instructional tools of the educator is in every respect similar to an industrial concern putting up a magnificient plant, sparing no expense to staff offices and shops with the finest personnel available, and then, finally, neglecting to give the same attention to the tools used in training the plant personnel to shape or convert raw materials into their end product. The end product of our schools is education, and to the extent that the teacher is required to use tools that are obsolescent, worn out, insufficient, or of improper design for the job, to that extent we may expect to get the same results that any factory would get under the same conditions.

We have learned in industry that it is only through the constant application of new developments and new tools that we are able to keep pace with the increasing demands of our society and the rate of progress that is steadily being established elsewhere in the world. I suggest to you that it is reasonable to take the position that tremendous opportunities exist in our world of high-speed communications and improved communications devices-that tremendous opportunities exist to improve the effectiveness of the instructional materials in our schools and in so doing to improve the general level of education. Indeed, such improvement, in the opinion of many specialists in communications in education, can be obtained at a minimum of cost in the shortest possible period of time and under conditions which would protect the quality of education being given to the present generation of students in our schools without the necessity of sacrificing these generations against the hope that some long-range program will produce greater benefits in future years.

The great new tools for learning that have developed with our growing skills in communications are, in fact, being used now and with demonstrated effectiveness. But only a very small part of their potential for educating is being realized in our country. These are not new techniques in the classroom; the sound motion picture and filmstrip and other audiovisual aids have been with us for many years. They are so well established as modern tools of the educator that almost every nation of the Western World, with the exception of the United States, has established a national agency to insure their optimum development and utilization. England has its Foundation for Visual Aids in Education, Canada its National Film Board; Russia, with its Ministry of Cinematography, has given it near-Cabinet status. The reports of reliable observers in Russia, by the way, indicate that no small part of their successes in their crash program of science education is due to the highly effective use they make of the sound film as an instructional tool.

This is certainly not to suggest that the use of such materials is unknown in the United States. On the contrary, we have in this country developed during the past quarter of a century an impressive array of skills in the production and introduction of new audiovisual materials. A large number of organizations in this field are producing several hundred new sound motion pictures for the classroom each year in almost every subject matter area of the curriculum. We have developed skilled technicians in the interpretation of subject matter in motion picture form, and a most impressive array of subject matter specialistsscholars of eminence in their respective fields of learning, who have learned to assist in the planning and execution of film assignments in the precise and demanding field of producing motion pictures designed expressly for classroom use. And in the Nation's schools there has been developed, at the elementary, secondary, and higher education levels, a nucleus of skilled specialists in audiovisual education. These are the audiovisual directors of our schools and universities, who over the years have developed their own skills as teachers using these tools, and learned the administrative skills necessary for the operation of audiovisual programs.

The miracle is that this body of skills, talents, and experience is now ready at hand for our use, for it has developed in the face of almost every circumstance calculated to discourage its growth. There has been no coherent industrywide planning or research, no wide-scale administrative machinery for fostering the development and use of these materials and organized provision for the training of educational specialists or the procurement of materials.

Although audiovisual materials are well known to the educator, and their history of effectiveness has been most impressive, their actual application in the classroom has unfortunately been on a shockingly small scale. It has been estimated that less than 10 percent of the Nation's school children are exposed to motion pictures in the classroom on any regular and planned basis. A recent estimate by the Eastman Kodak Co. indicates that the United States Government purchases more prints of sound motion pictures for instructional use than

all of the Nation's schools put together, this despite the fact that the schools in the United States, in an effort to equip themselves for the widest possible use of this new medium, actually have in operation the largest single number of projectors of any of the institutions-Government, industry, religion, to name a few-which make extensive use of this important technique for training.

Since the Nation's educators will almost unanimously agree that audiovisual instructional materials are of great importance in the educational process and can contribute impressively to a solution of many of our teaching problems, it is evident that the wider use of these materials is limited only by means. In the past decade, the Nation's schools have been hard put to maintain their obligations in the form of new buildings, increased facilities, and higher salary levels. They have barely kept pace with the rudimentary requirements in the instructional materials field-the essential textbooks and printed materials. They have simply not had the resources to incorporate on a large scale the process of audiovisual communication in the classroom.

In a quarter of a century of working with educators in the audio-visual field, my associates rarely encounter a school official or a classroom teacher who does not express a passionate desire to make wider use of these materials. But the overwhelming majority of these people point sadly to their basic limitations: inability to find the funds to obtain the materials and the lack of proper training in their utilization at the teacher training institutional level, at the State level, and indeed as the in-service level in the school systems themselves. This, then, is where a program of aid and support at the present time could meet a need in which literally all American teachers and school administrators share. These are, as I have said, not new techniques in the classroom; this is one of their greatest advantages. The proposal that we encourage their widest possible use makes no suggestion that you give support to an experimental device which has yet to be proved, or one on which a tremendous amount of work must be done before it can be put to maximum use in all of the Nation's schools. The sound motion picture, since its beginnings more than a quarter of a century ago, has been tried and tested in the one place where such a test has the greatest significance in the classroom, in a wide variety of teaching situations in literally every subject area in the curriculum of the public schools of this country.

HOW MOTION PICTURES CONTRIBUTE TO LEARNING

The logic of the motion picture in the classroom is so apparent as to almost make it unnecessary to labor the point. Few of us living in an age in which motion pictures and television have established the tremendous impact of simultaneous sight and sound in communications can deny that this force on the face of it must be a powerful one in education. It seems reasonable to assume that man's primary interest in using communications is for the purpose of education. In the days before any of our modern communications devices existed, the average man learned what he knew through the use of his eyes, his ears, and his voice. As the world grew larger, these facilities diminished in effectiveness, and he began to devise substitutes. Perhaps the greatest of these was the printing press which enabled him to use his newly found alphabet and set of numbers for the recording of facts and dissemination of information and ideas. Over the years this substitute grew and expanded in use, but it was always limited by the fact that many people never did learn to read-many people don't learn to read today, at least to the extent that their reading skills can be used for educational purposes beyond the primary areas-and few men were able to use all of their God-given senses to achieve maximum efficiency in the process of instruction and learning. With the advent of the motion picture, many of the great limitations to learning were brushed aside. Here are some of the things that the motion pictures in the classroom have done for teachers during the past quarter of a century: 1. Verbalism

The transfer of words from the printed page through the eye alone to the brain. their consequent memorization by students who frequently don't understand what they have memorized, is known as verbalism. This is the end result in all too many cases of the process of education in many subject areas. The student memorizes the theorem in geometry, recites it, and in some cases actually regurgitates it for examination purposes, but he has not had a meaningful experience, and in a very real sense, he has learned nothing at all. The sound motion picture, by giving meaning to abstract concepts, by giving reality to what would otherwise be a meaningless jumble of words, overcomes verbalism and stimulates real learning.

2. Common experience

Increasingly in today's classrooms the teacher faces a group of children from a wide variety of backgrounds. Some come from families with substantial means, others come from homes where a high educational level prevails and there are extensive resources to support the learning process. Some children have traveled, and others have not. Since teaching in classroom fashion is essentially a group activity, educators long ago learned that the process can only be fully effective when the children in the class have had some common experience, some single background against which the teacher can work, confident in the knowledge that each child has a frame of reference not unlike that of his classmates. The difficult, expensive, and cumbersome field trip has been, in the past, one technique for overcoming this. Now the sound motion picture, by taking the whole class at the same time through a single experience, whether it be an airplane trip, a visit to a farm or a particular industry, provides this background of common experience and tremendously increases the effectiveness of the teacher.

3. Motion

Many of the things we have to learn have motion. Some motion is complex and difficult to describe. Some motion, unless it can be seen, simply cannot be usefully imagined. Some things appear so vast that the ordinary human eye can't see them, while others take so long to happen that there would be no time to view them. Some of the things in motion are so small that only the most powerful microscope could make them visible, while other forms of motion take place within solid objects under conditions which would make viewing dangerous or impossible. Yet the motion picture draws upon the magic of slow motion photography, time-lapse photography, of photomicrography and X-ray photography, as well as animation, to solve all of these problems and many more besides. The child to whom "metamorphosis" would be a tremendously difficult word to learn, suddenly realizes that it's a pretty easy word after all, after seeing in just a few moments the miracle of the transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly through the magic of the time-lapse camera.

The ability to synthesize some events in time and space is literally exclusive with the motion picture camera. There are some elements of instruction that can only be effectively presented in this manner. They not only include the obvious items mentioned above, but encompass also such areas as geography, history, and other social studies areas. A pupil who can view two widely separated geographical areas within a few moments, or watch the reenactment of a vital period or episode in history, is being exposed to an educational communication of lasting effectiveness.

4. Reading limitations

It

Not every student can read, and our educators are learning that there are different levels of reading ability. Some children who can read comic books, for example, can't read an arithmetic problem or a page in a history or science textbook. Some who do very well with literature cannot deal with the technical materials, and vice versa. The great majority of these poor readers have substantial learning skills and they could be brought along in the process of education to a higher level than many of them presently reach. The sound motion picture, of course, communicates to all of them with equal effectiveness. knows no limitations in its ability to communicate to people of all kinds of reading skills; and indeed, by giving the poor reader a sense of learning accomplishment, it often contributes to an increased desire to learn to read better. This ability of the motion picture to communicate with people who cannot read, incidentally, is one of its major attractions in areas of the world outside of the United States where there is a low level of literacy and a great job of public education to be done. I would like to emphasize here that American educational motion pictures are being used on a constantly increasing scale around the world, and that they are one of our most impressive ambassadors of good will in areas where the ordinary kinds of propaganda have made little or no impression. We are building on a sound basis when a child in India or Thailand gains his first understanding of magnetism, electricity, or life in the United States by seeing an American-made classroom film.

5. Teacher training

As we have changed the American curriculum in recent years, we have placed tremendous burdens upon the existing force of teachers. When we decided to teach science at lower levels in elementary schools, for example, we recognized the fact that it was literally impossible to train the teachers at those grade levels

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in the rudiments of science. Many of them learned their basic science by watching the very sound motion pictures they depended upon to teach their classes. More important than that, teachers in most subject areas who were fortunate enough to have access to films were able to keep themselves current in developments in their subject areas by using these films. The textbook is not quickly discarded, nor is it easily revised. The overburdened teacher, whose responsibilities not only include work in the classroom but a tremendous amount of housekeeping and other tasks, rarely has the time to keep current on new subject matter developments. If the film, which can be produced quickly and which is frequently exchanged for a newer version of the same title at little or no cost to the educator, is slowly becoming the source of new information for the Nation's teachers, it is entirely possible that major changes in the curriculum of the future may be made largely through films.

6. The past and the distant

We know that if we are to educate our children to live in an age with global implications and to contribute to the preservation of democracy, we must teach them about the ways of life around the world and impress on them the great heritage that has come to them through the ages through history and particularly through the development of freedom that has been a characteristic of our great Nation. This is a task that poses tremendous problems for the older techniques of education, which depend largely upon personal exposition and the use of reading materials. Yet the camera, with its unique ability to visit the far corners of the world and bring back rich images, and with its added ability to reenact the great events of the historic past, makes a great contribution in these two significant areas. The child in an American classroom can visit the home of a youngster in Italy, see how he lives, what it is like in his classroom, how his father earns a living and his mother keeps house. He can live again the moment when Benjamin Franklin addressed the delegation in Philadelphia that produced the Declaration of Independence and identify himself and his attitudes with the great men in history as they faced the challenges that have produced our heritage.

7. Cost

It is difficult to describe the relative cost of sound motion pictures as compared with other materials of instruction, but there is considerable evidence to indicate that the cost of a film in terms of the number of students who use it and benefit from it is no greater-and in most cases is actually smaller than the cost of other instructional materials, including books. This is not an argument in favor of films as opposed to books, but it does indicate that there are no important obstacles in terms of great expense to the use of a sound motion picture as an everyday tool in the classroom.

8. Other advantages

Time and space simply do not permit the further discussion of the advantages of the motion picture in the classroom. Some of these, indeed, are so obvious as to hardly require discussion. The communication takes place under conditions which produce maximum attention. The motion picture reproduces life in sparkling color, which not only contributes to greater attention but also approaches reality to a degree simply not possible under any other circumstances. The teacher retains at all times complete control of the pace and progress of the communication. She can preview the film in advance of the class and decide how best to use it. She can edit it so that only that particular portion that applies to her problem is shown to the class. She can turn off the sound track and let the class share with her the experience of explaining what is happening on the screen. She can run the film a second time at her convenience to underline the importance of some aspects of the subject matter. Indeed, the limitations to the use of this impressive instructional device are only those which would limit the imagination and skills of the teacher herself.

THE SCIENCES

Because there is great current interest in techniques that would improve and broaden teaching in the field of the sciences, perhaps some special mention of this area should be made at this time. I think it is evident from what I have said before that motion pictures can be used in all areas of the curriculum, and indeed this is one of their advantages because there would be many drawbacks

to the development of any specialized teaching tool that was of value only in the science field; but it is also true that classroom films have made one of their greatest contributions since the very beginning in the area of science. The earliest films dealt with this complex and difficult subject, and they did some things that had never before been possible in the classroom. In biology, for example, they showed youngsters the human heart and circulatory system in a manner not possible in the classroom without an actual living body. Through actual photography they explained the miracles of digestion and the operation of the human body. In every field of science, using every technique of the filmic art, they explored difficult subject matter, abstract concepts, and contributed richly to the solution of teaching problems.

In recent years, as physics has become one of our most significant science areas, impressive work has been done in the film field. My own organization, in cooperation with the Fund for the Advancement of Education of the Ford Foundation, last year released the first complete science course in the American curriculum—indeed, in any curriculum-ever to be produced entirely on film. This course is now being taught in approximately 400 American schools in a wide variety of circumstances. It consists of 162 half-hour films in which a great physics teacher, Dr. Harvey White of the University of California at Berkeley, conducts lectures, lecture demonstrations, and laboratory experiments 5 days a week throughout the school year. In school systems where only 1 or 2 good physics teachers are available, these films have been used to relieve them of a tremendous amount of the housekeeping work involved in conducting experiments and putting on group demonstrations, and it has freed many of them to accept larger classes and deal more effectively with individual students. In situations where there are simply no physics teachers at all, the course is actually teaching students successfully, and students who take subsequent achievement tests following exposure to these films seem to fare as well as many students who have been taught in the ordinary process.

There is reason to believe that the development of complete courses of this kind on film may be a significant answer to some of our gravest problems in the science-teaching field.

At the present time my associates are working on the production of a complete course in introductory chemistry which will be available to students in the United States beginning with the 1958-59 school year. We are also associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology physical science study committee in the production of another kind of physics course-in the execution of a complete revision of the curriculum in the field of the physical sciences at the high-school level-and here again the sound motion picture plays a significant part in the production of exciting, effective, and revolutionary new concepts in the teaching of science.

We are learning, however, that the speedy implementation of these new techniques is simply not possible within the economic framework of the resources of American schools today, nor is it possible to contemplate anything except support for the barest experimental production and the most fragmentary use through the funds and foundations which have contributed so generously to education. It is now evident to us that if these new materials are going to be put to work today-and they are ready for today's students, many of whom may not have a chance to study the basic sciences otherwise-this support is going to have to come through Federal sources.

EXISTING RESOURCES IN AUDIOVISUAL INSTRUCTION

As I have indicated previously, the framework of an audiovisual distribution and utilization operation already exists at all levels in education in the United States. For example:

State universities

Many States maintain libraries of audiovisual materials. They distribute these films at lower cost to schools and school systems in the areas they represent. Few of these, however, have anything like the resources in numbers and variety of films that are actually necessary to provide real service and in the last analysis it is evident that the proper use of films, which requires that they be available in the classroom under the complete control of the teacher, simply cannot be achieved through rentals from distant institutions. Many State universities can supply only about half of the requests they receive, and