THE FILM IN EDUCATION
By EDGAR ANSTEY than these theatrical successes is the constant stream of instructional, expositional and propaganda films which have been made exclusively for showing outside the sphere of conventional entertainment. The Ministry of Information has established non-theatrical (or extra- theatrical) distribution machinery which last year served a total audience of 18,000,000 civilians, whilst the Armed Forces have come to rely on the instructional film as a necessary adjunct to training. The mobile projector and the transportable screen have been used to keep the people of Britain informed of the strategy arid tactics of the war ; they have helped to teach the citizen to cultivate with efficiency his back garden or allotment ; they have trained civil defence personriel—ranging from the skilled rescue worker to ''the humble fire-guard—in the broad principles and detailed methods of •• their vital activities ; the non-theatrical film has brought instruction to the farmer, and to the factory canteen it has brought a lively picture of the great fighting machine which the worker has sustained by his often humdrum and unspectacular labours. Moving pictures have carried a conviction often hard to achieve with the written word or the spoken broadcast.
With so much accomplished in war-time it is not surprising that many organisations and individuals are today considering the post- war use of the informational film. The first possible role which comes to mind is in the field of education. The Association 'of Cine-Technicians (the film technicians' trade union) has recently published an admirable pamphlet entitled Documentary and Educa- tional Films—a Memorandum on Planning for Production and use. in Post-War Britain, which deals with this question in some detail. Other similar blue-prints are on the way.
The idea of using the film as a piece of the machinery of educa- tion—a " visual aid "—is, of course, no new conception either here or overseas. In the United States a highly commendable initiative has come from the Universities: Texas, Wisconsin, Ohio State and Chicago have made valuable contributions. The last-named has recently followed its acquisition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica Company by purchasing ERPI, the leading educational film produc- tion organisation in America. In the U.S.S.R., as one would ex- pect, it is the State which is active as promoter. In Moscow there are separate studios for the production of technical, scientific and educational films. Even in China educational pictures are being produced, though these at present largely take the form of instruc- tional films for the Army. A recent report from Nazi Germany (received- through neutral channels, and to be accepted with caution) states that 261 educational or scientific films were being produced in German studios at the beginning of February, 1944, as compared with 140 at the beginning of 1943. In Britain today probably fewer
than 2 per cent. of our schools possess sound-film projectors, and those possessing silent machines are unlikely to number more than
6 per cent. In contrast with the activity of American universi- ties our own have made almost no use of the film. The lack of demand for films which results from the shortage of available pro- jectors has placed an insuperable obstacle in the path of commercial film-producers seeking to exploit the field. Production hai been discouraged, and the few educationists anxious to experiment have often been forced to use films produced primarily with an eye on other markets. Documentary films made by industrial sponsors such as the oil, gas and chemical industries, and by official agencies such as the G.P.O., have been available on certain subjects, but they touch curricula only at a few isolated points.
Today, however, there are hopeful signs for the future. The war has done two things: in forcing us to find a quick solution to many problems of mass-communication it has given us valuable experience in the production of instructional films, and, perhaps more important, it has resulted in the setting up of nation-wide machinery for the showing of such films. This machinery, at present principally in the possession of the Services and the Ministry of Information, should in due course become available for new post-war purposes. The Board of Education is an obvious potential inheritor of the Ministry of Information's distribution machinery and of the Ministry's Central Film Library (which includes a large number of . background educational films). It is, however, by no means a simple problem of transferring existing projectors to new owners. Many More machines will clearly be needed-3o,o0o is probably a minimum—if the full educational demand is to be met.
Certain basic principles need to be borne clearly in mind if the country is to take advantage of its present excellent opportunity to make full use of the educational film._ To begin with, we need to consider the nature of the films required. These—and the point is fundamental—will in no case replace the teacher. The educational film, whatever its category, is an adjunct only to more personal methods. Whether the film be a visual demonstration of a single fact, or a summary, or a film illustrating the general background to a piece of teaching, it remains a supplementary instrument. Its func- tion at its best consists in opening in the class-room wall a window through which the real world may be examined alongside its cold
blackboard representation. At the other extreme the film may prove capable of revolutionising the standard methods of academic de- monstration in such subjects as mathematics. Its power to depict developing space-time relationships May provide the mathematical research-worker as well as the teacher with a- new instrument.
The subjects are innumerable. How is the vast production problem to be tackled? There are two broad possibilities: the field may be left to commercial exploitation, or it may become subject to State subsidy and, indeed, State' control, with the film-makers working as Government contractors. Since the whole cost of com- mercially produced educational films must be recovered from the educational market (only a very few good educational films are suit- able for sale to the cinemas), the cost to the taxpayer is no less if he purchased films produced as a commercial speculation than if he sponsor them himself with grants from public funds. The difference is that whereas copies of speculatively produced films (at prices sufficient to cover production-costs) would probably be sold direct to local education authorities by the conitnercial producers,. the production cost, in the case of public sponsorship, would be borne at the higher, co-ordinating level of the Board of Education, copies being distributed free to L.E.A.'s or regional libraries. By this latter method proper planning of production to cover the whole educational field would be possible, and could be undertaken in collaboration with expert educational opinion uninfluenced by commercial considera- tions of profit. The resultant free distribution to L.E.A.'s would en- courage the development of the educational film, whereas the need to purchase copies or to hire them at high rentals would most certainly have an inhibiting effect. The risks of bureaucracy involved in such a plan are less than the drawbacks of commercialism. We cannot be satisfied with the production of educational films on popular subjects only, simply because these will find the most profitable market. Here, as with the postal service, only the State can cover the whole field, including its commercially unprofitable corners.
The Government has demonstrated during the course of the war that it can sponsor films which compare in quality and efficiency of production with those made on a purely commercial basis. These films, in a vast majority of cases, have been made available to the public as part of a free information service. These same principles of subsidised production and free distribution lend themselves patently for application, as soon as war circumstances permit, in the field of public education, a field in which the generous and in- telligently directed participation of the film is long ovetdue.
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