Unique Contribution (1959)

you know some things are so big that you just can't see them some things or see them either follow them and some so slowly that you have to have more patience and any educator has to teach people to see them some things are hard to understand some things can't be learned by reading that's what this film is about problems and teaching and all of these problems and many others have existed in education for many years teachers everywhere the teachers of every kind of subject matter has taught the answers I suspect we're closer to finding the answers today than ever before simply because more people are thinking about education today and then have been thinking about it seriously and motivated by a desire to really do something about it than ever before in the hurry of our nation understand more vividly than ever before that education is something more than a service we owe every young American but it may be a vital factor in our national survival that brain power is a force that has world significance this is the most important and most beneficial outcome of all of this talk of critical times in education that more of us are thinking about it and more of us are looking for ways to improve the techniques of Education teachers and members of the community alike of course as we think about improving techniques characteristically over the world in which we live we think of using new communications devices with our overloaded teachers and our overloaded curricula with the many new things there are to teach in a complex society it makes sense to reach out and employ the new technology in the sense that inventions are new films really aren't new some kind of motion pictures have been used in American classrooms for many years and indeed this is one of the great assets of the audiovisual teaching technique in the instructional materials attached to it they've been around for a long long time there's a large body of knowledge a large body of materials and a large body of skilled people who've learned to use them and they're willing and anxious to teach others to use them here in Wilmette in this Midwestern town where I sit now in my office I'm surrounded by people who have making these films for 30 years and to spend their time seeking ways to make the unique contribution that is the goal of the classroom film a typical problem they face is teaching teachers to teach the and questions that young people are asking these days about the newest phenomena of our society orbits rockets satellites now I have on my desk a rocket or a model of a of a rocket it's a real rocket this is as a matter of fact there's a real rocket motor and if I loaded it and fueled it properly I could put it into orbit it's a three-stage rocket and my failure to get the last two stages apart there's probably characteristic of what might happen in many classrooms well it would be a difficult thing for me to explain to you sitting here using just this model or a genuine rocket how this rocket came to life how it might be fired in such a way as to really go into orbit what that horbet would look like I'd have to take your mind's eye to some point in outer space and let you look at the world just as we have learned to do in films with the miracle of animation let you look at the world and see meaningfully as we will see in the first clip in this film what an orbit looks like and what it means when we say a rocket goes into orbit suppose there's a tremendously high mountain above the Earth's atmosphere where there's no friction with air suppose that on earth there's a gun or shot will soon be pulled to Earth by gravity even though its speed is not reduced by air friction if we use more powder the shot will travel father before it's pulled to earth what a charge that's just big enough we'll send the shot just fast enough so that the curve of its drop is exactly the same as the curve of the earth since we've assumed that we're above air friction speed is introduced therefore the shot returns to the point where it was fired with the same speed it started with and so continues to circle the earth indefinitely as a satellite the fuel in the large first stage burns out after about two and a half minutes sending the rocket very high then the first stage is left behind as the second stage takes over in thinner atmosphere with less gravity the second stage greatly increases the speed and height of the rocket this stage often contains the guiding devices that put the rocket into the correct path for launching the satellite now the nosecone is released it protected the satellite against the extreme heat of air friction a motor makes the satellite spin to give it stability with the rocket at the necessary height the final stage fires briefly to produce the great speed needed for orbit the satellite has been ejected and if all has gone well it goes into orbit with the rocket casing trailing it you get some idea of the vexing nature of the teachers problem when you realize that some things just aren't easy to explain try telling a child for example that a caterpillar turns into a butterfly well when you ask him next Friday on the quiz he'll tell you who but a caterpillar turns into a butterfly but the chances are he doesn't know what he's saying and doesn't really understand the process here's where the educational filmmaker really gets his best licks in he uses the magic of time-lapse photography taking action that takes hours and days weeks and months and compressing it into a meaningful few moments he uses animation and extreme close-up and photo micrography and he turns an event that can't have meaning unless you personally participate in it and observe it yourself into one that has deep educational significance let's see how he does this in the climactic few seconds from a film called the monarch butterfly story watch closely now for you are about to witness one of nature's grandest dramas this indescribably beautiful creation was but a few days ago a lowly crawling caterpillar but now it's recreated body is pumping fluid into the veins of wings destined for the glorious freedom of the boundless skies in about 10 to 15 minutes after its emergence from the chrysalis shell the wings will be fully expanded the monarch droops them limply to dry them in the warm rays of the Sun in a few hours they will be thoroughly dry and stiffened by the hardening of the fluid at last it tries its wings and rises with majestic power to frolic in the sunny Meadows to seek the sparkling nectar of the flowers to add a new generation of beauty to this wonderful world now there are some things the eye can't see some things are just too small and here's where the producer of classroom films extends the range of the human eye far beyond its ordinary horizon on this slide for example I have an amoeba now you can't see this in me but I can't see it either you couldn't see it if I held it right up against the face of the camera and students as a matter of fact can barely see it with the kind of microscopes they use in the classroom in classrooms where there are enough microscopes for every student magnified 50 or 100 or 120 times it just doesn't look very big it also looks quite dead what is an amoeba look like a live magnified 2,000 times its size and seen in full color how big speaking of microscopic life how big is a one-celled animal what do one celled animals look like under the microscope to deliver this information to the classroom we asked one of the great micro photographers dr. Roman Vishniac to draw the eye of a needle across the field of his powerful microscopes while his camera recorded the sight in color film and then we asked him to magnify two thousand times living and in color an amoeba and that's what you'll see in this next film clip per sequence from his great film protozoa the amoeba moves simply by streaming from one place to another the body becomes lengthened into what is called a pseudopod or false foot the endoplasm streams into the pseudopod amoeba with its pseudopods forms a major group of protozoa since protozoa are usually classified by the way in which they move now how about dealing with things that are invisible that our eyes can't see at all but you can't magnify you run across these for example in the study of the human body that important aspect of biology where we study ourselves how to protect and take care of our bodies and maintain our health when they come to understand something about the living processes it affects us how would you teach sound how people here you can't see sound you can't see the sound I make as my voice travels through the camera on the sound track and the speaker of your projector and into your ear how do you give a meaningful experience to a young person to whom you're teaching sound our cameraman told us that about the only way they could see that this could be done would be to take a camera inside a human head and look out through the ear this isn't very easy to do with most human heads but they said this is the only way you can see the middle ear living see the eardrum vibrate see those three bones the hammer and the anvil and the stirrup doing whatever it is they do to communicate the sound wave sensation at the eardrum to the brain with remarkable ingenuity in a piece of film that's known all around the world and has widely believed to be one of the most effective pieces of teaching film ever made they did just this in a film called the ears and hearing they matched animation moving drawings with this remarkable piece of photography in this view we're looking into the middle ear the semi transparent membrane vibrating at the lower left is the eardrum the bones connected with it are the mental ear bones this is the sound that is causing the eardrum to vibrate as the eardrum vibrates it moves the chain of three tiny bones connected with it these bones are in the middle part of the ear called the middle ear the largest of the three bones is about one quarter of an inch long the human bond is a good example of the sound motion picture at its best in education almost all of its difficult to understand and difficult to see in action certainly difficult to demonstrate in the classroom how about the human heart beats inside of everyone who's watching me it's beating inside of me you can't hear it beating and you can't see it it's a vital part of our complex body mechanism and it's a complex mechanism in itself how does it work how does the heart pump how does that blood get around what do we mean when we say the heart is a pump why don't we mean when we talk about heart valves a valve to a biology student who has never seen a heart valve might be like a faucet and a sink when you see it in autopsy it's just a wrinkled meaningless piece of membrane but when the camera gets inside the heart and looks out through a valve while the heart is beating then you understand the function of a valve and when the skilled animator takes the heart as a pump and with a series of moving drawings shows you just how it functions and you have another of the unique experiences that only the classroom film can bring to the teacher in the classroom now how about a broader field of biology leaving the human body and going out into the world the things that young people see and ask about plant life so important in botany in agriculture and in the subject of biology how do plants grow how do they reproduce themselves here's a plant in back of me it's growing as we watch it and at some point it will find some way to reproduce itself here's a packet of seeds the key to plant reproduction lies here these seeds in some way produced by the plant dispersed by it if they sit in my hand are shriveled almost meaningless things and if you planted them on a classroom you'd need a 24-hour shift to see them turn into a plant and in turn make seeds and disperse those we made a film about this 20 years ago and our technological skills in filmmaking have improved and so we've produced a second edition here's another way a film lives forever in a sense all those old first editions come back to us now with the camera man's new skills we make a brand new film and trade it for the old one something by the way that doesn't happen quite as frequently in libraries and with books let's take a look at seed dispersal as the cameraman with his unique skills sees it in the magic of the time-lapse camera the silky haired seed of the milkweed is like a parachute wind whips it from the plant and sends it sailing away it may travel a short distance or many miles every seed contains a miniature plant or embryo now we can watch how the embryo develops when a plant emerges from a seed we say it is germinating we are using a time-lapse camera to watch a beam germinate traditionally teachers have investigated the community by taking their classes on field trips with all their interruptions in routine and discipline and the time that's lost from the teaching process itself but suppose you wanted to take a class to investigate the health of the community what one place would you take them to where would you go to show them how the many people involved in defending the health of a community work together this is one of the contributions the filmmaker also delivers to the classroom he synthesizes time and space and shows within the framework of a few minutes the interrelation of all the people who fight to protect the health of the community here using another one of his skills the montage he shows us quickly and effectively within a single moment of a most informative film how the community defends its health protecting the health of an entire town requires the work of many people volunteer workers in your town may arrange meetings where parents with young children can talk with the town doctors here a mother can see how her child is growing and learned the best ways to keep him healthy if you are handicapped you might find that your town has special classes for handicapped children the town may arrange for chest x-rays which can detect diseases whose symptoms are hidden to view the x-ray takes only a few seconds but it can help to discover certain diseases in their early stages when they are easier to cure your town may also provide visiting nurses who go out to homes where people need care for injuries or illness but if you had to you could frame a series of field trips that would get you around to see the sites involved in studying the health of the community but when you leave the community in the neighborhood in the town and the area in which you live then of course the field trip disappears as a possibility yet the challenge increases every year to understand the world around us the other countries how people live to get some understanding of the problems people face living lands we may never visit in all our lives these are people we have to deal with in this new kind of global society in which we live how do you get a class to Peru to the Andes to twelve thousand feet up in the air cameraman doesn't my visiting it for them by seeing the community through their eyes by wandering through the marketplace into their homes by studying their activities by showing children in the United States what a boy in Peru does in school how he helps his father how a little girl helps her mother what a man and a woman do in a family in Peru here is just a bit from a film on Peru made by one of the cameraman who bring these sites back to American classrooms every day the village sheep are herded to the pasture by the lake at sunset they are driven back to the village sheep are the greatest source of wealth for the village their wool is the most important export of the Indians in southern Peru in spite of bright sunshine the mountain people dress in heavy woolen clothing because the mountain air at this height is always cool weaving is truly an Indian crafts Indians invented methods of weaving before the arrival of the Spaniard their looms are still crude but their hands are quick and skillful from long practice each village takes pride in its original designs and patterns these change little through the years the chumby house is large enough for both the younger and the older members of the family ordinarily the grandparents eat with their children on sunny days meals are eaten out of doors food consists mainly of boiled potatoes and some cheese like most people of these Highlands both the older and younger chumpies chew the flavorful coca leaves coca leaves are a mild narcotic which reduces the sensation of hunger or fatigue so the camera sees beyond the horizon in two lands we wouldn't otherwise see we've seen it look inside of solid objects and view the insides of the human body and make meaningful the processes of nature what about things that happen long before we were born things you otherwise might have to learn about only by reading because they happened so long ago that no one is now alive who can tell you about them can the camera turn its eyes back into time yes it can here whole new range of talents comes into being the educational film produces ability to recreate in believable form the events in history those things that happen through man's existence on earth that bring to us today the tradition which is so meaningful to us which we have to understand if we'd understand how the world got this way and where it might go from here on here with great skill the cameraman dresses sets finds exactly the right costumes the right artifacts the right words for skilled actors to say to give us a chance to live again in the events of historic time one of the great such experiences is a film made a few years ago by John Barnes a sensitive producer who went to England to produce an image of the pilgrims for schoolchildren all over the world this isn't the traditional pilgrim film you might imagine the buckle shoes and the fowling-piece over the shoulder and the turkey at Thanksgiving it gives depth and sensitivity and meaning not just to the Pilgrims and their celebration of Thanksgiving but to the extent to which man will go to defend his rights the amount of suffering he can endure for goals he believes in and understands if we hope to teach tolerance if we hope to give some sense of what people were willing to suffer to found our country and our traditions perhaps we have to do it this way here is just one scene then from the pilgrims Marta Brewster be warned is the King of England knows of your sins and we have his I warrant dispatch to your homes he shall meet no more I let secretly or in public to worship in this heretical way so you'll get to your so-called priest wearing clerical garb you objector kneeling when receiving the Holy Sacrament you object to I don't just care and trappings you're checked and object captain you will know that we desire above all to have the Word of God freely preached that you shall not have master Brewster mark me well the key of England is a supreme authority in matters of religion as well as matters of State you shall conform to the King's religion if you do not he shall Harry you out of the land but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek turn to him the other also that was moving and enjoyable - we learned from teachers and from students that learning by film is an enjoyable process even though the subject matter in itself isn't entertainment but sometimes the film becomes just a sheer pleasure this is especially true when it goes into fields of enjoyment such as music in the arts you don't think of the motion picture as a way to develop music appreciation we're accustomed in school to sitting back and listening to records and in this day of high fidelity we think perhaps this is the best way to communicate music yet let's take a look at how meaningful and how deeply involved you can get personally in a motion picture about music in the overture to the Opera Marriage of Figaro the immortal Austrian composer Mozart plays the violins and the woodwinds against each other [Music] well after that it's almost a shame for me to have the last word it's been the film clips in this motion picture that have told the story and told it far more effectively than I can with this illustrated lecture which is my part of this total presentation just as it's always been the films themselves in the hands of alert interested and forward-looking teachers that have made the great contribution to some of the things we've been able to do in our classroom using modern communications techniques there's the real message of this film then these tools have been created they are available to all peoples everywhere they have a place in every classroom they can be made available never before in the history of our country as our society turned its back on a challenge to use the modern devices the most advanced techniques to solve its problems certainly in education we have a critical problem and certainly in education we will make our greatest contribution to provide to those who deserve the most our teachers the tools that help them do the job that's so important to us