The great question at issue in connection with the motion picture industry, as it is with any given line of human endeavor, is this: Is its course upward or downward, will its future be free from the shortcomings of its past? Let me say here, very frankly, that had I not felt months ago that an affirmative answer to these queries was not merely justified but had been made imperative by facts and figures this book would never have been written. But as the work has progressed, and I have been obliged to look at the motion picture field through both a telescope and a microscope, I have been convinced by an overwhelming mass of evidence that the general trend of the newest of the arts is, in spite of all that I have said about its youthful indiscretions, in the right direction. It can never attain perfection—nothing that is man-made can hope to do that. But the movie, whatever may be said against it by its detractors, is constantly making progress toward a commanding position where, it is conceivable, it may eventually confer upon mankind the inestimable boon of which the author, as stated in the first chapter of this book, has had the audacity to dream. And be it said just here that if the full dynamics of the screen as a world-civilizer are completely developed, eventually both producers and public will owe a great debt of gratitude to the Committee on Public Relations. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XII THE MOVIE AS A PEDAGOGUE _The Entertainer Becomes an Instructor—Schools and Colleges make the Screen a Professor—Visual Instruction more Effective than Text-Books—Educational Films as Teachers of History—The Screen an Ally to Historical Accuracy—Can it Save the Race from a Threatened Cataclysm?_ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XII THE MOVIE AS A PEDAGOGUE THE utilitarian evolution of the movie has been as remarkable as the recreational—though much less spectacular. The screen seems to have come like a poultice to heal the blows of ignorance, of worn-out methods in schools, hospitals and laboratories, and to act as a tonic upon all the movements and enterprises that make for the betterment of the race. Modern scientists, philanthropists, statesmen, educators, sociologists, uplifters of all kinds, may appropriately paraphrase Robert Burns by exclaiming “a screen’s amang ye takin’ notes.” Visual education—that is, intellectual stimulus through motion pictures—has made amazing progress in our schools and colleges during the past few years. It has been proved by statistics, based upon the results of examinations, that students instructed by screen-pictures obtain higher marks than those who have been seeking knowledge on a given subject only through text-books.