantern slide 
attachment. This type is light enough to be moved from one 
room to another without being dismantled. It is best suited 
for use in the small auditorium. 

TYPES OF PORTABLE PROJECTORS ... . . Page 244 

(1) The portable suitcase type of projector is the kind rec- 
ommended for use in the classroom, and where extreme port- 
ability is wanted. It weighs less than twenty-five pounds, is 
self-contained in an asbestos-lined case, and projects a good 
picture at seventy-five or eighty feet. 

(2) Special type of projector for use with the Pathescope 
or 28 mm. "safety standard" film. Safety standard projectors 
are suitable for use in classrooms and small auditoriums. 


Motion Pictures in Education 


THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION WITH REGARD 
TO VISUAL AIDS 

EDUCATION is the imparting and acquisition of knowl- 
edge. One way in which we gain knowledge and be- 
come educated is by experience. We gain experience 
through the senses. 

"Seeing is believing" is an ancient adage in which 
there is more than a modicum of truth. That a large 
portion of the sum total of knowledge gleaned by the 
human race has come through the sense of sight is 
indisputable. 

The eye is the most retentive as well as the most 
observant of human sense organs. With many of 
the lower animals other senses are predominant, the 
sense of smell in some, hearing with others, but in 
man, sight is ascendant among his faculties. While 
oral methods may have been the first used by man in 
the transference of ideas, although there is authority 
for asserting that even here the visual was first, it is 
certain that visual images were used in the dim ages 
of antiquity to convey information and even to teach. 
The sand was used as a blackboard in the open-air 
village schools of ancient India. And mankind today 
is learning from drawings and paintings discovered 
in ancient caves in France and Spain the types of ani- 
mals familiar to men of paleolithic times, who lived 

1 


2 Motion Pictures in Education 

five or ten thousand years before the dawn of recorded 
history. 

The earliest records are picture records. The pur- 
pose of these records was to inform, to educate. It 
is now generally believed that the cavemen drew pic- 
tures on their walls not as a means of ornamentation 
but primarily to impart facts, as to issue warnings. 
Certainly their purpose was to convey ideas. 

Egyptian hieroglyphics mark the transition between 
picture writing and the early alphabets of the ancients. 
Pictures are and always have been primarily a means 
of conveying information and are in form, antecedent 
and purpose essentially educational. 

In studying the history of education we see that 
educational theory in modern times has followed three 
distinct lines. The humanists relied for purpose of 
school training on the study of good authors with 
their records of human experience. The realists be- 
lieved that teaching the child from books was second- 
ary in importance to bringing him into direct contact 
with nature and reality. The naturalists maintained 
that the child can be prepared for life only by living. 

Foremost among the realists was John Amos 
Comenius (1592-1671), who gave the world the first 
illustrated textbook, in his Orbis P ictus or The World 
Illustrated. 

Comenius believed that the child could not learn 
through words alone. He, therefore, appealed to the 
eye and the mind of the pupil through the skill of the 
artist. Words were clarified and impressed by pic- 
tures or by the thing itself when possible. His World 
Illustrated became the most popular schoolbook in 
Europe and held that place of distinction for nearly 
a century. 


History of Education and Visual Aids 3 

Pestalozzi (1746-1827) and Rousseau (1712- 
1778), representing the naturalist school, taught that 
the child should learn life by living and preached a 
"return to nature." Froebel (1782-1852), who put 
Pestalozzi's theories into practice, believed in develop- 
ing the senses of sight and touch and employed visual 
aids in his famous kindergarten. 

One of the greatest impulses given visual education 
has been afforded by the British Museum. Art gal- 
leries and museums are, in a sense, merely visual aids. 
The sculpture of ancient Greece and the paintings of 
medieval Italy were visual aids to education, religious 
and civil. People have made collections of paintings, 
statues, minerals and metals, of birds and butterflies, 
because of their special interest in these objects, be- 
cause they wanted to see, to study, to observe these 
things at their leisure and enable others to do so. The 
British Museum, which was opened to the public in 
1759 and contains printed books, manuscripts, prints 
and drawings, antiquities of many nations and people, 
coins and medals, and biological and geological ex- 
hibits, is the largest and the oldest existing of these 
storehouses of knowledge and has long been a most 
prominent and potent factor in the promotion of 
visual education. 

To Comenius, however, belongs the distinction of 
introducing visual education to the modern world. 
He may properly be called the father of visual educa- 
tion. And may we not name as the grandfather the 
teacher who first drew pictures in the sands of India 
and as the great grandfather that paleolithic man who 
first began to build a picture language on stone before 
the dawn of recorded history? 

It is apparent that visual aids are fully as old as 


4 Motion Pictures in Education 

education itself. The picture has grown steadily as an 
aid in teaching, from the time when earliest man carved 
his first crude drawings in stone until the art of 
photography and cheap reproduction made pictures 
accessible to all. 

The Photographic Art 

An even hundred years ago, the photographic art 
began. In 1822 the first permanent photographs were 
secured by a Frenchman named Niepce. As early as 
1802 a process by which records could be made by the 
action of light was discovered by a certain Tom 
Wedgewood, but no method of fixing it was then 
known. Photography, considered a recent art, is a 
centenarian and visual education is much older. 

Out of the photograph quickly grew the stereoscope 
and the lantern slide, and all three have found a promi- 
nent and lasting place in the world's educational sys- 
tems. Blackboard drawings, illustrations in textbooks, 
graphs, maps, charts, photographs, stereoscopes and 
the stereopticon have long since become intimately 
interwoven -in the fabric of pedagogy. The Visual 
Instruction Division of the New York State Depart- 
ment of Education announced that in 1922 it was 
circulating something over a half million slides besides 
numerous photographic prints, 

A New Art 

And now has come a new form of illustration, 
ushered in with the twentieth century, an art made up 
of all the methods of picturization which have gone 
before, an art which adapts itself naturally and basically 
to instructional use. This new form of picturization 
is the motion picture. It combines the principles of the 


History of Education and Visual Aids 5 

photograph and the lantern slide with the earlier arts 
of drawing and has added to them the semblance of 
motion. As a result we have a composite which seems 
destined largely to revolutionize illustrative pedagogy. 

It must be borne in mind that while education has 
been developing for several centuries, the motion pic- 
ture has only been available for education for the past 
few years. It is logical to assume that Comenius and 
Froebel would have eagerly seized upon the motion 
picture as an aid to education if it had been available 
to them. The cinema has disclosed a whole new world 
for observation and study. It has brought the miracles 
and wonders of nature to the pupil, has shown him the 
microscopic life of the ocean, life in the arctic and 
antarctic regions, how a plant unfolds, how a cater- 
pillar becomes a butterfly and many of the long hidden 
mysteries and secrets of Mother Earth. 

The motion picture has recently passed through 
stages that the other arts completed ages ago. A brief 
history may be of some value to those interested in 
visual instruction. What are motion pictures? Who 
invented them? When? Where? How? 

What do we mean by "motion pictures"? The defi- 
nition of Dr. Rowland Rogers, instructor in Motion 
Picture Production at Columbia University, is, "Mo- 
tion pictures are a method of communicating thought 
by mean of a series of photographs projected in rapid 
succession to simulate action." 

F. A. Talbot, in his book, Practical Cinematography, 
says: 

Animated photography is an optical illusion purely and 
simply. The eye imagines that it sees movement. Each 
picture is an isolated snap-shot taken in the fraction of a sec- 
ond. In projection the images follow so rapidly that the 


6 Motion Pictures in Education 

successive views dissolve into one another. The explanation 
is persistence of vision. This peculiarity of the eye and brain 
remains a scientific puzzle. 

Animated photography grew out of still photog- 
raphy, and its development was gradual. Valuable 
contributions were made by a number of the early 
experimenters and investigators. 

While the development of the motion picture is 
new, the idea behind it is old. As long ago as 65 B.C., 
Lucretius in his Rerum Natura wrote of "images that 
appear to move," and Ptolemy, the Greek philosopher, 
wrote a series of books on optics about 130 A.D., in 
which he spoke of persistence of vision and described 
simple apparatus by means of which the phenomenon 
might be observed. It is the existence of this phenom- 
enon that has made possible the development of the 
"moving picture." 

Some see the dawn of the idea of motion pictures in 
the nursery toy, "The Wheel of Life," invented in 
1833 by W. H. Homer, which proved quite popular 
in England and also in America, where it made its 
appearance ten years later. This consisted of a hollow 
cylinder with vertical slits cut into it and having repre- 
sentations on the inner surface. By turning the wheels 
the drawings or paintings of animals or people in 
different positions, seen in rapid succession, gave the 
idea of continuity of motion. 

It must be remembered that the development of the 
motion picture we know today has been made possible 
by a number of contributing factors, the most impor- 
tant being the development of the art of photography, 
the discovery of a flexible sensitized medium for re- 
cording photographs, and the invention of apparatus 
for taking and showing pictures. 


History of Education and Visual Aids 7 

Dr. Sellers, of Philadelphia, amusing himself with 
this nursery toy, made a series of photographs of his 
two sons, picturing one in the act of driving a nail 
and the other seated in a rocking chair, rocking. To 
show them to better advantage than was possible in 
The Wheel of Life, he invented a machine, the Kine- 
matoscope, patented in 1861. He was the first to 
use photographs of real people in continued action 
and to arrive at the conclusion that to obtain continuity 
of motion the picture should be at rest during the mo- 
ment of vision. This is the principle of the intermit- 
tent movement, used today in both motion picture 
cameras and projectors. In 1860 Dr. Sellers made 
what was probably the first camera for taking pictures 
to be reproduced to simulate motion. 

A photographic study of a horse race made by the 
Englishman Edward Muybridge, in 1872, at Palo 
Alto, California, furnished the next step forward. 
Muybridge's objective was the analysis of movement. 
He secured twenty- four cameras, placed them at the 
edge of the race-course, conveniently close together, 
with a fine thread attached to the shutter of each and 
stretched across the track so that a horse in passing 
would break the string and make an exposure on the 
sensitized plate. 

The results created such surprise and enthusiasm 
that Muybridge then took up in earnest his experi- 
ments in pictured motion, which continued twenty 
years. He invented a machine, the Zoopraxo scope, 
which projected "moving" pictures on a screen, thus 
enabling a number of persons to watch the results 
simultaneously. Muybridge's machine consisted of a 
large glass disc with reproductions of the photographs 
taken with different cameras set along its margin. It 


8 Motion Pictures in Education 

was also Muybridge who, working at the University 
of Pennsylvania, succeeded in making the first instan- 
taneous photographs, an essential step in cinema- 
tography. 

Muybridge gave twenty-five years of his life to the 
cause of pictured motion. He succeeded in taking in- 
stantaneous photographs of rapid action and in project- 
ing them on a screen in such a way that the spectator 
received the impression of continuity of motion. 

The first published report of Muybridge's experi- 
ments was received with great interest by artists and 
scientists in Europe and America. In 1881 Muybridge 
made his first appearance in Europe, addressing a 
group of eminent scientists at Paris at the laboratory 
of Dr. E. J. Marey, who was soon to make valuable 
contributions to the growth of the cinema. 

In 1882 Dr. Marey announced the invention of a 
"photographic gun," the first camera capable of taking, 
through a single lens, the number of exposures per 
second requisite for recreating the illusion of motion 
when projected. In his book entitled Movement, Dr. 
Marey describes his invention as follows: 

We united in a single apparatus all the accessories neces- 
sary for chronophotography on fixed or moving plates as well 
as for regulating at will the frequency and duration of the 
exposures. The weak point of the photographic gun was 
principally that the images were taken on glass plates. The 
maximum was twelve pictures in the second and had to be 
very small. These difficulties may be overcome by substitut- 
ing for the glass disc a continuous film very slightly coated 
with gelatine and bromide of silver. 

This book, published in 1895, also contains detailed 
accounts of some extremely interesting early scientific 
experiments in pictured motion to which reference will 
be made later. 


History of Education and Visual Aids 9 

While Dr. Marey was making a scientific study of 
movement, one Thomas A. Edison of East Orange, 
N. J., had become interested in Muybridge's experi- 
ments, and his inventive mind began to work on the 
development of pictured motion. To him we owe the 
Kinetograph, a recording machine for taking motion 
pictures as now used. 

Motion pictures may be said to have been formally 
presented to the American public at the Chicago 
World's Fair in 1893. Here Muybridge exhibited on 
his revolving disc machine 20,000 original photo- 
graphs dealing chiefly with animal movement, which 
were viewed by men of science from all over the world, 
and here Edison exhibited his Kinetograph, the first 
motion picture machine employing film, which im- 
mediately sprang into popular favor. In the Kineto- 
graph the observer looked at the film instead of at the 
screen, and only one person could see the picture at a 
time. The basic invention of motion pictures as we 
know them today was here, but more work was needed 
to be done on them. 

Mr. Edison, in a letter to the authors, refers to his 
invention as follows: 

I was the first man to invent the motion picture apparatus. 
The Kinetograph was the name that I gave to the recording 
or "Taking" machine. If you will examine the projecting 
machine to enlarge pictures and show them on the screen you 
will find that it is nothing but the recording machine re- 
versed, but it was necessary to add certain details and devices 
to make this reversal practical. 

The means of throwing pictures on a screen by means 
of a moving film was yet to be developed. 

Although the art of photography had advanced until 
the taking of instantaneous photographs was now pos- 


10 Motion Pictures in Education 

sible and cameras had been invented by means of 
which photographs could be taken in rapid succession 
through a single lens, other problems remained for the 
early inventors to overcome, namely to find a proper 
vehicle to carry the pictures and mechanism for show- 
ing them. Many were the scientists who labored to 
discover an adequate medium to receive the photo- 
graphic exposures. Edison realized from the first that 
a light, flexible medium was needed to replace the 
bulky glass plates. About 1888, George Eastman, a 
manufacturer of dry plates, in Rochester, N. Y., began 
experiments to find something to replace glass plates, 
which were both bulky and breakable. He first tried 
a transparent paper covered with an emulsion. But 
it was not until the Rev. Hannibal Goodwin at last hit 
upon celluloid as a base that a satisfactory substitute 
was obtained. Its possibilities were immediately rec- 
ognized by Eastman, who is largely responsible for its 
development. 

In 1889 a flexible film became available to inventors 
at work on the problem of recording and reproducing 
pictured motion. At first negative film stock was used 
as positive also, and it was not until 1895 that the 
Eastman company began commercially to manufacture 
positive film, the demand for which has grown to 
millions of feet a month. It is interesting to note that 
for some time after the inception of motion pictures 
a much wider film stock than that employed at present 
was used. 

Now that a medium for receiving pictured impres- 
sions was at hand it remained for inventors to find a 
means for showing the pictures. C. Francis Jenkins, 
a young clerk in the U. S. Treasury Department at 
Washington, came forward with a machine which 


History of Education and Visual Aids 11 

would project on a wall or screen pictures from mov- 
ing celluloid film so that these "moving pictures" (the 
expression was not invented until much later) could 
be seen by a number of persons at once. 

Mr. Jenkins' story of his early invention as told the 
writer is interesting: 

I began working on the development of an apparatus for 
recording and reproducing motion in 1890 and the film I 
used in my first camera and projector and subsequently was 
kodak film, purchased in the local photo supply shops, slit 
and joined into long, narrow ribbons by cementing with 
collodion. My first exhibitions were in 1892, private affairs. 
My first public exhibition was in Washington in 1893, but the 
first public performance of which there is any newspaper or 
other written account was held on June 6, 1894, at Richmond, 
Indiana. 

Here on the walls of a jewelry store a showing of 
pictures made on celluloid film and projected on a 
simple apparatus was given before a small group of 
interested relatives and friends a performance that 
was afterwards to become famous in motion picture 
history. The necessary light was supplied by an elec- 
tric arc and the electric current to feed it was obtained 
from the trolley wire outside. Not only was it the 
first public showing of motion pictures of which we 
have record but it was the first showing of colored 
films. The subject of the film was a butterfly dance 
by a popular vaudeville star, and each separate picture 
had been painstakingly colored by hand. 

In March, 1895, Jenkins and Thomas Armat entered 
into partnership for making projection machines 
which would throw pictures on a wall where they 
could be seen by a group of people. At the Cotton 
States Exposition in Atlanta, 1895, Jenkins and 
Armat gave public showings at an admission price 


12 Motion Pictures in Education 

of twenty-five cents, using two projection machines, 
the amusement-loving public's first opportunity to be- 
come movie fans! A fire broke out, destroyed the 
equipment and left the two inventors stranded. Soon 
afterwards they parted company. In 1896 Armat 
and Edison entered into an agreement for the making 
of an improved Jenkins- Armat machine under the 
name of Edison Vitascope Armat Design. Jenkins 
received for his interests the sum of twenty-five hun- 
dred dollars. 

On April 27, 1896, New York saw its first motion 
picture show, pictures being projected on a screen at 
a theatre on 23rd Street, and in June of the same year 
the Cinematograph projector, perfected by Lumiere 
of Paris, using Edison's "peep-hole" machine as a 
model, was brought to New York, and a motion pic- 
ture show was given with it at Keith's Union Square 
theatre. 

From that time on showmen saw the entertainment 
possibilities of this new medium and developed them. 

First Motion Pictures Educational 

It is most significant however, that Muybridge's 
experiments, which mark the real beginning of motion 
pictures, were scientific in character and results. The 
first use of motion pictures, by the founder of the art, 
was in education. Moreover, for many years Muy- 
bridge's experiments were conducted at the University 
of Pennsylvania with funds appropriated by the Uni- 
versity as a contribution to the advancement of science 
and education. In taking up the work practically 
where Muybridge left off, Dr. Marey also devoted 
his experiments solely to the attainment and demon- 
stration of scientific facts. Dr. Marey was an eminent 


History of Education and Visual Aids 13 

French scientist, a member of the Institute and of the 
Academy of Medicine, Professor at the College of 
France and Director of the Physiological Station, 
where most of his experiments in pictured motion were 
conducted. 

In the preface of his authoritative work on Move- 
ment, previously referred to, Dr. Marey says: 

The Graphic method, with its various developments, has 
been of immense service to almost every branch of science. 
* * * Almost all vital functions are accompanied by move- 
ment, but any attempt to investigate them is beset with diffi- 
culty, for the majority are very complicated or very rapid, but 
it occurred to us that many of these problems could be solved 
by chronophotography. [This is the name given by Dr. 
Marey to what we now call cinematography.] 

Some of Dr. Marey's early motion pictures are of 
as much scientific interest today as when they were per- 
formed. One extremely interesting one was made to 
discover the way the flight of one insect differs from 
that of another. Others showed to eager scientists 
the locomotion of animals in water the jellyfish, 
comatula, eel, skate, seahorse, cuttlefish and starfish. 
In another experiment Dr. Marey succeeded in photo- 
graphing the successive phases of heart action in the 
tortoise under conditions of artificial circulation and 
was thus enabled to study the mechanism of cardiac 
pulsation. It was now possible to see the beating of 
a heart ! This was the first application of motion pic- 
tures to experimental physiology. In recording this 
experiment Dr. Marey writes enthusiastically: 

By means of chronophotography we were enabled to make 
direct examinations of the movements of the heart by a more 
subtle eye than our own and one that is capable of grasping 
in a moment the sum total of changes which take place in the 
cavities of the heart. 


14 Motion Pictures in Education 

It was Dr. Marey and his associates who first took 
pictures of moving objects under the microscope. One 
of the earliest experiments showed the movements of 
the blood in capillary vessels. 

Another pioneer scientific investigator who stands 
out prominently is M. J. Carvallo of France, who, as 
sub-director and secretary of the Marey Institute, was 
probably the first to harness the X-ray to cinema- 
tography. He succeeded as early as 1900 in producing 
pictures in motion showing the process of digestion in 
the stomach of a frog. 

Dr. J. Comandon, also of the Marey Institute, was 
probably the first to popularize the educational film. 
He made successful X-ray cinematographs of the 
bending of the knee, the opening of the hand, the play 
of the muscles and also marvelous micro-cinemato- 
graphs of microorganisms so minute that two million 
of them occupy a cube measuring 1/25 of an inch 
across. 

It was about this time that the well-known firm of 
Pathe Freres first made its appearance. Under its 
auspices Comandon did much of his work. So minute 
was much of his subject material* that he had to em- 
ploy the ultra-microscope in making some of his films, 
a wonderful accomplishment in that early day of the 
cinema. Some of his magnifications were as large as 
50,000 times natural size, a minute organism, much 
too small to be seen with the naked eye, appearing on 
the screen as large as a dinner plate. These earliest 
of microscopic films were shown at the Sorbonne, 
where they were pronounced a new and reliable means 
of teaching bacteriology and of solving many problems 
theretofore impossible of solution. 

A film of peculiar interest made in Europe early in 


(Community Motion Picture Service') 


y SOLDIER" 
ANTS 

GUARDING 
A3APTIVE 


k /AV "" 


(Pathc} 


(Pictorial Clubs) 


STUDIES OF INSECT LIFE 
1. Alder Bug. 2. Ant. 3. Eye of Fly. 


History of Education and Visual Aids 15 

the century was a picture record of the union of the 
sperm and the ovum. Another showed the separation 
of the membrane and segmentation of the sea-urchin. 
These were made by Dr. G. Ries of Switzerland. In 
another film, made by M. Demeny of France, the way 
in which the tongue moves in the articulation of con- 
sonants was shown. It was believed that films of such 
nature would prove most useful in teaching the dumb 
to speak. 

Many of these early scientists employed the cinema 
in research work and original investigations, with most 
satisfying results, but few of the films they recorded 
were ever given to the general public because they 
appealed to only a limited few. 

All of these early experiments and accomplishments 
in Europe were in the cause of education and instruc- 
tion. The use of motion pictures for entertainment 
was a later development. It remained for the showmen 
of America to discover the entertainment value of the 
film and to develop it into an important industry. It is 
obvious that the field of education has first call on the 
cinematographic art. 

Since the early days of its development theatrical 
use has prompted a growth, refinement and perfection 
of the art such as education and science could not pos- 
sibly have contributed in so short a time. In a little 
more than a quarter of a century, the art under the 
stimulus of demand for recreation has progressed 
from crude beginnings to the fifth industry of our 
nation, the most popular form of entertainment in the 
world, an art, if you wish to call it such, which helps 
mould for good or evil the views and character of the 
six million people who are said to attend motion pic- 
ture exhibitions in this country every day. While we 


16 Motion Pictures in Education 

owe the greater part of this development to the recre- 
ational field, educational use of films has never been 
entirely abandoned, has been slowly but steadily in- 
creasing and is inevitably destined to become, in the 
fullness of time, the most extensive as well as the 
most important use to which the cinema shall have 
been devoted. 

Educators and men of science have instinctively 
turned to motion pictures for aid in teaching and 
demonstration. Continually, though spasmodically, 
has the educational use of the cinema been slowly 
evolving. Some educators have made excessive claims 
for the motion picture as the coming panacea of all 
education's shortcomings, destined to supersede text- 
books and supplant teachers, to furnish a soft and easy 
road to knowledge. Others have been equally exces- 
sive and intemperate in discounting pictures as a frill, 
a fad, as of no real merit in education. But between 
these two extremes have been men and women who 
have recognized in the motion picture a valuable sup- 
plement and aid to the imparting of knowledge and 
who have been patiently and with much labor and 
confidence in the future helping the pictures over the 
rocks of early endeavor. 

The production of strictly pedagogical films and 
the use of films in education have scarcely been 
started, but sufficient progress has been made in this 
direction to point the way unmistakably. 


II 

GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE INSTRUC- 
TIONAL MOTION PICTURE IN THE 
UNITED STATES 

WHILE in this country of commerce most attention 
has been devoted to the development of motion pic- 
tures for the more profitable field of entertainment, 
their value for education, with which Muybridge and 
Marey first endowed them, was never lost sight of. 
The Federal Government was among the first to utilize 
motion pictures on an extended scale for instruction. 
The U. S. Reclamation Service seems to have been the 
pioneer among the bureaus at Washington to take up 
this work, and that bureau exhibited at the Jamestown 
Exposition 1907 films showing the work of the Gov- 
ernment in reclaiming arid lands. 

Educational Film Production 

The U. S. Department of Agriculture was soon to 
follow and was the first branch of the Government to 
establish a laboratory of its own for the production 
of educational films. Pictures on plant and animal 
production, forestry, plant and animal diseases, home 
economics, dairying, food chemistry, road building 
and numerous other subjects covered by the varied 
activities of the Department were made. That they 
have not become more widely known has been owing 
to the lack of sufficient funds to provide enough copies 
to meet the popular demand. Their use has been 

17 


18 Motion Pictures in Education 

largely confined to members of the Department and 
of the State Agricultural Colleges. These films are of 
considerable educational value, contain a wide range 
of scientific and practical information and have for a 
long time probably constituted the largest single col- 
lection of educational films on a related group of sub- 
jects, if we except the geographic or travel films, 
which, because of their wide popular appeal for enter- 
tainment and their facility of production, have long 
formed the largest numerical group. 

The manner of growth and development of this 
pioneer educational film work holds much of interest 
for those concerned in visual education. The work 
was not formally established until 1918, when, during 
the writer's tenure of office, it received recognition and 
was raised to the dignity of an independent unit. 
Credit for starting film work in the Department of 
Agriculture should be given, though seldom is, to 
Joseph Abel, a photographer in the Bureau of Animal 
Industry. In 1909 he made a film of the live-stock 
show at the Alaska- Yukon-Pacific Exposition and, 
later, films on the Texas Fever Tick and Its Eradica- 
tion. It all too frequently happens that the real 
pioneer, the man who struggles against almost insur- 
mountable odds in original creative work and accumu- 
lates a vast fund of expert and useful knowledge and 
experience in the effort is left with his experience and 
knowledge alone to comfort him, while newcomers 
who merely use his knowledge and build their reputa- 
tions on his earlier accomplishments reap the credit 
for the entire undertaking. 

When the Secretary of Agriculture awakened to a 
realization of the importance of the motion picture in 
the educational work of the Department, the Section 


Growth and Development 19 

of Illustrations was authorized to undertake the pro- 
ject, Abel's equipment was transferred and his own 
work promptly forgotten. Later a governing commit- 
tee was formed of which the writer was the member 
representing the Forest Service, a bureau of the De- 
partment. Still later, the writer was placed in full 
charge of the film activities of the Department and 
organized them into a separate division. In this divi- 
sion were made the first films on forestry in this coun- 
try, and, we believe, in the world. Among the more 
important and unique films produced were microcine- 
matographs of plant diseases and analyses of motion 
studies of the wear of shoe leather by men marching, 
the latter conducted under the scientific direction of 
the Bureau of Chemistry for the War Department. 
The Department of Agriculture, it is believed, was the 
first successfully to combine cinematography and ani- 
mated technical drawing, in a film entitled The Bar- 
barous Barberry, a study of wheat rust. 

Other films of special scientific interest built by the 
Department were The Seventeen Year Locust, Poul- 
try Parasites, and Grain Dust Explosions, in which the 
explosive character of grain dust in suspension was 
demonstrated. Many films of more popular appeal 
were produced in that period, such as Milk and Honey, 
Wliat a Careless Hunter in the Woods Can Do and 
The Home Demonstration Agent. 

The filming of this wide variety of subjects was 
facilitated by the fact that in the Department of Ag- 
riculture the film efforts of all the seventeen Bureaus 
were, as they still are, coordinated in one unit, while 
in other Government Departments where film work is 
carried on each bureau conducts its own film activities, 
notably the Bureau of Mines, the Reclamation Service 


20 Motion Pictures in Education 

and National Parks Service of the Department of the 
Interior; the Bureau of Navigation, Recruiting Divi- 
sion and Marine Corps of the Navy Department; the 
Signal Corps and Army Medical Museum of the War 
Department ; the Children's Bureau of the Department 
of Labor and the Bureau of Standards of the Depart- 
ment of Commerce. During the World War, the War 
and Navy Departments maintained film divisions for 
the twofold purpose of supplying informational pic- 
tures to the public and of instructing officers and men 
in the science of war. 

Films Made During the World War 

The Committee on Public Information, created at 
the time of our entrance into the World War for the 
dissemination of information concerning the govern- 
ment's war activities, established a film division which, 
according to the report of George Creel, its chairman, 
was second only to the newspaper division in spread- 
ing information at home and abroad. The film activ- 
ities of this committee were begun, with the coopera- 
tion of the writer, in the motion picture laboratory of 
the U. S. Department of Agriculture and functioned 
there until it became a well-established organization 
and outgrew the Department's facilities. This divi- 
sion by its own large appropriations and through the 
unlimited cooperation afforded by other branches of 
the government, the motion picture industry and the 
general public was able to produce and widely dis- 
tribute instructional and inspirational pictures which 
were real factors in maintaining and increasing the 
morale and patriotism of our people. 

Much of the enormous volume of film produced was 
of permanent historical value, though most was of 


Growth and Development 21 

ephemeral interest and of value only during a continua- 
tion of hostilities. The attention given to motion pic- 
tures by the Government during the war gave them 
an impetus, a dignity and an importance as a medium 
of conveying information that they never before 
possessed. 

For a time after the close of the war much of this 
film, particularly that made for the public's informa- 
tion, was available to educational institutions, and 
some may still be had from various State Universities 
where they were deposited. Because of necessary 
governmental post-bellum economies, no provision is 
now made by the Federal Government for the use of 
these pictures, and the bulk of this material is now 
lying largely unused. The stimulus, however, is still 
felt. The Departments of Agriculture, Interior, Labor 
and Commerce and, to a smaller extent, other De- 
partments at Washington are carrying on their produc- 
tion of valuable pictures, and several states, educa- 
tional institutions and private companies are yearly 
turning out and making available a modest but in- 
creasing number of screen studies and pedagogical 
pictures, and these are visibly improving in quality as 
time goes on. 

Private Production 

Many of the large theatrical film companies have 
from time to time established educational departments, 
and many firms have arisen which are devoting their 
time entirely to producing educational films. The lat- 
ter are in most cases smaller, but more persistent and 
to a much greater extent engaged in original educa- 
tional production. The larger companies have devoted 
themselves more to readapting their theatrical short- 


22 Motion Pictures in Education 

length subjects. Most of the original educational pro- 
duction has been carried on in the smaller independent 
companies organized for that purpose. Several of 
these are doing work of real pedagogic merit on a 
wide variety of subjects. In addition, individuals have 
arisen here and there who have made or sponsored 
the production of one or more films on a particular 
subject in which they were specializing. Such a film 
as The Birth of the Dragon Fly (U)* and the film 
explaining the Einstein theory of relativity are the 
work not of a company engaged in regular produc- 
tion but of individuals. These small groups have made 
some valuable contributions to the steadily increasing 
library of films of real pedagogic value. 

It is obvious that the production and distribution 
of instructional films are the functions of organiza- 
tions or individuals specializing in these efforts and 
can not apparently be handled properly by theatrical 
companies. The latter seem to have little sympathy 
with the school angle, are not possessed of the point 
of view necessary for success in cooperating with 
schools and seem to find the profits in the school busi- 
ness not large or rapid enough to suit their investment 
requirements. 

In fairness it must be said that their point of view 
has largely been borne out by experience. A well- 
known producing and distributing company which 
pioneered in the educational field and produced a num- 
ber of worth-while and successful films highly com- 
mended by the non-theatrical user has abandoned the 
educational field after a comprehensive study of the 

* Wherever practicable the distributors of films mentioned in this 
book will be indicated by initials, the key to which will be found 
in the appendix, together with the addresses of the distributors 
referred to. 


Growth and Development 23 

situation and consistent trial and effort lasting over a 
period of several years. 

"It simply does not pay to try to meet the needs of 
the non-theatrical exhibitor," said an officer of this 
company, discussing informally the educational film 
field. 

"The non-theatrical exhibitor is usually a poor business 
man, he is unreliable, far from a steady customer, he does not 
know what he wants, yet he is dissatisfied with what has been 
produced, or else he wants us to produce a film according to 
his ideas to meet his needs without stopping to consider that 
such a film might meet the needs of no other user of educa- 
tional films. In addition, his equipment is often poor, he 
damages the film far more than does his theatrical neighbor, 
and yet is willing to pay Jess than a fifth of the price the 
theatrical exhibitor expects to pay. It is because the non- 
theatrical exhibitor wants everything for nothing or prac- 
tically nothing that we have abandoned, at least for the 
present, the non-theatrical field. The few dollars which the 
relatively few non-theatrical users of films are willing to pay 
for films are not worth bothering with. We have found from 
experience that it simply does not pay to pass the films over 
the counter to these customers, and it will not be a paying 
proposition until the demand for educational films increases 
from about 400 requests per day scattered throughout the 
entire country to about 4,000 concentrated in key centers." 

The foregoing comment on the educational film situa- 
tion coming from a well-known producing and dis- 
tributing company is significant. It is a severe but in 
many cases a true indictment of the non-theatrical 
user of films. It is the user of films here described 
that hinders rather than helps the cause of visual edu- 
cation. The cause can be furthered by business-like 
methods on the part of educators using films and their 
willingness to pay fair rental prices. 

Two other of the largest theatrical film companies 
started educational departments, one, the big Famous 


24 Motion Pictures in Education 

Players-Laskey Corporation. Both employed men of 
acknowledged ability to carry on the work but abol- 
ished the departments after several months' experience 
because these departments did not pay for themselves. 

Educational departments have recently been estab- 
lished by two other large companies, Pathe and Fox. 
These have devoted their non-theatrical efforts mainly 
to renting the more suitable of their theatrical produc- 
tions to the non-theatrical customers and seem to have 
made comparatively little progress in the production or 
compilation of films designed for instruction. 

It is only fair at this point to let the theatrical film 
industry speak for itself with regard to the production 
and distribution of pedagogical films. Hon. Will EL 
Hays, President of the Motion Picture Producers and 
Distributors of America, said at the 1922 meeting of 
the National Education Association at Boston: 

On behalf of our organization I offer to your association 
all of our facilities to aid in your experimentation. There is 
already a great demand for pedagogic pictures. I propose 
that we jointly study that demand and that we jointly find 
ways and means of supplying it. Let a committee be ap- 
pointed of this association made up of the very best talent 
within your ranks ; let them meet with the great producers of 
the country and find ways to use our facilities. We ask you 
to aid us and let us aid you in the study of the whole problem 
of the use of motion pictures as a direct pedagogic instru- 
ment. Let us together find the means of making classroom 
pictures which are scientifically, psychologically, and peda- 
gogically sound. Not only can we take care of the demand 
which now obtains; but the great demand which is imminent, 
and which will certainly come, must be met by producers with 
a supply that measures up to the ideas of the educators of the 
country. 

And later he made the following statement: 

With the National Education Association and the Federal 
Commissioner of Education we are now engaged in the study 


Growth and Development 25 

of the efficacy of the film in the classroom and in working out 
the arrangements to make certain the production of pictures 
for classroom work which will be pedagogically, scientifically 
and psychologically sound. 

Although this sounds encouraging for the future, 
attention should be called to the fact that the big theat- 
rical companies represented by Mr. Hays and whose 
organization is thus promising the production of peda- 
gogical films are not the ones responsible for the bulk 
of the pedagogical films, some of very excellent qual- 
ity, now available for schools. It has been the small 
independent educational producer who has made the 
large majority of the pedagogical films now being used 
in instruction and from whom we may continue to 
expect films of real merit in the future. 

Whether or not these statements and plans of Mr. 
Hays presage actual production of pedagogical films 
on a large scale by the theatrical film companies, they 
do make it quite evident that the leaders of the indus- 
try generally realize that the educational film is to be- 
come a very prominent factor in the motion picture 
world. 

Non-theatrical Companies 

In film production, as in book publishing, the manu- 
facture and distribution of a product for the use of 
schools seerm to demand specialization. It is for this 
reason that such commercial companies have arisen 
and are progressing as The Society for Visual Edu- 
cation, Inc., National Non-Theatrical Motion Pictures, 
Inc., Community Motion Picture Service, Carter 
Cinema Company, Visual Textbook Publishers and 
other similar organizations, which are devoting them- 
selves exclusively to the non-theatrical field of pictures. 


26 Motion Pictures in Education 

It has been mainly through the efforts of such com- 
panies as these and of many of the state universities, 
the Federal Government and some of the large manu- 
facturing companies, that even now a fairly large 
quantity of acceptable instructional film is to be had. 
Films on commercial, physical and general geography, 
zoology, literature, civics, agriculture, hygiene, surgery 
and to a lesser extent chemistry, botany, history and 
physics are available. 

Some of these have been produced primarily for 
school and church use. The major portion, however, 
was originally made for theatrical use but have been 
found suitable also for educational purposes. In many 
cases such material has been re-edited to make it suit- 
able for the school and other non-theatrical use. We 
shall have much to say regarding re-edited film later. 
Most of the films of greatest instructional value, how- 
ever, are those being made primarily for instruction. 
Some of the foremost educators in the country are 
devoting their time to such educational pictures and 
members of the faculties of some of our great univer- 
sities, such as Columbia and Chicago, are cooperating 
with experienced film producers in building pictures 
paralleling standard courses of study in our schools. 
Perhaps the most conspicuous and promising example 
of these pictures are the films on the history of the 
United States, now actually being produced by the 
Chronicles of American History, Inc., in association 
with Yale University Press. 

Production in Educational Institutions 

It is interesting to note that ten great Universities 
have been or are now directly or indirectly producing 
motion pictures. They are Yale University, already 


Growth and Development 27 

mentioned, Chicago University, the Universities of Illi- 
nois, Indiana, Iowa, Oklahoma, Michigan, Nebraska, 
Wisconsin and Utah. 

The United States Naval Academy at Annapolis 
has produced analyses-of-motion films on Boxing, 
Wrestling and Swimming (NN-T) for use in physical 
instruction. 

The State Department of Public Instruction at 
Raleigh, North Carolina, has produced a film history 
of the State. The University of Nebraska has erected 
a $20,000 motion picture studio on its campus. 

Distribution Problems 

One of the most troublesome problems in the in- 
troduction of visual instruction has been that of film 
distribution. It is an even greater problem today than 
that of film production, for of what use are the thou- 
sands of excellent pictures that may be in the vaults 
of producers in New York if the user of films in Texas 
or California can not obtain them? Although the 
problem of exhibition or utilization of the motion 
picture in schools is what we are most concerned with 
in this book, the problem of distribution has a vital 
bearing and is of concern to all who are using or who 
may desire to use films in education. Independent 
educational producers have been unable, because of 
the lack of an adequate system of national non-theat- 
rical exchanges, to circulate their products to various 
parts of the country except at prohibitive expense for 
transportation and with unreasonable loss of time. In 
the attempt to meet this difficulty there are growing up 
here and there through the country local educational 
distributors of motion pictures who are offering to 
both producers and users more or less satisfactory 


28 Motion Pictures in Education 

facilities for the local handling of educational film 
product. 

Probably the largest non-theatrical distribution fac- 
tors up to this time have been the extension depart- 
ments of various State Universities or institutions of 
similar character. The following institutions are dis- 
tributing films in their respective states: The Uni- 
versities of California, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, 
Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, Okla- 
homa, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin; the Iowa 
State Agricultural College, the Illinois Agricultural 
Association, the Kansas State Normal School, the 
Louisiana State Normal School, the Department of 
Education of Massachusetts, the Mississippi Agricul- 
tural and Mechanical College, the Bureau of Com- 
munity Service of North ^Carolina, the North Dakota 
Agricultural and Washington State College. 

Such of these institutions as the Universities of 
Wisconsin and California and the Iowa State College 
have large film libraries and are accomplishing con- 
siderable distribution, while many others are making 
a rather futile attempt. Ten or more of these in- 
stitutions operate visual instruction departments which 
circulate motion pictures to non-theatrical exhibitors 
within their respective states. The service offered is, 
in most instances, rather a community than a school 
service and designed primarily for entertainment 
rather than instruction. However, many valuable 
pedagogical films may be secured from these state dis- 
tributing centers and some give special attention to 
supplying school needs. Some of the films produced 
by and for the Federal Government may also be se- 
cured through the state universities and agricultural 
colleges. The work being done in North Carolina in 


Growth and Development 29 

teaching whole communities by means of films is so 
unique that it is worthy of mention here. 

The Bureau of Commercial Service, which later 
became a division of the State Department of Educa- 
tion, was organized in 1916 under a voluntary ar- 
rangement entered into by the State Departments of 
Education, Health and Agriculture, the State College 
of Agriculture and Engineering, the State College for 
Women and State Farmers' Union. In 1917 the legis- 
lature appropriated $25,000 for the work "designed 
to improve social and educational conditions in rural 
communities through a series of motion pictures se- 
lected by the Department of Public Instruction." 

Complete portable operating units were organized, 
each having a lighting plant, projector, screen and 
other equipment mounted on trucks. Ten community 
circuits were started. Application for the service came 
from the county Board of Education. In applying for 
the service the community agreed to pay two thirds the 
cost while the state paid one third. To raise their 
share the community charged a small admission fee 
which, in most cases, was sufficient to meet expenses. 
Where there were ten community centers holding two 
meetings a month, the work in a short time grew until 
there were twenty county units holding 400 community 
meetings a month with an average monthly attendance 
of 45,000. In one mountain county not over forty in 
the first audience of 280 had ever before seen a motion 
picture. And in the remote mountain sections people 
often walked for eight or ten miles to attend a meeting. 

Each program given usually consisted of six reels 
made up from comedy, history, literature and agri- 
cultural subjects of both general and local interest. 
The Department began at once to collect its own film 


30 Motion Pictures in Education 

library and in four years' time owned over 800 films. 
In addition to purchasing, the Bureau started produc- 
ing films of local interest, showing the best and poorest 
schools, homes, farms, roads, livestock, etc. These 
"county progress" films, as they were called, were first 
shown in the communities in which they were taken, 
sent around the circle and then placed in the state's 
permanent film library. One writer, referring to the 
venture, said: 

North Carolina has scored a visual success. It is sure to 
spread, for there is no finer way of getting a grip on rural 
folk and increasing their content with country life. By con- 
certed effort the best type of educational and recreational films 
can be brought to brighten the lives and widen the horizon of 
young and old even in the most remote sections of our 
country. 

While the country should properly look to the State 
and Federal Governments to assist and encourage all 
worthy educational undertakings, we believe that it 
will be the responsibility of the commercial field to 
supply the bulk of educational materials, as it has in 
the past, and this applies to motion pictures as to other 
materials of instruction. Because of the peculiar 
nature of the undertaking, the great initial cost of pro- 
ducing films and the consequent need of large buying 
power, the demand for facilities for transferring film 
supplies from one locality to another to meet shifting 
needs and other considerations, the solution of the 
problem of instructional film distribution would seem 
to lie with the companies prepared to establish and 
maintain national systems of exchanges devoted ex- 
clusively to supplying films to the non-theatrical field. 
At this writing at least one such movement is under 
way. No doubt other firms will soon follow the 
example set. 


* 


H r> *:f-.. : x'* 

> #.' : " 


Y*i ' 

'*&" 


p*f^ 

?T 5r ^- 

E9UI.V. 


Growth and Development 31 

Not only will such distribution systems place films 
within reach of schools everywhere but will promote 
and encourage the production of additional pedagogi- 
cal film by affording its producers a profitable outlet. 
There is bound to grow out of this effort and in 
response to an incessant and ever-increasing demand 
from users means of placing available educational films 
in the hands of those who need them. This in turn 
will be such an encouragement to producers as will 
greatly stimulate supply. The ball is already rolling, 
has acquired considerable momentum and needs only 
a reasonable time to reach its destined goal. 

Retarding Factors 

Lack of an adequate supply of suitable educational 
films, doubt as to the character of projector to pur- 
chase, unreasonable and lack of uniform legislation 
regarding the use of films in schools, lack of sufficient 
funds with which to purchase projectors and films, 
lack of proper cooperation between the users, pro- 
ducers and distributors of educational films, lack of 
architectural provision for motion pictures in school 
buildings and the conservatism of educators are some 
of the factors which have retarded the demand for and 
the use of motion pictures in instruction. 

Despite these factors, the use of the cinema as a 
supplement in school work has developed remarkably 
in the past few years until now it has become con- 
clusively evident that films are to be an important and 
an essential part of school work and that in the near 
future no well equipped and efficient school will .be 
without a projection machine and an adequate appro- 
priation for films to correlate with class work. 


32 Motion Pictures in Education 

Visual Instruction Departments 

Already many of our most modern and efficient 
school systems have visual instruction departments 
with supervisors in charge. Such is the case in At- 
lanta, New York City, Chicago, Evanston, Kansas 
City, Detroit, San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Los 
Angeles and Newark. Provision is made in these 
cities for funds for the purchase of motion picture 
projectors and for the purchase or rental of films. 
Many other school systems which have not as yet in- 
stituted visual instruction departments and numerous 
individual schools in all parts of the country are utiliz- 
ing motion pictures for instruction. 

Visual Instruction Associations 

The schools of New York City were the first in 
which the use of films actually conformed to the course 
of studies, and such of the New York schools as are 
thus using films pedagogically are setting a pace and 
a standard for other schools of the country. We in- 
vite a challenge to this statement. We have made it in 
good faith and believe it to be true. Much of what 
New York City has accomplished in this regard has 
been owing to the active cooperation and splendid 
spirit existing between the teachers and the educational 
film producers and distributors. Under the able lead- 
ership of Dr. Ernest L. Crandall, Director of Lectures 
and Visual Instruction, Board of Education, the Vis- 
ual Instruction Association of New York was formed. 
In this association the several factors essential in the 
upbuilding of this movement, film producers, distribu- 
tors and users, united their efforts on an equal footing. 
This body, through its various committees, has be- 
come a clearing house in which producers and dis- 


Growth and Development 33 

tributors learn the needs of the users of visual aids; 
teachers learn the limitations and difficulties of pro- 
duction and distribution; competing film makers and 
sellers of films and equipment learn to cooperate to 
their common good and all work together for the best 
interests of the school. 

Out of the New York Visual Instruction Associa- 
tion there was born at the Boston meeting of the Na- 
tional Education Association in 1922, the Visual In- 
struction Association of America, founded to perform 
on a nation-wide scale a function similar to what the 
New York body has performed with marked success 
locally. The National Association has in each State a 
vice-president, one of whose duties is to build up local 
units in his territory. 

Another and older association, the Academy of 
Visual Instruction, contains in its membership prac- 
tically all of the directors of visual education in the 
state colleges and universities as well as other educa- 
tors. Active membership in the Academy is restricted 
to those interested in visual education who have no 
commercial affiliations. The Academy declares that 
it is interested in the intelligent furtherance of visual 
instruction in all institutions employing visual aids and 
includes among its purposes the use of films for com- 
munity entertainment. 

Educational Film Magazines 

There are two magazines devoted entirely to the 
non-theatrical field, Educational Screen and Visual 
Education, the latter confined almost exclusively to 
school work. Other educational motion picture period- 
icals which did valuable pioneer work but have since 
suspended publication are Reel and Slide, later The 


34 Motion Pictures in Education 

Moving Picture Age, which in turn has been absorbed 
by Educational Screen, and The Educational Film 
Magazine and The Screen. 

Growth of the Movement 

One important indication of the growing place be- 
ing accorded motion pictures in instruction is that 
nineteen of our large educational institutions having 
normal departments for teachers' training are giving 
or have given some instruction to their students on the 
use of motion pictures for visual instruction. 

No less an authority than Dr. John J. Tigert, U. S. 
Commissioner of Education, has said: 

I for one am convinced that for the future the motion pic- 
ture is to forward our campaign against illiteracy as nothing 
else that has been adapted to the classroom. No one can long 
stay the general introduction of the film into the school. 

Certainly the day of the educational film is dawning 
and the prophecies of those early inventors and in- 
vestigators of motion pictures are about to be realized. 
It was Thomas A. Edison who said, "My opinion is 
that in time the schools will be the principal users of 
moving pictures." And Dr. Marey, in 1895, when the 
motion picture was truly in its infancy, stated that this 
new medium seemed likely to extend our knowledge 
with regard to all kinds of phenomena. "But its fu- 
ture," said this pioneer investigator, "depends upon 
the correction of the distortion of the image, on the 
discovery of a satisfactory means of projecting a much 
larger number of moving images on a screen so as to 
be visible to a large assembly and on increasing the 
number of successive photographs so as to present a 
performance of considerable duration." Marey did 
not foresee that the realm of entertainment would be 


Growth and Development 35 

interposed between the wonderful advances in the 
cinema for which he was so largely responsible and 
the complete fulfillment of his vision. Every one of 
the requisites which he laid down as necessary of ac- 
complishment before the cinema should perform its 
full educational function have been fulfilled and more. 
The enterprise of the very entertainment world whose 
interposition he overlooked has added refinement and 
technical development to the art. His dream has come 
true and the day is breaking for instruction through 
the motion picture, the greatest single element for the 
advancement of learning since the invention of 
printing. 


Ill 


OBJECTIONS TO THE USE OF MOTION PICTURES 
IN EDUCATION 

DESPITE the advance made by the motion picture, edu- 
cators are far from unanimous in approving their use 
in education. The actual proportion of schools using 
them is exceedingly small at the present time, only a 
small part of one per cent. 

In reply to a questionnaire sent out by the U. S. 
Bureau of Education in 1920 only 1,513 schools and 
colleges replied that they were using films in any form. 
Although this was a long time ago in the annals of the 
cinema, and only 10,000 answered the questionnaire, 
it is highly probable that most projection machine 
owners who received the questionnaire replied. It is 
evident that motion pictures have a long way to move 
before they can be said to be a controlling factor in our 
educational system. 

An editorial appearing in the New York Times, 
July, 1921, on "Education by the Movies," makes the 
point that 

At best the current history, science and travel that can be 
flashed upon the screen is a smattering. Really to under- 
stand such things requires reading, study, laboratory demon- 
stration. Princes have found that there is no royal road to 
knowledge and Americans may as well learn that it can not 
come via the armchair. [And this much discussed editorial 
speaking of the modern photoplay continues.] As compared 
with the novel and spoken drama, the moving picture story 
has certain obvious advantages. It is more swiftly graphic, 

36 


Objections to Their Use 37 

more vivid and immediate in its appeal. But by the same 
token its range in subject matter and characterization is nar- 
rower. It tends inevitably toward the familiar, the uncon- 
ventional, the stereotyped. 

The child who gratifies his love of stories by reading en- 
larges his vocabulary, stimulates his power of imagination, 
multiplies his points of contact with human nature and sensi- 
bility. That and not the facile delights of the silver screen 
provide genuine education. Children brought up on the 
movies 'too often lack patience to read, the sense of verbal 
beauty, of lifelikeness in character and are rather inclined to 
patronize those others who spend long evenings to encompass 
the story which the moving picture tells in a few minutes. 

And a New Jersey daily, discussing "Movies in 
Schools," says editorially: 

The motion picture companies have produced thousands of 
most educational films. Many subjects may be taught better 
with motion pictures than by lectures or lessons. On the 
other hand fundamentals can not be taught with pictures. 
Visual education is incidental and has the demerit of cultivat- 
ing intellectual slothfulness. The textbook, the lecture and 
the lesson will continue to be the basic means of imparting 
knowledge and training the mind to function. 

That films make superficial thinkers and that they 
do not stimulate the imagination were opinions ad- 
vanced at a recent discussion by High School teachers. 
One teacher said: 

I think moving pictures over-develop the appeal to the 
sense of sight and that on the whole their effect is psycho- 
logically bad. There is too great an appeal to vision and the 
other senses are neglected. Besides, pictures inspire a dis- 
content with life as it is and tend to make one seek "movie 
life" where action is quick and results quicker. 

Another teacher in the same group had this to say 
against movies in education: 

I am convinced that so far as school children are con- 
cerned, the motion pictures of today are more of a detri- 


38 Motion Pictures in Education 

ment than a help. One of my English pupils told me that the 
movies helped her so much in her book report that she did 
not have to read the book ! The mere depicting of the in- 
cidents (and how frequently the episodes are changed) robbed 
that student of the benefits to be derived from reading the 
book in question. 

So many and so extravagant have been the claims 
advanced for motion pictures in education that it is 
not surprising that editors and educators have fre- 
quently arisen to protest. 

The State Superintendent of Schools of Maryland 
wrote to the New York Times to say: 

If the movie is more powerful in educational influence in 
America than the school, as Commissioner Tigert is quoted 
as saying, then we are wasting millions of dollars a year on 
the dull prosaic teacher-pupil system when we could turn our 
schools into movies and absorb education by sitting and en- 
joying ourselves. It is quite true that the movies make a deep 
impression on the child at times but there is nothing that can 
replace the teacher -pupil method of education. 

The disadvantages of the film are summed up by 
C. E. Turner, Mass. Institute of Technology, in an 
article "An Evaluation of Visual Education," as fol- 
lows: 

Seeing may do away with the necessity of doing; films 
amuse; they make education too easy. Motion pictures use 
so much fake photography the pupil will not believe any- 
thing he sees in a film, and they cost too much. 

A speaker at the National Education Association 
meeting held at Cleveland, 1920, summed up the draw- 
backs to the use of films in school work as: 

eye strain, the flickering light being hard on the eyes; fire 
hazard, the electric current required might prove dangerous 
and inflammable, so this puts it under the ban by insurance 
interests and an expensive housing is required which re- 


Objections to Their Use 39 

stricts the use of films to auditoriums and takes them out of 
the reach of the class. In addition films are expensive and 
made primarily for entertainment or advertisement and the 
whole matter up to the present seems like an exhibition of 
misfit effort. 

A writer in Life goes further, saying: 

Motion pictures have revealed themselves the most effec- 
tive carriers of idiocy that the civilized world has known. 
They have lurked near school houses and seduced the im- 
pressionable minds of the children. They have bought litera- 
ture and converted it, by their own peculiar and esoteric 
magic, into rubbish. 

And in the Outlook we find this diatribe under the 
title "The World's Worst Failure": 

The movies have borrowed historical episodes and failed to 
illuminate them; have ransacked granaries of drama and 
fiction and borne off more often the chaff than the wheat; 
they have turned Thalia into a hurler of custard pies, dressed 
Terpsichore in a one-piece bathing suit and in pursuit of 
Melpomene treated the world to unpremeditated tragedy. 
Such real characters as movies have portrayed have generally 
been filched from printed books and been marred in the 
filching. 

And in The Bookman we find one of the young in- 
tellectuals, with the courage of his convictions, saying: 

Not one scenario has been prepared in this country for a 
motion picture with a significant idea. In almost every 
instance where good novels and plays and short stories have 
been drawn upon for movie material, the ideas have been 
distorted and sentimentalized out of all recognition. And the 
very worst and most insipid of American fiction has been 
gutted for scenarios of widely advertised and patronized 
films. Stage successes such as "The Affairs of Anatol" have, 
on the screen become nauseating. It would seem that the 
most incompetent journalistic hacks, the most illiterate back- 
wash of the writing profession, are retained to prepare the 
scenarios for American film production. Most of the repu- 
table writers who have sold and contracted to sell the motion 


40 Motion Pictures in Education 

picture rights to their work, have either ostensibly or actually 
taken the attitude that there is no help for the situation, that 
the movies are an institution by illiterates and for illiterates 
and pocketed the easy money. 

While some of these indictments are directed not 
against educational films but against photoplays, they 
are quoted for the reason that they have an applica- 
tion to the entire field of motion pictures and should be 
considered even in an evaluation of educational films. 

Objections 

The following is an attempt to summarize succinctly 
the more important objections to the use of films in 
education : 

1. Films cause eye strain. 

2. There are too many mechanical difficulties and 
projection problems, including proper wiring, current, 
etc. 

3. Fire hazard. 

4. It costs too much to install the equipment and to 
buy or rent films. 

5. Films make learning too easy. They substitute 
entertainment for instruction and passive acceptance 
for active effort in learning. 

6. They make superficial thinkers. 

7. They reduce reading. 

8. They destroy the sense of perfection in lan- 
guage. 

9. They dull the imagination. 

10. The introduction of films into a lesson causes 
distraction. 

11. Films tend too much to replace the teacher-text- 
book method of instruction. 


Objections to Their Use 41 

12. Slides and still pictures are better. 

13. Proper films are not available. 

14. Films that are available are too frequently in- 
accurate, untrue, vulgar or crude. 

15. Films are too rapid. 

16. The benefits to be derived are uncertain and 
unproven. 

17. There is no established method of use. 

This is a formidable array of objections, which we 
shall consider in detail. 

Eye Strain 

Eye strain deserves the fullest consideration but 
does not at this stage of development enter into the 
discussion of pedagogical adaptability of the films. 
Eye strain from moving pictures may be caused by 
faulty projection, old or badly scratched film, or weak 
or defective eyes. The problems of keeping the pro- 
jector in good order and in proper adjustment and 
seeing that it is operated by a competent person are 
constantly present and require attention. Users of 
films should carefully inspect all films furnished; if 
they come from the exchange on very old and bent 
reels they should be rewound on good reels kept for 
the purpose; old and badly scratched films should not 
be used, and the school should not continue to pat- 
ronize the company which furnishes films in bad con- 
dition. This, of course, imposes another burden on 
the school. 

The most serious cause of eye strain, weak or de- 
fective eyes, is a problem of the exceptional child, not 
of pedagogical practices. It is one that the individual 
principal or teacher will have to meet. 


42 Motion Pictures in Education 

Mechanical Difficulties 

Mechanical difficulties, such as those having to do 
with current, wiring, booths, screens, securing the 
right kind of projector for a given hall or auditorium 
and the required permits from local fire and insurance 
authorities are brought forth as reasons why many 
schools are not using motion pictures. There are a 
number of such difficulties to be considered in install- 
ing* films. To put films into schools does take time, 
trouble, thought and investigation and study of the 
several problems involved. A number of permits may 
have to be obtained. Copies of local rules and regula- 
tions governing the installing and projecting of motion 
pictures will have to be secured and studied. The sub- 
ject of electric current available will have to be gone 
into, and a licensed electrician may be needed to see 
that the wiring is done according to local ordinances. 
Necessary fire extinguishers will have to be provided 
if inflammable film is used. The question of what 
kind of projector to buy and what kind of film to use 
will require investigation and study. The mechanical 
difficulties and problems of insurance have prevented 
many schools from installing motion pictures. We 
can advise no one to install films who has not con- 
sidered these problems and reached some solution. 

Fire Hazard 

What of the fire hazard? We hear much of the 
danger of film catching fire and occasionally read of 
great film fires and explosions. What relation have 
these reports to the danger of fire in schools and the 
safety of children where films are used? These are 
exceedingly vital questions which should receive thor- 


Objections to Their Use 43 

ough investigation before a decision to use films in 
schools is reached. 

The ordinary motion picture film is highly inflam- 
mable. The film stock which carries the photographic 
emulsion is made of celluloid which has a nitro-cellu- 
lose base. There are two kinds of nitrates, the high 
nitrates, such as guncotton, which are highly explosive, 
and the low nitrates, of which celluloid is one and 
which, while it is not itself explosive, is highly inflam- 
mable for the reason that it contains free oxygen in its 
composition, and this enables it to burn rapidly in the 
air and to keep up slow combustion even where air is 
excluded. 

Carelessly handled nitro-cellulose film is exceed- 
ingly dangerous. Let us quote what an officer in the 
Underwriters' Laboratories, New York City, says: 

From the very beginning of the motion picture industry the 
fire insurance underwriters took the position that nitro-cellu- 
lose films, being a highly inflammable article, should have 
all possible safeguards thrown around it, both when in use 
in projection machines and when not in use. 

The growing importance of the educational, religious, in- 
dustrial and non-theatrical use of motion pictures makes it 
doubly imperative that the Underwriters, the State Fire Mar- 
shals and the local fire departments of our cities and towns 
should be on the lookout to protect the lives and property 
involved in such use of nitro-cellulose film. For years the 
proper safeguards have been thrown around its daily use in 
places of amusement. Why should not the same safeguards 
be demanded in schools, churches, hospitals, asylums, prisons, 
manufacturing plants and other institutions? 

The danger is not so much in the machine itself many 
of the portable machines are safe enough within them- 
selves but in the handling of nitro-cellulose film outside of 
the machine. Furthermore, all devices which are designed 
to make the handling of hazardous film less hazardous within 
the machine and outside of it, which do not comply with the 
laws, are merely evasive and do not meet with the approval of 
the underwriters. 


44 Motion Pictures in Education 

Portable projection machines using the regular theatre film, 
without booths, competent operators, and the other fire-pre- 
ventive provisions of the law, are unquestionably a menace 
to life and property. 

The future of the non-theatrical field of motion pictures, 
if it is to depend upon portable or semi-portable projection 
machines largely, lies apparently in the broad development 
of the safety idea in machines and film libraries. 

The Question of Expense 

Film and film equipment are among the most expen- 
sive of visual aid materials. The cost is higher than 
for slides, charts, graphs, models or still pictures. 
Questions the school superintendent or principal 
should ask are: Do motion pictures justify the money 
invested in them? Will it pay us to install them in 
this school? 

At the present time satisfactory projection equip- 
ment costs from two hundred to two thousand dollars, 
depending upon the type of machine desired and the 
additional equipment needed. Films rent at from one 
to ten dollars and even higher per thousand foot reel 
per day, with an average film rental of about four 
dollars per reel per day. Prices vary greatly. A pro- 
gram or series of programs for a term or whole year 
are proportionately less and usually range from fifteen 
toutwenty-five dollars for a six or seven reel program. 
The purchase price of films varies so greatly that one 
writer is quoted as saying films could be purchased at 
from five to ten dollars a reel for "junk" or used film, 
with the sky as the limit. Prints of the U. S. Depart- 
ment of Agriculture films, for example, can be pur- 
chased for about forty dollars per reel, certain educa- 
tional films have been quoted at one hundred dollars a 
reel, while others are not for sale at any price and 
can only be rented. 


Objections to Their Use 45 

One school principal, who had not investigated local 
rules, ordinances and insurance rates before purchas- 
ing a projector, answered the question "Has it paid 
us to install films in our school?" in a most decided 
negative. He says: 

We find that we cannot operate our machine at all unless 
we are willing to pay an extra insurance of over $600 per 
year which of course is prohibitive. Consequently we have 
a nice white elephant on our hands. You can believe me, I 
wish I had never heard of a movie machine in a school. After 
spending hundreds of dollars we find that we must put it away 
as a bad venture. 

And such has been the experience of more than one 
would-be user of films. In many cases local rules and 
regulations regarding the use of films make them pro- 
hibitive for schools under certain conditions. 

Films Make Learning Too Easy 

The comment is frequently made by educators that 
films amuse ; they make education too easy ; seeing may 
do away with the necessity of doing. Interesting 
criticisms of the use of films in education were made 
by speakers addressing the first class in Educational 
Motion Pictures, Columbia University, Summer Ses- 
sion, 1921. One speaker, a prominent school super- 
intendent, said: 

Films do not teach concentration, but rather the contrary. 
They confuse because of their variety and continual motion. 
The only function of the motion picture in education is to 
gather together facts and summarize them. 

A former officer of the National Federation of Col- 
lege Women, writing on "Some of the Pitfalls," makes 
the point that the movie has created in the child a 
distrust of itself. The wonder and credulity that are 


46 Motion Pictures in Education 

supposed to be essentially childlike characteristics are 
fast disappearing. And a professor of English says: 

Failure lies in making a toy of the motion picture in the 
classroom, using it to replace effort on our part or on the 
part of the pupil. Mere quickness hampers us in gathering 
accurate facts and details. 

Other writers and observers maintain that the 
cinema may prove harmful instead of helpful because 
a fundamental principle of pedagogy is that the pupil 
should learn by dint of laborious study, that there is 
no royal road to learning, and that by our effort to 
simplify and facilitate the acquisition of knowledge we 
make the school superficial and detract both from 
imparting useful knowledge and the building of char- 
acter which the struggle for knowledge engenders. 
Knowledge is like a rich metal embedded deep in the 
earth and which has to be dug for as a miner digs 
for gold. The tendency of the modern school, they 
tell us, is altogether away from the older ideals of hard 
work. Everything is being simplified for the child, 
made easy and pleasant, and the pedagogical film is 
just another step in the same direction, all tending to 
substitute play for work and thereby depriving the 
school of its greatest asset, personal effort. 

Another phase of this consideration is that the child 
of this generation regards the motion picture so defi- 
nitely as entertainment that when the picture is in- 
troduced into the classroom he must persist in still 
regarding it as recreation rather than material for seri- 
ous application. This is pointed out as scarcely the 
disposition requisite for earnest attention and effort 
to learn which should be present in the classroom. It 
is a question whether motion pictures, both because of 
their antecedents and because of their essential char- 


Objections to Their Use 47 

acteristics, can ever overcome their primary appeal as 
recreational rather than as instructional material. 

Films Make Superficial Thinkers 

The objection is made that films produce super- 
ficial thinkers, dull the imagination, destroy the sense 
of perfection in language and reduce reading. Ex- 
amples have been cited where pupils rarely do parallel 
reading if they can see the work in question in a 
"movie." It is also true that many entertainment 
films and some instructional films make no demands 
on the mentality of the beholders. If a pupil is al- 
lowed to replace the reading of the classics with seeing 
a film portrayal he will have only half a knowledge 
or a distorted one of the subject and the result will 
be harmful. No one can intelligently discuss a book 
or a play merely from having seen the screen version. 
Without a knowledge of the original it is impossible 
to know how truthful the motion picture producers 
have been in their translation. 

Discussing "The Motion Picture and English Liter- 
ature," a professor of English at Brown University 
writes: 

If in general it is dangerous to supplant books by motion 
pictures it is trebly so in literature. A motion picture can 
give only the facts of the case in action plus whatever ele- 
mental emotion these facts generate. If the motion picture 
accentuated the habit of thinking in bits it would be not a 
help but a menace. The best part of a novel can not be trans- 
ferred to the screen. A coarsened, syncopated representa- 
tion of the plot (as in Treasure Island) can be given, but 
that is all. 

Another teacher advances the opinion that 

motion pictures do more harm than good in the study of 
the classics, for the pervading soul of the author is lost and 
the original is gone. 


48 Motion Pictures in Education 

Films Reduce Reading 

That the movies reduce reading is a contention often 
made. A librarian writes: 

The movie is moving the boy away from good literature. 
Once he develops the movie type of mind he will be lost 
forever to good books. The repose and repression, the at- 
mosphere and the background that are part of all good books, 
will bore him. In motion pictures the boy finds nothing that 
calls for the exercise of his mind. He becomes in a sense 
the father of the mentally sterile man. The motion picture 
simply asks for his eyes, never for his intelligence. And 
so he passes in time completely away from the field of books. 

Films Cause Distraction 

That the introduction of films into a lesson causes 
distraction and that the darkness causes disorder are 
objections that have to do with discipline and teaching 
methods rather than with the medium used. However, 
these objections are raised as very serious factors by 
teachers who maintain that pupils in the grades will 
not behave or be attentive when darkness hides them 
from the wachful eye of the master. Furthermore, 
the unusual condition introduced by the necessary 
darkening of the room causes, they claim, a distrac- 
tion which more than offsets the advantage gained by 
the showing of the pictures. 

Films versus Teacher and Text 

State Superintendent of Schools Cook of Mary- 
land, previously quoted, is quite correct in saying that 
there is nothing that can replace the teacher-pupil 
method. 

The personality of the teacher, his acquaintance 
with the qualifications and shortcomings and idiosyn- 
crasies of the individual members of his class and his 
direct and personal interest in them can not be replaced 


Objections to Their Use 49 

by any pedagogical device, however skillfully designed. 
It is as inane to suggest that the cinema will supplant 
the teacher as that it will take the place of the textbook, 
as Thomas A. Edison is quoted as having predicted. 
The combination of the textbook, teacher and pupil 
can not successfully be supplanted. 

One of the outstanding weaknesses of the film as 
known today is its tendency to relieve the teacher of 
much personal effort, and while this may be pleasant 
for the teacher, it is not good for the class. In using 
lantern slides the teacher has opportunity and occasion 
to talk upon them. To do this requires that he know 
the subject covered by the pictures and that he inject 
his own personality into the picture lesson. This 
means in turn that he will naturally take more interest 
in the slide lesson, familiarize himself in advance with 
the pictures and be better prepared to discuss them 
than in the case of the film, whose sub-titles make it 
self-sufficient and defeat rather effectively any attempt 
at lecturing or explaining while the pictures are being 
shown. If this be true, is not the use of film less apt 
to gain the support of the earnest, enthusiastic teacher? 
For that is the kind who desires active participation in 
all activities of his class. 

"Still" Pictures are Better 

An objection that deserves special consideration is 
one frequently heard from many visual educators 
namely, that the slide, the stereograph or the still pho- 
tograph will do all that is claimed for the motion pic- 
ture and will do it better, without causing eye strain, 
without danger from fire, and with much less expense. 
These champions of still pictures tell us that slides are 


50 Motion Pictures in Education 

available in greater quantity, more easily obtained than 
films and have the added advantage that as few slides 
as desired or needed to illustrate a given point may 
be used, while in the case of the film the whole subject 
has to be shown whether or not the entire reel is suited 
to the lesson being studied. 

The case of the slide versus the film has been ably 
set forth by one slide enthusiast, E. R. Barrett of the 
Kansas State Normal School, who sums up the case 
as follows: 

The still picture stays in sight just as long as the teacher 
may wish. It may be returned to view instantly. It may be 
shown alternately with other pictures for sake of comparison. 
Of still objects like the Capitol at Washington, a banana tree, 
the Panama Canal, etc., a more comprehensive view may be 
obtained from still than from moving pictures. The range 
of subjects that may be shown from slides is infinitely greater. 
When motion pictures are used in the classroom the picture 
determines largely what shall be taught, but with the slide 
the subject determines the picture. Operation of the new 
stereopticon is as simple as turning on the electric light and 
adjusting an opera glass. Many schools make their own 
slides and they can be bought at from twenty-five cents up. 

And the principal of a public school, resenting some 
of the claims made for the film in education, writes to 
the editor of the New York Times rather heatedly as 
follows : 

Five years of experimenting with the moving picture and 
the stereoptican have proved the greatly superior advantage 
of the still picture, and pictorial aids of any kind are being 
used with more and more moderation because of the evidence 
that much of the instruction so given (or rather offered) is 
accepted merely as passive entertainment. I am glad to have 
the facilities for pictorial instruction and know the value 
of their occasional use, but the general public, and much of 
the educational world, has gone mad over the new and easy 
way of pouring instruction into the waiting child. 


Objections to Their Use 51 

Mr. A. W. Abrams, chief of the Visual Instruction 
Division of the New York State Department of Edu- 
cation, and a recognized authority on the use of the 
slide in education, in a letter to the writer says: 

We are circulating this year something over half a mil- 
lion slides, but we are doing nothing whatever by way of 
furnishing motion pictures, though I suppose we are giving 
at least as much attention as any bureau to attempts to deter- 
mine the value and limitations of the educational type of 
picture. The thoughtful school administrators and super- 
visors, who have the responsibility of directing the work of 
our teaching institutions, are not yet very thoroughly im- 
pressed with either the character or the great importance of 
visual instruction, particularly when that term is made syn- 
onymous with motion pictures. 

And in a published article Mr. Abrams makes these 
statements which are worthy of serious consideration: 

A motion picture consists of a succession of images pro- 
jected on a screen from a film with such rapidity as to 
produce the effect of movement. The chief function of such 
pictures is to tell a story. They are not well adapted for 
the observation of any of the aspects of material things other 
than motion. The distinctive place of the motion picture is 
in the field of entertainment, though it may have some sup- 
plementary educational value in showing processes when 
other related facts are known. There is no possible advan- 
tage to be derived from the motion picture for representing 
objects that are static, such as buildings, works of art and 
physiographic features of the earth. Motion is sometimes so 
characteristic of a living form of mechanical contrivance as 
to be in itself an object of interest and when the moving 
form can not be examined a pictorial representation of the 
movement is distinctly useful. 

For educational uses, aside from the question of expense, 
the chief weaknesses of the motion picture are the absence of 
discussion while observation is going on and a consequent 
lack of training in observation and in the power of verbal 
expression. The deeper and more significant features to be 
observed are overlooked, true mental reaction is weak, and 
study is superficial. The same results may attend the use of 
still pictures but are much less likely. 


52 Motion Pictures in Education 

Proper Films are Not Available 

There is much truth in the statement that suitable 
films can not be obtained by educators. Dr. John J. 
Tigert, U. S. Commissioner of Education, writes in 
School Life: 

The whole matter of producing proper films for school 
purposes has been at a deadlock because the producers who 
were commercially successful did not understand the needs 
of the school, and school men, on the other hand, who have 
undertaken to produce, though understanding the educational 
problem, did not have the practical experience which is neces- 
sary for success. 

Not only have comparatively few satisfactory edu- 
cational films been made specifically for the teacher's 
needs, but those that he could adapt to his purpose are 
not to be had if he lives any distance from a few large 
film centers. 

The educator living in Maine, Florida or New Mex- 
ico may find that the film he wants can only be ob- 
tained from New York and the cost of transportation, 
plus film rental, plus time in transit, discourages him. 

Practically the entire attention of the motion picture 
industry during the past quarter of a century has been 
directed toward providing films for public entertain- 
ment in the theatre, and it is not surprising if the pro- 
ducer has not found it profitable or attractive to turn 
his attention to educational films. Certainly there has 
been little or no profit hitherto in the handling of edu- 
cational pictures, and comparatively few producers 
have had the ability to provide motion pictures of in- 
structional value even if they were so inclined. In 
fact, from specimens upon the screens of some of our 
theatres, few picture makers seem capable of produc- 
ing worthy examples of even the dramatic art. As 


Objections to Their Use 53 

for the so-called "educational pictures' ' frequently 
shown in our better theatres and which contain many 
gems of value pedagogically, even these are largely a 
drug upon the film market and few find it profitable 
to make or sell them. Certainly, compared to the vast 
number of photoplays and comedies that are being 
produced yearly, there is an almost infinitesimal per- 
centage of true pedagogical pictures, and those which 
do exist, owing to the lack of adequate systems of 
distribution, are not easily accessible to schools outside 
of a few big cities like New York or Chicago. The 
Board of Education of Los Angeles, for example, has 
been striving for months to obtain the Burton Holmes 
travel films for use in its schools but thus far has found 
it impracticable to use many of them because they can 
be got only from New York. It is to be regretted 
that an art conceived in educational endeavor should, 
after thirty years, have fallen so far short of adequate 
pedagogical accomplishment. 

Films are Inaccurate 

That films that are available are too frequently in- 
accurate, untrue, vulgar and crude is a criticism that 
contains much truth. 

The early efforts of any art are apt to be crude. 
Early attempts at painting can truthfully merit all the 
epithets enumerated above. The products of many 
early masters of the Christian era were ludicrous ex- 
positions of ignorance of human anatomy. The sculp- 
ture unearthed from the ruins of ancient Babylon, 
while amazing manifestations of the advance of the 
art of that period, can scarcely be considered altogether 
satisfactory representations of their subjects. And 
the motion picture is no exception. The minds direct- 


54 Motion Pictures in Education 

ing the motion picture industry have naturally not long 
been schooled in their calling. The cinema has as yet 
no traditions to live up to, no principles to adhere to 
and has received into its fold many who were failures 
in the callings they hitherto followed. The writer in 
The Bookman, already quoted, says: 

The motion picture industry has behind it a vast deal of 
shrewd and adventurous business acumen but not one in- 
fluential directive mind above the level of a stock promoter, 
not one guiding personality who has revealed more than a 
glimmer of aesthetic interests or even of elementary taste. 

Whether the movies in this country will ever attract the 
first-class artist is problematical. The field is held at present 
by ex-chauffeurs and ex-scene shifters who summarily reject 
all constructive criticism and are hostile to all ideas which 
they stigmatize as highbrow. It is to their interest, obviously, 
that the movies remain the tawdry claptrap they are, sentimen- 
tal and vulgar episodes in settings which are anachronistic, 
flashy, ludicrous, and absurd. 

If these invectives be true, it would most naturally 
follow that the attempts of these same near-artisans 
to produce pictures of educational character would be 
even greater failures. And, in fact, many films which 
the writers have had submitted to them as pedagogical 
had not as much instructional merits as a dime novel or 
the comic section of a modern Sunday newspaper. 

Films are Too Rapid 

We are told that motion pictures move too rapidly, 
that no sooner is an object seen on the screen than it is 
gone, before the spectator has opportunity to grasp it, 
that scene follows scene so quickly that the mind can 
not intelligently follow and that the effort of the child 
to follow is too great a strain. What habitue of the 
"movies" has not suffered from motion pictures run- 
ning at top speed? If this is an essential limitation of 


Objections to Their Use 55 

motion pictures, their pedagogical value is thereby 
seriously lessened. 

When one realizes that the pupil seeing motion pic- 
tures is seeing sixteen distinct images a second and 
about sixteen thousand in fifteen minutes and that the 
images are constantly being withdrawn to make place 
for explanatory titles which the child must hasten to 
read before they disappear, the criticism that the film 
is too rapid and that the child can not take in all he sees 
might appear to be a just one. 

In the course of an article on "Some Psychological 
and Pedagogical Aspects of Visual Education," 
Matilde Castro, Professor of Education, Bryn Mawr 
College, writes: 

The ordinary motion picture even of the less exciting type 
moves too fast usually for mental assimilation and the 
nervous anxiety is often great because, as a child, remarked 
"I just never can keep up with where things are coming 
next." 

If this is the sort of quickening and vitalizing process 
which the motion picture purposes to apply to "dead" sub- 
jects of the classroom it is pernicious not merely because 
of the bad hygienic effect upon the child, but because any 
condition of tenseness or anxiety is detrimental to learning. 
Further, this tempo is bad for memory. Impressions follow- 
ing each other in very close sequence tend to weaken the pre- 
ceding ones. . . . Even when the proper use of films is under- 
stood there will always be an individual problem as to how 
many and at what intervals exhibitions should be given to a 
particular class. 

Another point worth considering, made in the same 
article, is that 

the motion picture does not by virtue of the fact that it 
presents movement and activity avoid passivity on the part 
of the child. His attitude may be far from that of giving 
dynamic attention. He may be so concerned to let nothing 
escape his attention as the procession files by him that he 


56 Motion Pictures in Education 

inhibits any tendency to think lest it get in his way. Or the 
mental alertness may be one of strain and tension, of being 
on the jump in order to keep up the pace of the necessary eye 
adjustment. 

Benefits Uncertain and Unproven 

No one knows wth certainty what motion pictures 
are capable of accomplishing in our schools, for the 
very simple reason that they have not been thoroughly 
tried out. True, earnest experimenters have consci- 
entiously determined the exact percentages of learning 
which come to the child through the eye, the ear, the 
nose, the mouth, the skin (see Educational Screen, 
Dec., 1922) and we have learned very conclusively and 
definitely from their tests that the eye transmits to 
the mind, under various tests, 40%, 46%, 85%, and 
90% of the sum total of mental acquisitions and that, 
for example, motion pictures are exactly 2% more or 
less efficient (we forget for the moment which) than a 
certain type of teacher; but beyond such discoveries 
the world really does not know either how to use the 
cinema in teaching or what good it would accomplish 
if it were used. 

Even the tests referred to have been conducted, 
for the most part, by student investigators who chose 
or had imposed upon them as their thesis the subject 
of motion pictures in education and might naturally 
feel called upon to build up a case for them, or by 
visual instruction experts who might be excused if 
they were somewhat prejudiced in favor of their own 
chosen medium of instruction. 

In a recent article, Dr. Rowland Rogers of Colum- 
bia University asked these pertinent questions: 

Can visual aids help reduce pupil mortality? 

Can they better existing methods of imparting information? 


Pat he Pictures 


STUDIES OF ESKIMO LIFE 


Objections to Their Use 57 

Can they stimulate the student's imagination and con- 
structive thinking? 

Can they create the desire to learn to know? 

These questions are unanswered. Many years of research, 
investigation and observation will be needed to determine the 
advantages and limitations of visual aids and the field of their 
usefulness. 

No Established Method of Use 

The motion picture medium has no precedents or 
traditions behind it and the methods found useful for 
the slide and the stereograph do not apply. The 
teacher, accustomed to regard the cinema as entertain- 
ment, is inclined to sit back and just enjoy the film in 
the classroom and to allow his pupils to do likewise, 
particularly when he does not know what else to do. 
Then, too, schools being poorly equipped for classroom 
instruction via the film, pupils are often herded into 
the auditorium to see "a movie show/' often the entire 
school or several classes together under circumstances 
absolutely precluding the application of any pedagog- 
ical method even if one were at hand. 

The present-day teacher may well ask: Are we justi- 
fied in experimenting with our children in so unproven 
a field? 

Such are the objections presented for the reader's 
consideration. Of course, a judgment can not be based 
solely upon the negative side of a question. The posi- 
tive side must also be weighed before a practical de- 
cision can be reached. 


IV 


ADVANTAGES OF USING FILMS FOR 
INSTRUCTION 

IN the foregoing chapter effort has been made impar- 
tially to present all of the objections to the use of 
films in education thought worthy of consideration 
which a considerable amount of painstaking research 
has revealed. The present chapter will weigh in equal 
fairness the positive advantages which the use of films 
holds forth and discuss the more important objections 
offered. 

Pictures are able to standardize impressions and 
make them clear and complete, uniform, lasting and 
specific. By them the abstract can be made concrete, 
the absent present. They can bring into the classroom 
faithful representations of objects which are too far 
distant or too small or too large or too rare or ex- 
pensive or dangerous or otherwise inconvenient or 
unsuited for direct classroom examination. Pictures 
of an object can frequently reach simultaneously and 
equally a greater number of spectators than can the 
object itself. These capabilities are possessed by the 
still photograph, the slide, the drawing, the stereograph, 
in common with the motion picture. The latter pos- 
sesses some advantages over the still group ; conversely, 
the still group presents some over the cinema. 

To a greater extent than any still representation, the 
cinema is able to present objects as they actually exist, 

58 ~ 


'Advantages of Their Use 59 

move and have their being, bring distant peoples into 
the classroom and show them actually going about their 
ordinary pursuits as they really did in the distant land 
when the picture was being taken, or, better still, it in 
effect transports the spectator to the distant land and 
enables him to mingle and live with its inhabitants, to 
view the country from the observation platform of a 
railroad train as it winds its way through chasms and 
valleys and mountains, or to stand beneath the waterfall 
many hundreds of miles away and almost feel the 
spray upon his brow. 

Motion pictures overcome time and space. By 
means of them rapid processes can be slowed down 
and analyzed ; slow processes can be accelerated ; inan- 
imate objects animated; dead facts made to live and 
pulsate. Attention can be held and concentrated and 
the memory more deeply impressed by the moving 
image projected on a brightly illuminated screen in a 
darkened room than by ordinary teaching methods. 

Scientific experiments and demonstrations per- 
formed with ideal equipment and under the best pos- 
sible conditions, and operations performed in the clinic 
can, by means of motion pictures, be repeated indefi- 
nitely anywhere and at small expense. Microscopic life 
can be enlarged many times on the screen, so that what 
can ordinarily be seen with difficulty through the 
microscope by only one at a time can easily be viewed 
on the screen by an entire class. Motion pictures ex- 
pand the experiences of the pupils by bringing to them 
the whole wide world. Schoolroom instruction can 
by this newer medium be made more pleasant, less 
expensive in the long run and immeasurably more 
efficient. 

Motion pictures mean bringing life into the school- 


60 Motion Pictures in Education 

room things as they are. Rushing rivers, the bub- 
bling lava, caldrons of great volcanoes, waving fields 
of grain, vast forest fires, the mighty ocean and its 
pounding surf, the storm clouds all are by means of 
the moving picture more than by any other means 
brought into the school. It acquaints the pupil with 
living, moving specimens of the world's animal life; 
the deer and bear in the forest, the tiger and elephant 
in the jungle, the life in sea and river, the unseen life 
under the microscope. The pupil is made to live his 
lessons, not just to read about them abstractly, coldly, 
distantly in his textbook. 

When he studies geography, the cinema transports 
him as if by magic to the scenes of his studies where 
he lives among the native people. He studies biology, 
and the films bring the living animal life of the world 
and its native environment to the classroom. Is it 
any wonder that school work immediately becomes 
more pleasant and more effective ? 

The writer has just witnessed a four-reel exposition 
of the Einstein theories, which, in less than an hour, 
left a clearer, more graphic appreciation of the theories 
of this great scientist than two days' study of text 
could have given. In fact, the text without the picture 
could never have made the theories so clearly under- 
standable. And the memory of the animations will last 
long after the memory of the printed page has dis- 
appeared. 

Motion pictures can show a projectile slowly travel- 
ing from the gun and leisurely pressing its way 
through the target and can analyze one by one the 
slow, graceful movements of the racing horse, and, on 
the other hand, can show the flower bud opening to 
the full-blown flower or the dragonfly emerging from 


Advantages of Their Use 61 

its chrysalis in the brief space of a minute. The forma- 
tion of the mountains and canyons through the slow 
processes of the ages can by films of animated draw- 
ings and models be vividly presented to students so 
that they will never forget. The electric current pass- 
ing through a series of wirings of an electric motor, 
the nervous impulses passing between various parts of 
the body and to the brain, the circulation of the blood 
through the body, can be described in books but can be 
clearly and plainly shown in film. Think of what the 
child can learn easily, pleasantly, accurately and effi- 
ciently by seeing the actual workings of the whole 
venous and arterial system of man! 

An experimental demonstration is performed by a 
great physicist in his wonderfully equipped laboratory, 
where every facility and the most modern and efficient 
apparatus are at hand. A motion picture camera has 
caught every detail of the demonstration. Thereafter 
every student of physics in the world may witness the 
demonstration in the film and at less expense to the 
school and with more efficient results than though 
performed in the laboratory. 

A great surgeon performs a marvelous operation. 
A few fortunate medical students are gathered in the 
amphitheatre. They strain to see every movement of 
the surgeon's dexterous fingers as he skillfully makes 
the incision, removes a pernicious growth and sews up 
the wound. They miss much of his skill and dexterity, 
but the operation is over and the lesson, which only 
a privileged few could attend, is finished. Students 
less fortunate can only read about the great surgeon's 
work. But no! Two motion picture cameras have 
been at work from advantageous points and have 
caught every detail of the operation Students all 


62 Motion Pictures in Education 

over the world may now witness the unusual operation 
performed over and over again by the expert. Hun- 
dreds of students can see it at the same time, plainly, 
frequently, and the work of the great surgeon becomes 
an immortal teacher of thousands. 

If we were bringing the case of Motion Pictures in 
Education into the courtroom for trial before an im- 
partial jury we could undoubtedly secure great masses 
of evidence on both sides. In collecting data far more 
was found in favor of the use of films in schools than 
against their use. All of the testimony against the 
film which we could find we gave in the preceding 
chapter. We shall now consider these objections and 
see what can be said on the other side. 

No user of visual aids will deny that there are very 
definite limitations to the use of films in schools and 
every prospective user of motion pictures should care- 
fully weigh the limitations and advantages and decide 
for himself if the advantages to be gained are suffi- 
cient to justify their use. It is interesting to note that, 
where films have been used as a part of classroom in- 
struction, in the majority of cases the reaction is highly 
favorable. The school superintendent of Emporia, 
Kansas, says: 

I consider the use of slides and films invaluable in teach- 
ing nature study, geography, history and civics. It has also 
proved a great help in making the school a social center. 

The Superintendent of Schools of Auburn, Ne- 
braska, writes: 

I consider equipment for motion pictures as necessary as 
textbooks. We are adding to our apparatus as fast as funds 
permit. It is the last word in efficiency in our modern edu- 
cational system. 


Advantages of Their Use 63 

1 

But the user of films in education should know how 
certain limitations can be overcome. Let us take the 
matter of eye strain. We have said that there are 
three causes for eye strain from films faulty projec- 
tion, old or badly scratched film and weak or defective 
eyes. The school can and should refuse to accept and 
run films in worn-out condition. There is no good 
excuse for faulty projection even on the part of ama- 
teurs. Operating a projector is not a difficult job 
and is one which a member of the faculty or a bright 
pupil can usually perform with entire satisfaction. 
Machines should be kept in good order and in proper 
adjustment, and no dirt or dust should be allowed to 
collect around the film gate. As for weak eyes, the 
abnormal child should not be allowed to determine the 
policy for the normal individuals of the class. With 
proper film, properly adjusted machine and normal 
eyesight, no appreciable eye strain results. 

2 

To put films into the schools does involve labor, 
expense and knowledge of the subject. 

To install and equip science laboratories requires the 
services of those who know what is needed and of 
skilled labor to make the proper installation, and the 
same is true of motion picture equipment. No well- 
equipped school of tomorrow will go without motion 
picture equipment merely because of the mechanical 
difficulties. There are mechanical difficulties in install- 
ing light and heat and water and yet what modern 
dwelling is without these things? As a matter of fact 
there are many types of motion picture installation 
which are exceedingly simple. 


64 Motion Pictures in Education 

This subject will be discussed at length in Chap- 
ter XL 

3 

The fire danger arising from the use of films seems 
from actual experience to be greatly over-stated. No 
serious fire has occurred in a properly equipped film 
theatre and no serious film fire of any kind has oc- 
curred in any school. This may be due in a large meas- 
ure to honest recognition on the part of authorities that 
film improperly handled is dangerous but properly 
handled is not. 

There is no more reason for refraining from the 
use of film merely because when misused it becomes 
a menace than for depriving a school of electric lights 
or heat on the ground that their careless and improper 
use is dangerous. Properly handled it is no more 
dangerous than the gasoline in an automobile, the 
highly inflammable lace curtains at the window or the 
flimsy dress of the child. If any of these are permitted 
improperly to come in contact with flame danger re- 
sults. The school motion picture equipment should 
be installed from the standpoints of both safety and 
efficiency. The well-appointed school should possess 
approved projection equipment properly installed in