The Red Cloud chief., 1911-05-04

= pri2c ring would not endure any pictured sexua,
dcpravity To me that was wonderful rcvcla.
ton of AngloSaXon psychology
Thus 1t will always be in our thCatcr. whether
the admission price be FIVE cents or two dollars.
American audiences want action; they want
thrills: they want desperate courage and wild
hcroism but they want it all clean. Yhcy want
the good to triumph the guilty to 30 punished,
and wrong to be avenged
a Partisan manufacturer offered 5000 900 for
the right to make moving pictures Of the Obcr.
ammcrgau Passion Play. His offer was refused
He went back to his studio, engaged company
of very skillful actors, rehoarsed them carefully
and reproduced the Passion Play. almost we'll
as II was originally done. and the cost about
a twentieth OF what he offered for the original.
This manufacturer had eyo a field
for the moving picture. While his imitation will
perhaps. find comparatively small market. II
cannot hope to reach the class that would have
purchased n 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 tho
fact that the Congregational and Presbyterian
churches OF Redlands. California. showed moving
pictures all last summer In their outdoor pavl
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
founded on Biblical accounts.
While the moving pictures are battering at the
doors OF the churches they have already par
TALLY scaled the walls of the school-houses. Out
OF every seven subjects passed by the National
Board OF Censorship. one Is classed as "peda-
gogical."
In tho catalogues OF the manufacturers one
finds films that show lessons in agriculture
aeronauics, animal life bacteriology, biography,
biology, botany, entomology, ethnology, fisheries,
rnnl,,y i,. y,,,.la
les, mining and metalurgy. microscopy, mill.
tary and naval life natural history ornithology.
pathology, pisciculture religion. travel and
zoology"
It looks like tho catalogue OF an educational
publishing house. Yet II Is only the list OF films
that may be and ordered by "the trade"
Subjects under these lists shown daily in the
$500 theaters that exhibit moving pictures in this
country. They form entertainment not insruc
ton. They have put the stereopticon out OF
business. not the schoolmaster.
For the public schools have no more surren
dered to the new and plausible invader than have
the churches.
Why?
Why not teach children history by showing
them 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
having to puzzle your head over the dry print
that records II on unvened page? Why not
learn about the growth Of flowers pleasantly. by
watching picture instead of having to patiently
dssect the flower and then piece 1t 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.
Ject and fnd out II II feasible to install
moving-pcture machines in the various schools
or the city. Superintendent Maxwell the
committee. ! saw him a few days after the ex.
hibtion.
He was not very enthusiastic about the pic.
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
hypodermlcally. You cannot swallow It in tab.
loid form, There is but way to take It. and
that 1t the Oldest way known You will find after
all of these will.o'the-wisps have vanished that
1t will be the newest way, too"
Which throws the moving picture right back
where 1t belongs-in the theater. 1t can have no
permanent place in the church. 1t can have no
real place in the school. though 1t may be auxil
larry to either. or both