BEST SCHOOL AID

Evening Star, Issue 21054, 17 March 1932, Page 18

BEST SCHOOL AID

SOUND FILMS RECOMMENDED AMERICAN PROFESSOR'S VIEWS Dr Kirtley F. Mather, geology professor at Harvard University, told the United States National Board of Review of Motion Pictures recently that ho expected to demonstrate that sound films are a better aid to instruction than any other method of teaching. “ But 1 may be disappointed,” he added. In an address at the board’s annual conference Dr Mather told of experiments under way in three Massachusetts high schools where sound films are being used to supplement textbook instruction. The experiments, conducted by the Harvard Graduate School of Education and tlio University Film Foundation, are being made in schools at Lynn, Revere, and Quincy. They will not bo completed for another six or eight weeks. “ Our impressions to date,” lie said, “ have been that the sound films stimulate questions in the child mind to an extent never before believed possible. They pop out like bullets from a machine gun,- and come from all boys and girls instead of the three or four who usually monopolise the teachers’ time. The teachers have noticed that even the most modest and least assertive students burst out with queries. Outsiders, that is, other teachers aud students from other classes and even laymen, have in some cases dogged the classrooms to such an extent that the teachers have had to bar the doors to insure quiet and privacy for the class under instruction.” For the purpose of finding the relative value of methods of instruction, Dr Mather said, the students have been divided into throe groups. The first received instruction from the textbooks only, the second from the textbook supplemented by films, and the third received no instruction whatever. The third group, which will obtain its ideas only from ordinary outside sources, will serve as the zero on the scale of values to be determined. All the students in the experiment were subjected to intelligence tests and divided into groups as equitably as possible. Motion pictures made for adults have a largo influence in juvenile deliquency, Mrs Helen F. MacPherson, chief juvenile probation officer, Hartford, Conn., said. Advocating that parents see pictures before their children witness them, Mrs MacPherson said that “ a great many modern pictures plunge children directly into adult life.” She declared motion pictures have a greater attraction for children than any other moral force in the community.