A DRAMATIZATION OF DICKENS'S ROMANCE AND ONE OF THE LONGEST MOTION PICTURE PLAYS THAT HAS BEEN PRODUCED, FOR ITS PRESENTATION REQUIRES ABOUT AN HOUR men the causes and prevention of wrecks; English social welfare workers have exhibited a reel emphasizing the folly of violence in strikes; the Michigan State Guards have gained many recruits by explaining in pictures the necessity and value of the militia. Indeed, the advocate for or against armies and state militia finds ready all the ammunition he can possibly use. On the market are thousands upon thousands of feet of army manœuvres, drills, military methods of ridding a country of disease, and pictures of military schools that might be used profitably by all teachers of soldiers; and there are enough realistic views of the horrors of the recent Turkish and Italian wars to gain thousands of converts for the peace movement. Information was formerly measured by the page; it may soon be computed by the foot. One motion picture firm is sending out letters announcing that it has in stock ten thousand feet of architecture, thirty thousand feet of science, and ninety thousand feet of geography. The pictures are making information. cheaper and more easily obtained than ever before in the world's history. Indeed, through several agencies it is literally being given away. The Northern Pacific Railway Company has spent thousands of dollars showing by motion pictures the geography, resources, industries, and possibilities of the country through which the road passes, and the Great Northern Railway is preparing for the same spreading or "unrolling" of facts. Marshall Field WE RAN A MIGHTY MERCHANDISE OF NIGGERS IN THE HOLD AN EXAMPLE OF THE VIVID POWER OF MOTION PICTURES TO REALIZE TO THE EYES OF MODERN AUDIENCES THE DETAILS OF SCENES THE ORIGINALS OF WHICH HAVE DISAPPEARED FOREVER ONE OF "RIP VAN WINKLE'S" EXPERIENCES AS THE CHILDREN MAY NOW SEE THEM REPRODUCED IN LIFE A NEW WAY OF TEACHING AMERICAN HISTORY THE STORY OF THE BATTLES OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR RETOLD IN MOTION PICTURES THAT BRING TO THE EYE THE LIFE AND ACTION AS WELL AS THE COSTUMES AND EQUIPMENT OF THE MEN WHO FOUGHT A VITAL REPRODUCTION OF THE SPIRIT AND OF MUCH OF THE HISTORICAL DETAIL OF ONE OF THE MOST STRIKING EVENTS OF THE CIVIL WAR & Co. have received permission from the Chicago school board to show the school children, free of charge, the entire process of the cotton industry from the planting of the seed to the wearing of the dress. The Iron and Steel Institute, of Pittsburg, has taught its audiences by pictures the passing of the iron from the mine into the finished product. Not long ago RearAdmiral Colby M. Chester showed before the National Geographic Society a reel covering the entire thirty miles of the Panama Canal, and explained the workings of the vast undertaking. Chicago, Cleve and the ministers of the town assembled and ordered "that the board of education be petitioned to take immediate steps in this direction." Prof. Arthur G. Balcom, supervisor of lectures for the Newark Board of Education, recommended in his annual report that a fireproof room for motion. pictures be incorporated in the auditorium By courtesy of the Gaumont Film Company HOW MOTION PICTURES REPRODUCE MOTION land, and Detroit are using the pictures in the public schools; Pasadena, Cal., is equipping three of its school buildings with machines; the large Evans School, of Denver, is instructing not only the pupils but the parents by this means; Paducah, Ky., uses this method regularly in teaching history, geography, literature, and various sciences; the school board of South Bend, Ind., owns a machine for social-centre purposes; Pueblo, Col., instructs with motion pictures in its high school; the state of Texas has film constantly in use by its Department of Education; and the town of Biggs, Cal., runs a municipal theatre for educational purposes. And where the schools have not pictures the teachers are demanding them. The Board of Education of South Orange, N. J., recently placed itself on record favoring the use of the motion picture in the schools, TWO SUCCESSIVE FILMS FROM A REEL SHOWING MARINES DRILLING ON A FRENCH WARSHIP. SIXTEEN SUCH FILMS ARE TAKEN EVERY SECOND. A MAN WALKING THREE MILES AN HOUR ADVANCES ABOUT FOUR INCHES IN ONE SIXTEENTH OF A SECOND. APPROXIMATELY THIS CHANGE OF POSITION APPEARS IN THE TWO PICTURES OF THE MARINE AT THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE FILMS plan of all schoolhouses built hereafter. About the same time Mr. Milton C. Cooper, district superintendent of schools in Philadelphia, asked for the purchase of a motion picture projector for every school in the city. Superintendent Martindale, of Detroit, not content with having them in his school houses, wants them outdoors also, and has said publicly: "The use of the playgrounds for moving picture shows is feasible. The playgrounds afford natural out-of-door auditoriums which will accommodate one thousand or more people each, and the pictures thrown on a large screen would be plainly visible to all." Only one thing has until recently been lacking the coming of the talking motion picture, but this has recently been announced in both France and America as an assured fact. Think of it as we may, "this new force has entered into the educational progress of modern American life. You may call it the five-cent university or the dime civilizer, but its influence is real and sure just the same." For it is better and easier to learn from life than from books. S TRYING TO DO ΤΟ MAKE HEALTHY AND SUCCESSFUL WOMEN OF CITYBRED GIRLS BY METHODS OF TEACHING THAT SUBORDINATE HIGH AVERAGES IN FORMAL SCHOLARSHIP TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CAPACITY FOR HAPPINESS AND INTEREST IN REAL LIFE BY THIRTY-FIVE TEACHERS OME of us in a faculty of two hundred and eighteen eighteen teachers are trying to get back to first principles. Some of us are trying to make our practice tally with our preaching. Every one who writes on education says it must not be the absorption of knowledge; it is not the transmission of a course of study from a book or a teacher to a boy; but it is the culture of men (President David Starr Jordan), the improvement of the human machine (Arnold Bennett), the perfection of womanhood (Prof. John M. Tyler), the formation of character (Prof. William H. Maxwell). This has been preached so often that listenersare tired of it. But no school is doing it. They are all built upon the model for doing what their own promoters say education is not doing. Our school and other high schools are not organized upon the character basis nor the human improvement basis but on the knowledge idea. We are teachers of English or of geometry. No one prepared us to teach any of the essential qualities of superior womanhood: courtesy, gentleness, firmness, industry, courage, and nobility. Though these are proclaimed as the greatest business of a teacher, systems treat them as incidental. Knowl edge is sorted into courses and every one of us is given a piece. A girl is at the mercy of a score of knowledge specialists for four years and then, if she has lasted, she is marked "Educated." We did not make this system; no living man devised it. No publicist defends it. But Dr. Eliot declares that educational practice is fifty years behind its doctrine. But we are so habituated to think of training in terms. of present schooling |