THE CINEMA AND EDUCATION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19278, 16 September 1924, Page 2

THE CINEMA AND EDUCATION.

Written for the Otago Daily Times.

Bv Education Student. Education begins at birth and terminates ' at death. There are those among us who would say that education begins well before birth. They have even formed them- ; selves into a society, and call their contribution and attitude towards education the Science of Eugenics. Certainly they have some grounds for this. There is an accumulation of data in the earliest period of life after birth that can be explained only by pre-natal causes. These facts aro well known to specialists, and cry aloud for investigation and treatment. There aro these, too, who hazard tho opinion that education does not cease with death, i But there we have very slender “ facts.” A few enthusiastic men have essayed to investigate that “ bourne from which no traveller returns.” Their “ facts ” are so rare and so incongruous and out-of-kcop-ing with other facts of life’s experience that we received their statements with open scepticism and even hostility. Tho right attitude is to keep an open mind where, from our own experience, we cannot accept and believe. But. coming to this life and all modern means and material of education, we aio face to face with tho cinema, the most extraordinary phenomenon in all social his tory with consequences for good or ill that wo must meet. For it is fraught with consequences that few of us have yet had time to think of. It is not merely the consequences of one grand unique fact that we have to measure, but the far more subtle and insidious consequences of a fact that operates frequently and continuously though in small doses over the whole nation at all ages. A result is not less inevitable because it is produced by acoumutilated operations, continuously on a small scale, over a large area. But it takes a Darwin to investigate and measure it. Here we have highly perfected apparatus for exhibiting “some of the most contemptible stories that have over been inflicted upon the public.” We have tried to avoid this result by setting up a censorship. That is merely negative work. The question is, Can we bo sure that what passes the censor as a minimum of decency is not harmful and is positively beneficial either as a form of recreation or as education? Let us look at some of the facts. The manufacture of moving pictures is now one of tho most important industries of tho world as regards capital invested and persons employed. The theatre public consists of all ages from babies in arms to the oldest in the community. Tho motive ol the producers is economic and commercial. The motives of the clientele vary from pure recreation and rest after arduous or monotonous occupation in workship or factory, from a habit of emotional indulgence, to inability to use one’s leisure time with hobby or other interest. In congested areas —large towns and cities—the fact of daily or frequent attendance has a two-fold bearing—the economic and the physical, besides the mental. With the question of cost of living and indulgence in luxuries one cannot afford, this article does not deal; but the question of hygiene, physical and mental—late hours, fatigue, physical and mental exhaustion, emotional and nerve storma —is of the essence of education. A cinema Commission, of which Dr Kimmins was a member, experimented recently in London with the educational possibilities of tho cinema. It found that frequenters of “movies” developed a “distinct cinema sense” which enabled them to follow the story where a rare visitor would lose the thread. Many parents must have noticed, perhaps with some surprise and shock* how readily children pick up tho threads. This facility in the “uptake,” especially in experiences of adult life, is an unpleasant revelation of the child’s precocious stock of ideas. One must, however, beware of the educational fallacy of assuming too readily that the child “sees” these things from the adult point of view. Again, Professor Munstei berg has pointed out in his book on the photo-play that in the cinema we have really a new art. Much research is still required before we shall be in a position to determine tho educational effect of tho “close-up” and the “cut-back.” The '‘cut-back” reduces to a minimum the mental effort in reviewing tho past. Compared with the lantern slide tho moving picture is found to give much clearer memory after the lapse of a three or four months’ interval. The emotional effect of the “close-up” can now be_ measured by electrical means. One awaits reports of these researches with much interest. In the meantime we can consider the broad educational effect of the cinema. Skill and ingenuity have been spent on the machine until it is well ngh perfect. Improvement on the intellectual side has been comparatively neglected. “Captions” have been reduced in number and length. It has become more and more recognised that one of tho most important aspects of education is the development of the imagination. It is just here that w© have one of the most damaging effects of the cinema. The cinema throws the imagination completely out of action by over-insistence on detail. _ The audience cannot bo trusted to imagine the most insignficant details for itself, but must have every move in the game elaborately and minutely depicted. There is a similar effect produced hy the trashy as compared with the artistic novel. In education mental effort is not to bo avoided. It might well be said that true education is the art of teaching people to think no matter what tho subject matter. In primary school work much time must be spent in getting pupils to acquire the tools and means of thinking and expressing thought. But that is subsidiary to education. By means of the “close-up” and “cut-back” the machine does all the thinking for the audiences. They are relieved of the necessity of making any mental effort at all. This may bo a valuable relief and recreation for people jaded with arduous or monotonous work, but from the point of view of education, especially of education at the most propitious age—from seven years to 25 years—thinking makes mind. Absence of thinking connotes mental atrophy. Hence the tendency of the cinema, by reducing the necessity to think, is to reduce the mind to something bordering on imbecility. Children who are brought up on such mental faro are less likely to be able to use their minds than a child that is allowed to read or listen to a Shakespeare play and discover the meaning for himself. A generation is growing up amongst us that can look without seeing, that uses its eyes uniritelligently, and that cannot use its ears or its brains at all. Parents when criticising school of to-day as compared with schools of their own day as children, must take this among many other different conditions into consideration. Pupils who frequent the cinema are apt to view everything with cinema eyes. Whatever is coarse and broad, whatever is farcical and has rapid movement appeals. The subtle and the witty the beautiful in sound and sentiment in language and poetry, are irreconcilable with moving pictures. The successful kinema story is often crude and sensational, and the action extravagant, coarse, and sometimes suggestively vulgar. In educational value the kinema is not comparable with the representation of ’Hamlet.” Which gels the patronage? The theatre is deserted for the kinema; the moving-picture has routed drama. Hero is a clear indication of where we stand. Wherein lies the explanation of this decadence of the standard of taste? What is tho remedy? In the Arts place, we must recognise that we aro all still suffering from war after-effects, some seriously so, Tho children in tho senior classes of our primary schools have some recollection of the final years of the war. The community has not yet recovered its normal health and poise. Our enterprise and initiative are timid and nervous; economic conditions strangle our development and expansion; the parts of tho social community are sensitive, fretful, and impatient with one another. There is an absence of that generous, forbearing, courageous, and adventurous spirit that betokens robust health in our nation. We must have the faro of sick people. TrageiJy-rontcrppl.-i----tion must give place to comedy. You must tickle us or wo die. We must be entertained, not educated., Tho smalltown mind with its supicions and its uncharitableness pervades the whole nation. This is not the spirit of a sea-born people, of a high-spinted' r imperial nation in the hevday of its health. What will be the Anal product if these conditions and influences continue uninterruptedly? Can we contemplate the result seriously with equanimity. Shall we continue a spineless policy of drift and laissez fairc? Lot us return and acquire some of that virility and large-mindedncss of our fathers. But can we acquire them in cinema palaces? But convalescence with its fretfiilness and discontent is not the only explanation of our present decadens standard of taste. Part of the fault lies at the door of the film manufacturer. He has accustomed a growing generation to extravagant action and violent plots. The need at the present time is for pioneers to restore the imagination of our people. The younger generations now in the schools have been as richly endowed and can aspire to ns great adventures as their fathers. We must see that they are not robbed of their right to education. Our

people, adult as well as juvenile, must not fare wholly on violent neurotic novels and “movies,” but must be bred and nurtured on full-blooded spoken drama. The cinema has the imagination in chains Our educational problem is to set our children free.