Education: Cinematic Pedagogy

Seeing is believing—and remem- bering. If adults can be made to believe that painted ladies and yel- low-collared gentlemen are nobly in love with each other, or that certain drawing-room manners, courageous leaps and skillful rescues represent slices from real life, simply by the flicker of light through celluloid, then surely children can be made to believe, remember and perhaps understand certain other human activities and natural phenomena of a more educational nature.

There has been much experiment with cinematic pedagogy. But lately the Eastman Kodak Co. investigated these experiments and found that they were being conducted most unscientifically, inefficiently. Accordingly, the Eastman Kodak Co. last week announced that it had arranged to develop a large series of films to be used in fourth, fifth and sixth grades of grammar schools, and in junior high schools, to supplement courses in geography, health and hygiene, civics, fine and practical arts, general science. The Kodak president, able, active George Eastman, has many times manifested keen interest in educational matters, chiefly through his gifts to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (TIME, Feb. 1). That the Kodak interest in cinematic pedagogy is more than a commercial project was seen in the fact that the films are to be made in co-operation with the National Education Association. School authorities in ten cities are to assist— in New York, Rochester, Detroit, Chicago, Kansas City, Denver, Los Angeles, Springfield (or Newton), Macs., Atlanta and Winston-Salem, N. C. Dr. Thomas Edward Fin- egan, chairman of the National Education Association’s committee on visual education, has been conferring with a committee that in- cluded Dr. John Huston Finley of Manhattan, Superintendent William A. McAndrew of Chicago, Commissioner Payson Smith of Massachusetts.

A similar project was begun some years ago at Yale University— to reproduce “Chronicles of America” in films which were to be leased to boards of education and private schools, and sent free to ru- ral districts. This venture was found financially impracticable. The present prospect of many school children learning geography and science from “shots” of Patagonian flocks and herds, Chinese temples, the home life of the Paramecium, or of “Making Rubber in Ohio,” seems excellent. The Eastman Kodak Co. is one of the largest corporations in the U. S. The National Education Association has some 161,000 members. And added to these agencies will be the huge publicity corps of Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc., Will H. Hays, president.

Perhaps, in the Kodak films on natural science, there will be glimpses of a furious, thick-maned, leaping, snarling, terrifying African lion. Last week despatches related that a companion of George Eastman, on his current expedition to the heart of the Dark Continent, had shot such a beast. If he was carrying out his own plans as announced, (TIME, Mar. 22, SCIENCE), Mr. Eastman was doubtless at the scene, cranking way at his camera from behind a bush. Mr. Eastman planned to hunt, personally, with cameras only.