The Forrest City times., 1911-04-28

= pflZe ring would not endure any pictured sexual depravity. To that was wonderful reyela- ton of Ango-Saxon psychology.
 Thus 1t will always be in our theater whether the admission price be five cents or two dollars. American audiences want action they want thrills: they want desperate courage and wild herosm; but they want 1t all clean. They want the good to triumph the guilty to be punished and wrong to be avenged.
 A Parisian manufacturer offered s200 GOO for the right to make moving pictures of the Ober- ammergau Passion Play. His offer was refused He went back to his studio. engaged a company of very skillful actors. rehearsed them carefully and reproduced the Passion Play. almost as we'll as 1t was originally done and the cost was about twentieth of what be offered for the original
 This manufacturer had eye field for the moving picture. While his imitation will perhaps, find comparatively small market it cannot hope to reach the class that would have purchased a guaranteed reproduction of the Oberammergau play; viz. the churches.
 For the churches have not yet come utterly un- der the sway of the moving picture despite the fact that the Congregational and Presbyterian churches of Redlands. California showed moving pictures all last summer in their outdoor payi- lion
 Yet the moving picture manufacturers are de voting lot Of time and money to religious sub tects. Joseph Going Into Egypt" "The Repulse Of Herod Jephthah's Daughter The Relief of Jericho" and The Wisdom of Solomon" are a few of the subjects of movingpicture plays founded on Biblical accounts.
 While the moving pictures are battering at the doors of the churches they have already par ually scaled the walls of the schoolhouses Out of every seven subjects passed by the National Board of Censorship is classed as "peda. gogical'
 In the catalogues of the manufacturers one finds films that show lessons in agriculture aeronautics animal life. bacterioogy biography biology. botany. entomology. ethnology. fisheries yAnc rtax ies. mining and metallurgy. microscopy mil tary and naval life. natural history ornithology pathology, piseiculture. religion travel and zoology"
 It looks like the catalogue of an educational publishing house. Yet it is only the list of films that may be and are ordered by the trade" Subjects under these lists shown daily fin the 75oo theaters that exhibit moving pictures in this country They form entertainment not instruc tion. They have put the stereoptieon out of business. not the schoolmaster
 For the public schools have no more surren dered to the new and plausible in<ader than have the churches.
 Why?
 Why not teach children history by showing them scenes from the lives of great men pageants from the great moments that are duly and laboriously recorded in the books Why not sit and watch George Washington cross the Della. ware on the moving picture sheet instead of
 
 that records 1t unlivened page? Why not learn about the growth of flowers pleasantly by watching a picture instead of having to patiently dissect the flower and then piece it together again under the instruction of botany text book? Such pictures be and are constantly shown Do they not mean the revolution of pedagogy?
 Not long ago the New York Board of Education appointed committee to investigate this sub, 1ect, and find out if it were feasible to install moving picture machines in the various schools or the city. Superintendent Maxwell was on the committee. saw him few days after the ex- hibltion.
 He was not very enthusiastic. about the pie lures.
 "A method will never be devised that will save any human being the labor of learning" he said We learn only by taking thought and that Is work, hard work You cannot insert learning hypodermcally. You cannot swallow it in tab Ibid form. There is but one way to take it. and that it the oldest way known You will find after all of these wilio.the-wisps have vanished that it will be the newest way, too"
 Which throws the moving picture right back where IL belongs--in the theater. It can have no permanent place in the church. It can have no real place in the school though it may be auxil- iary to either. or both