EDUCATION CONGRESS

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 54, 6 March 1922, Page 8

EDUCATION CONGRESS

THE CINEMA'S OPPORTUNITY.

TEACHING HISTORY.

(HtOM OUR OWN COHMiroKBIHt.)

LONDON, 2nd January.

At the Educational Conference v very interesting discussion was raised by Mr. HilaJre Bjlloo on "The Teaching of History through Pageant and Drama." He opened with the remark: "History is the lesurrection of the fle-sh." It did not really raise the dead—luckily for them —but it did attempt the resurrection of tho flesh. The ideal hietory would be a presentation to the pupil, if it were possible, of all l-ho past with which they had to dealj with its climate, tho expression of its people, its architecture, its daily life; the whole thing as poignant, -as vivid, as actual as the life being led today. That would be the ideal method; and it. was their business ■to see how clearly they could approach it. If they told a person what had happened in a foreign country they could not give ©very detail, they could not make the whole thing live. But, by proper selection they could make it more or less vivid, and more or less true. History was, perhaps, the most important of the purely temporal subjects—excluding theoloary, which was the most important. It was almost above mathematics, and it, was certainly a great deal more important than tne rotten stuff called philosophy, whioh was tho asking of riddles, while nobody attempted to get the truth. History added to human experience a third dimension. Our experience as living beings was a wonderful thing, the depth to which '.we could penetrate being only a few years. History, properly taught, extended that bounding line so greatly that life took on a new aspect altogether. There was added the third dimension. History was the memory of the human race. Imperfect history was distorted memory, and no history was the loss of memory. A HISTORY OF LIES. Mr. Belloc once had a conversation with a public school man, who said that to tell lies in history was a great advantage to the State. They wanted a!l the boys to be patriotic, but they could not make them so if they were told what things were like. They must be taught to revere their country a« they revered their father. "The father would be a £reat fool if ha told his eon exactly what he had done all his life. (Laughter.) Therefore," we tell them lies, and for my part I lie to them, and I think I have a good class of history scholars." (Laughter.) There wa« a lot to be said for that, but he regarded truth on the whole, and in the long run as beet. The teaching to-day was deplorably defective. How. many history students at Oxford knew that the Prussians advanced en masse at Waterloo, or that King Alfred went to Mass? These were two very different things, but they were, nevertheless, • important. There ware various methods of treating history—the historical novel, the play, the pageant, the still, picture, and the moving picture. He regarded the play as the most latisfaotory. form of all, for the living, personality impressed the imagination as ho picture could do. The 6till picture had this advantage: it could be polished and made most perfect in its realisation. Tho novel had its disadvantages. It had to bring in the adventitious interest. The mind was concentrated : more on the plot, and the details of the- part were often ignored or forgotten. The novel could never be the beat vehicle for teaching history. Very, few men, indeed, combined the requisite knowledge with the requisite imagination, and the requisite power of an organic description of a. long story as, a whole. As to the pageant, the obstacles to a faithful presentation of any period of history were great. To resurrect the past they required the accent, the gesture, arid all the details that went to make true history. . . ■ ADVANTAGES OF THE MOVING PICTURE. i In tfie moving picture they Had their great, Siovel, and hitherto untouched opportunity. The moving picture could teach history to all the schools, and, what I was equally important, to the universities, and they badly needed it. (Laughter.) They could teach history with vision as nothing else could succeed in doing. They could polish and polish a moving picture | untir they had everything exact. The accent—that fatal thing—(laughter)—would not matter. The characters might talk the purest Cockney, as long as? the. gestures were , right. They could show the. millions the tragedy of Mary Queen of Scots from her imprisonment to her death. The whole thing as it really was would live in Hhe mind. But he feared that the financial advantage accruing from an accurately historical picture of that kind would not be great enough to induce anyone to take it up. He feared, too, that if it were attemped it would be done badly. v HISTORY IN RELATION TO TIME. Lord Howard de "Warden (chairman) described himself as one ,who had suffered from a public school education, and had been unable to avoid the unfortunate effects produced by the present system of teaching history. The teaching was so sporadic and casual, or so concentrated on certain periods, that he had no idea ,bf time relation in history, and formed the notion that the eighteenth century spread ovor an ordinary geological period, and •that the Middle Ages must have been got over in a fortnight. (Laughter.) He had no sort of relative idea of what wae happening in different.places at any particular date, space and time- being compressed and expanded like a concertina until his mind became- a complete and absolutemaze —and it had remained so very largely ever since. (Laughter.) He thought it possible,/'by"'teatthmK history through the media of play and pageant.'to reestablish in the child's mind some idea of this time relation. Ho had recently seen people connected with the cinema, and had questioned them as to the feasibility, of Mr. Bailee's, suggestion. The answer was that there was not a producer in England who waa fit to touch it. (Laughter.) CINEMA DEVELOPMENT OB- - STRUCTED. At a meeting of one of his companies, Sir 0. Stoll criticised the Entertainments Tax and the London County Couricil'a ban on children attending cinemas. The tax paid on tho year amounted to £24,927. It was really money^ for nothing, so far as' the entertainment public was concern-, cd. The' Treasury was depriving entortainments of receipts to -an extent which threatened the bulk of the industry, and was daily adding to the industry's unemployed. The Treasury were not the only menace, for the L.C.C., tho autocrat of •the London area, was, together with its municipal bodies, levying heavy and increasing rates on the entertainment world. Although the rates had to be paid from revenue the council never tired of hitting that revenue with weapons fashioned out of any absurd idea that might occur to the mind of any so-called reformer within its ranks. "The la-tost'is a sweeping generalisation that cinemas aru not fit places for persons under 16 years of age,'-' ho proceeded, "unless they are accompanied by a parent or guardian. That is a cruel aspersion to be spread broadcast against- a lawful and legitimate industry by a public authority. If people lived to-day as long as in the dnys of Methuselah, then before they could visit a cinemachildren up to the age of 240 would have to be accompanied by a. parent or guardian. In my youth, I b?gan to manage a theatre at the age of 14 years and three months. It was fortunate for me that no such council existed in thosedays."