INTRODUCTION
The Cinema-Educator.
The educational possibilities of the film have not yet been fully visualized, and this volume is designed to advance its usefulness in the widest sense in the scheme of education.
“Do not train boys to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds,” said Plato, and this in a measure is the theme of a section of this book dealing specifically with the use of the cinematograph in our schools and colleges. One can imagine the introduction of the film in class-work eliminating that Shakespearean type of scholar who goeth “like snail, unwillingly to school.”
Emerson wrote to the effect that “the secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.” Although he was not making allusion to the pupil of the eye, it may be that to-day “the secret of education lies in attracting the pupil,” and the film is the important factor to secure his or her attention.
At a scholastic conference on “New Ideals in Education,” at Bedford College, Miss E. Holmes affirmed that the average teacher of to-day could think of no other way of teaching than by grouping pupils into classes and educating them by chalk and talk. That meant that the older children had to mark time during the most critical years of their life, making them tired of routine, and all desire to continue education died of sheer inanition. The average teacher into whose soul had entered the iron evil of tradition could rid himself of much routine, to the advantage of himself and his pupils. Given a sympathetic Government and a sympathetic local authority, teachers might do much as they pleased in the way of striking out new paths for themselves, it is averred. The aid of the film may be one of the “new paths” to knowledge.
It has been said elsewhere that when you introduce into our schools a spirit of emulation, you have present the keenest spur admissible to the youthful intellect. The screen can convey the proper spirit to the boy and girl, whether the subject be scientific, literary, historical, or biographical. Rousseau wrote that “Education is either from nature, from man, or from things”—and the film is the modern medium. If it be truly said that the eye is the window of the soul then the possibilities of the cinematograph in our schools are without limit.
While the film can never supersede oral education, it may be most valuable as an aid to instruction. Modern educationists would not contemplate the idea of training the eye to the exclusion of the use of the ear. The cinematograph may (to use a stereotyped phrase) “supply a long-felt want.”
The children of to-day are such habitual Cinema-goers that too much cinematograph is to be discouraged, but the film used in proper perspective in the schools will excite and increase interest in science, industry, art, geography, travel, history, biography and literature.
“The eye sees what it brings the power to see,” said Carlyle, and the inference is obvious.