THE CHILD AND THE KINEMA

Hokitika Guardian, 5 March 1921, Page 4

THE CHILD AND THE KINEMA

(By Dr Elizabeth Sloan Chesser.) The educational value ol the kinema is only beginning to he realised. Spoon education must give place to picturesque,- arresting methods ot teaching the great facts of lite and history and science. Already the medical profession lias grasped the significance of film teaching in operative surgery. The scientist has, in the kinema, an instrument for placing before the people the newest discoveries in physics, chemistry, and biology. I should like to see a kinema introduced into every school, and the cram hook and the dull, monotonous voice of the teacher give place to the picture story for part of the child s working working hours. So many children are bored with learning that there must he something wrong with our present methods of teaching.

The kinema cannot rob a child ot imagination. On the contrary, the imaginative mind will derive suggestions from pictures of the right sort. That is the kinemn’s greatest asset and greatest danger—its power ol appealing to the imagination. Its power of imparting knowledge cannot he denied. The school child might he made familiar with the elementary facts of hygiene, biology, and bacteriology, so that the foundations of health and hygiene are laid in youth. Secondly you can enrich the child mind and teach by kinematograph films the facts relating to the growth and manufacture of every-day commodities, food, clothing, and the like. Vliai does (lie man in the street know ot manufacture, of the romance of trade and transport?

“Education,” so called* wearies and depresses nine children out of ten, while with the aid of pictorial teaching by the film (which, of course, needs improvement and development) education would stimulate original effort and originality to an extent we cannot realise to-day. The danger of the kinema is sensationalism. Its producers are too prone to give the public cheap “art” and harmful melodrama under a mistaken idea that it is more popular. 1 do not think so. Good work makes a direct appeal to all classes of people. The public wants clean, wholesome comedy, topical events, history, geography, and science represented in an interesting, vital, and arresting way. Audiences like good, stirring cowboy stories, full of incident and adventure. They are healthy and wholesome in contrast to ugly, sordid dramas of murder and suicide, which must exert a bad influence on young minds, at least. Everybody knows the power of suggestion. The psycho-therapeutic value of the film lies in the future.—Daily Mail.