MOTION - PICTURES IN EDUCATION A PRACTICAL HANDBOOK FOR USERS OF VISUAL AIDS BY DON CARLOS ELLTS AND LAURA THORN BOROUGH WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PHILANDER P. CLAXTON PKtlVHl, IfNrVKRSIJY OK AIAB M4 M RMKR U. b. COMMUNION Eft OF EDUCATION NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright, irk THOMAS M M VK1. I. INTRODUCTION ScHOOi-S 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 plearer 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 alue of all this added equipment is to provide an abundance of helpful concrete material and opportunity for self-activity m 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 Worlds 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, esj edally in high schools, colleges, professional and technical schools, and in extension classes, fanners institutes, womens 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 ler 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...