FILMS FOR EDUCATION

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22344, 15 February 1936, Page 12 (Supplement)

FILMS FOR EDUCATION

BRITAIN'S BACKWARD PLACE

Britain is 10 years behind the Continent and America in the use of the film for educational purposes, states a correspondent of the London News Chronicle. Overwhelming evidence to this effect was given at what may prove to have been an historic meeting in London under the auspices of the British Film Institute. Seven sound films on 16 m.m. school projectors were shown. In the audience were film directors and technicians and 40 members of the County Councils' Association from many parts of Britain. The meeting was arranged after the Councils' Association had received a deputation from the British Film Institute urging the vital importance of the use of films in the schools.

Films shown ranged from the rudiments of football to a highly technical description of the cathode ray as used in radio research. They included Professor Julian Huxley's "The Sea Urchin," which won the gold medal as the world's finest scientific film at the International Exhibition at Brussels in 1934. A fascinating one was a language film for elementary school children in an entirely new technique by Mary Field.

"In one respect a dictatorship puts us to shame," said a director of the British Film Institute, who has just returned from a tour of investigation of German schools. "Every school in Germany is equipped with a projector, while fewer than one per cent, of tho 52,000 schools in Britain own projectors."