FILMS AND TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION

Abstract

The most important aspect of the use of films for teaching is the supply of material. If one looks through a film catalog, then the less specialized the subject, for example, chemistry as opposed to geology and the more elementary the intellectual level of treatment, then the larger the number of films. It is a strange feature that the higher the standard of education and the greater its unit cost, the greater the rate of obsolescence and the less the insistence on training that the education establishment demands. Therefore, there are many university teachers, and especially of technology, who are ignorant of the techniques of teaching—and the use of film is intrinsically bound up with the entire spectrum of resources that are deployed when ideas are attempted to be imparted. Out of the several recurrent complaints about the teaching of technology, the two are as follows: (1) it is too vocational and the lectures are cluttered with unnecessary practical detail and (2) it is too theoretical and the qualified student requires a course of orientation before he can be usefully occupied in any form of worthwhile industrial endeavor. Both of these objections contain a certain grain of truth that the judicious admixture of film will help to mitigate. While there can be no substitute for personal experience, the wide range of industrial operations that must come within the scope of every technological tyro can only be summarized and brought within reach by the intervention of film.