Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1911-04-28

- prize ring would not endure any pictured sexual
depravity To me that was a wonderful revea-
ton of Anglo-Saxon psychology.
Thus 1t will always be in theater whether
the admission price be five cents or two dollars.
American audiences want action; they want
thrills they want desperate courage and wild
heroism but they want 1t all clean. They want
the good to triumph the guilty to be punished,
and wrong to be avenged.
Partisan manufacturer offered $200.000 for
the right to make moving pictures Of the Ober-
ammergau Passion Play. His offer refused.
He went back to his studio, engaged a company
of very skillful actors, rehearsed them carefully
and reproduced the Passion Play. almost we'll
as 1t originally done, and the cost was about
a twentieth of what he offered for the original.
This manufacturer had an eye on a new 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 guaranteed reproduction Of the
Oberammergau play; viz, the churches.
For the churches have not yet como utterly
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 pavi-
lion.
Yet the moving picture manufacturers are de-
voting lot of time and money to religious sub
jects. 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 moving-picture plays
founded Biblical accounts.
While the moving pictures battering at the
doors of the churches they have already par
TALLY scaled the walls Of the schoolhouses Out
of every seven subjects passed by the National
Board of Censorship one is classed "peda
gogical"
In the catalogues of the manufacturers one
finds films that show lessons in agriculture
aeronautics, animal life bacteriology, biography
biology, botany, entomology, ethnology fisheries
geography, history, industry kindergarten stud
les, mining and metalurgy microscopy, mill
tary and naval life, natural history ornithology
pathology, piscicuture religion. travel and
zoology
publishing house. Yet 1t 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 instruc-
ton. They have put the stereoptcon 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 the moving picture sheet, instead of
having to puzzle your head over the dry print
that records 1t on unlivened page? Why not
learn about the growth Of flowers pleasantly, by
watching picture instead of having to patiently
dissect the flower and then piece it together
again under the instruction of a 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 1t feasible to install
moving picture machines in the various schools
of the city. Superintendent Maxwell was on the
committee. / saw him few days after the ex
hibItion.
He 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
hypodermically. You cannot swallow 1t In tab
lod form. There is but way to take it. ant
that 1t the Oldest way known. You will find afte
all of these willo'the-wisps have vanished tha
1t will be the newest way, too"
Which throws the moving picture right bacl
where 1t belongs-sin the theater It can have n,
permanent place in the church. It can have NJ
real place in the school, though It may be auxil
iary to either. both.