“Springing from a sense of wonder”: classroom film and cultural learning in the 1930s

Abstract

This article makes an “exercise in the archaeology of education” and focuses on the City of Birmingham (UK) in the year 1935 where the Education Committee allowed an experiment on the use of classroom film in senior elementary schools. Arrangements were made to provide projectors, films, operators, and screens for a series of exhibits at 80 schools. The aim of the experiment was to test the value of cinema for class teaching purposes. This article argues that this experiment with sound film could equally be considered an experiment in cultural learning. The first section describes the experiment and the local context in which it took place. The second section broadens the perspective by providing context beyond the local level that puts the experiment in time and place. The third and final section picks up on some of the findings of the first two sections and considers contemporary sources, mainly articles published in the British Film Institute’s film magazine Sight and Sound, as well as recent scholarship on both educational and documentary film in order to discuss the notions of “background” and “excursive” film and to show that the experiment was a genuine adventure in cultural learning.

Keywords:

• Classroom film
• cultural learning
• Birmingham
• exhibition
• experiment

Notes

¹ See, for example, Film: 21st Century Literacy (http://www.21stcenturylit.org/index.php); P21: The Partnership for 21st Century Learning (http://www.p21.org/) (accessed November 18, 2015). See also Erica L. McWilliam and Sandra Haukka, “Educating the Creative Workforce: New Directions for 21st Century Schooling,” British Education Research Journal 34, no. 5 (2008): 651–66. In responding to rapid social change and revolutions in technology, this approach links up with the notion of the “risk society”, as was the case towards the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. See Kevin Myers and Ian Grosvenor, “Cultural Learning and Historical Memory: A Research Agenda,” Encounters on Education 15 (2014): 3–21.

² Adam Cooper, “Introduction,” in Tom Barrance, Using Film in Schools: A Practical Guide(Film: 21st Century Literacy, 2010), http://www.filmeducation.org/pdf/misc/C21_Using_film_in_schools.pdf (accessed 18 November 2015).

³ http://www.cinemauk.org.uk/2008/06/21st-century-film-education-strategy-launched/ (accessed 18 November 2015).

⁴ Film: 21st Century Literacy, Re/Defining Film Education: Notes Towards a Definition of Film Education ([2012]), http://www.bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/downloads/film-21st-century-literacy-redefining-film-education.pdf (accessed 18 November 2015). In 2013, FILMCLUB and First Light became Into Film, the mission of which was “to put film at the heart of children and young people’s learning and cultural experience in the UK”. http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/announcements/launch-new-film-education-charity-film; http://www.intofilm.org/our-story (accessed 18 November 2015).

⁵ Film: 21st Century Literacy, Integrating Film into Education – Advocacy Report, http://www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk/media/Misc/film-21st-century-literacy-advocacy-report.pdf (accessed 18 November 2015).

⁶ Cultural Learning Alliance, ImagineNation: The Case for Cultural Learning (Cultural Learning Alliance, 2011), https://www.culturallearningalliance.org.uk/images/uploads/ImagineNation_The_Case_for_Cultural_Learning.pdf (accessed 18 November 2015).

⁷ Ibid., 15, 1, 7.

⁸ A preliminary version of this paper was part of the “Adventures in Cultural Education” symposium that was organised at ISCHE in Istanbul, June 2015. The quote was used in defining the aim of the symposium and refers to Willem van der Eyken and Barry Turner, Adventures in Education (London: Allen Lane, 1969), 8.

⁹ Devin Orgeron, Marsha Orgeron and Dan Streible, eds., Learning with the Light Off: Educational Film in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 9.

¹⁰ With the notion of classroom film, reference is made to the use of film “in the classroom”, which is a spatial rather than a pedagogical descriptor (for example, teaching or instruction film) following from the guidelines the head teachers involved in the experiment received from the organiser (cf. infra).

¹¹ [Education] Committee, “Memo” (October 8, 1934). All archival records used here are held at the Birmingham Archives & Heritage Service.

¹² Cf. the rigid provisions of the 1909 Cinematograph Act designed to make better provision for securing safety at cinematograph and other exhibitions.

¹³ Elementary Education Sub-Committee, “Report: The Use of Films in Schools” (October 26, 1934). The Birmingham Archives & Heritage Service also holds archival records on earlier experiments dating back to 1924 (Sherbourne Road), 1928–29 (Kings Heath), and 1932 (Edgbaston and Bordesley Green East). Contextual information can also be found, for instance, in Terry Bolas, Screen Education: From Film Appreciation to Media Studies (Bristol: Intellect, 2009), particularly Chapter 1: “Cinema under Scrutiny” (11–36); Jeffrey Richards, The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in 1930s Britain (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), particularly Chapter 3: “The Devil’s Camera” (46–66, and more specifically 52–61 on the Birmingham Cinema Enquiry); Idem, “The Cinema and Cinema-Going in Birmingham in the 1930s,” in Leisure in Britain, 1780–1939, ed. John K. Walton and James Walvin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983), 31–52.

¹⁴ P.D. Innes, “Letter to Head Teachers on Experimental Exhibition of Educational Films in Senior Elementary Schools,” (nd).

¹⁵ D. Raymond Davies [Ciné-Equipments Ltd], “Letter to P.D. Innes” (January 24, 1935).

¹⁶ See, for instance, W.H. Hayward [Head Teacher], “Hartfield Crescent Senior Boys’ Elementary School (Acocks Green): Report on the Experiment in the Use of Sound-Films in the Classroom” (February 1935).

¹⁷ Elementary Education Sub-Committee, “Report” (March 14, 1935). Compare with F. Wilkinson, “G.B. Instructional’s programme,” Sight and Sound 3, no. 10 (1934): 80, referring to Roots: “Ordinary teaching film though it might be, it succeeded in arousing as well that emotion which is essential to all creative thought and springs from a sense of wonder at the mingled simplicity and complexity of nature” [emphasis added]. It proved, however, to be a difficult task, as can be read from B.G. Hollick [Head Teacher], “Report on Three Sound Films Shown at the Marlborough Road Senior Mixed Elementary school (Small Heath)” (February 1935): “It cannot leave the imprint of nature on a child’s soul”. Discussing Wheatlands, F.E. Mills from the London School of Economics was wondering “[h]ow many teachers have thought of the possibilities of using the emotional power of the film as a means of leading the strong feeling and quick sympathies of the adolescent into educational channels, as scouting had directed the boy’s physical energies?” F.E. Mills, “The Classroom Film,” Sight and Sound 5, no. 18 (1936): 39–42, see 41. On the importance of emotions see also, for instance, Noah W. Sobe, “Researching Emotion and Affect in the History of Education,” History of Education 41, no. 5 (2012): 689–95; Joakim Landahl, “Emotions, Power and the Advent of Mass Schooling,” Paedagogica Historica 51, no. 1–2 (2015): 104–16.

¹⁸ While Shakespeare was still well commented on after the London exhibition in 1934 (see next section) it was less the case in the head teachers’ reports to the Education Committee in Birmingham. In London, on the one hand, the question was raised as to “[h]ow often teachers [are] confronted with the problem of interpreting the imagery of a poet to a class of insufficiently developed imagination?”. Shakespeare now came “promisingly to their rescue”: Wilkinson, “G.B. Instructional’s Programme,” 80. In Birmingham, on the other hand, A.V. Utting argued quite the opposite: “If it was intended to help literature it was a poor effort. I do not think it advisable to adopt such a method. The mental images produced in a person as a result of reading poems or prose are probably composite features of the best sections of the best scenes one has come across. They could surpass those shown. Our mental imagery could be left I feel to the individual. I do not want to standardise our imagery.” A.V. Utting [Head Teacher], “Leigh Road Senior Boys’ Elementary School (Washwood Heath): Report” (February 8, 1935). Obviously, this needs to be related to the practical-realistic bias of senior elementary schools (cf. infra).

¹⁹ Elementary Education Sub-Committee, “Report” (March 14, 1935).

²⁰ Ibid. This touches particularly on the so-called sound/silent controversy. See, for example, A. Clow Ford, “Sound or Silent Film in Teaching? The Case for the Sound Film,” Sight and Sound 4, no. 13 (1935): 26, 28, 30; J. Fairgrave, “Sound or Silent Film in Teaching? The Case for the Silent Film: A Reply to Mr Clow Ford,” Sight and Sound 4, no. 13 (1935): 27, 29–30.

²¹ Elementary Education Sub-Committee, “Report” (March 14, 1935).

²² John Thackray Bunce and Charles Anthony Vince, History of the Corporation of Birmingham, vol. V, 1915–1935, Part I (Birmingham: General Purposes Committee, 1940), 6.

²³ Ibid., 1.

²⁴ Ibid., 6.

²⁵ Ibid., 218, 225ff. Board of Education, Report of the Consultative Committee on the Education of the Adolescent (London: HM Stationary Office, 1927).

²⁶ Bunce and Vince, History of the Corporation of Birmingham, 218.

²⁷ Harold J. Black, History of the Corporation of Birmingham, vol. VI, 1936–1950, Part I (Birmingham: General Purposes Committee, 1957), 339. As a representative of the Association of Directors and Secretaries for Education, Innes was also representing Local Education Authorities in the making of the Hadow Report. Board of Education, Report of the Consultative Committee, 249.

²⁸ Bunce and Vince, History of the Corporation of Birmingham, 219. On LEAs see also Roy Lowe, “A Century of Local Education Authorities,” Oxford Review of Education 28, no. 2–3 (2002): 149–58.

²⁹ Bunce and Vince, History of the Corporation of Birmingham, 226.

³⁰ Ibid., 228.

³¹ W.H. George, “The Film Must Go to School,” Sight and Sound 3, no. 11 (1934): 126.

³² Bunce and Vince, History of the Corporation of Birmingham, 230.

³³ W.B. Stephens, ed., A History of the County of Warwick, vol. VII, The City of Birmingham (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), 501–48; Bunce and Vince, History of the Corporation of Birmingham, 223–24.

³⁴ Bunce and Vince, History of the Corporation of Birmingham, 6, 230.

³⁵ Board of Education, Report of the Consultative Committee, xx.

³⁶ Catherine Fletcher, “Science Teaching Films,” Sight and Sound 6, no. 23 (1937): 156–7.

³⁷ Board of Education, Report of the Consultative Committee, xxiii.

³⁸ C. Brawn, “Films as Related to School Geography,” Sight and Sound 8, no. 31 (1939): 120.

³⁹ Board of Education, Report of the Consultative Committee, 207. See also, for example, Brawn, “Films as Related to School Geography,” 120–1; G.J. Cons, “Films and Living Geography,” Sight and Sound 4, no. 14 (1935): 78–9; Mills, “The Classroom Film”.

⁴⁰ J.W. Brown and A.C. Cameron, “Letter to The Secretary, The Education Committee” (November 20, 1930).

⁴¹ Josephine May, “A Field of Desire: Visions of Education in Selected Australian Silent Films,” Paedagogica Historica 46, no. 5 (2010): 623–37 (see 625). Compare the development of educational film in its relation to progressivism in Orgeron, Orgeron and Streible, Learning with the Light Off, 17. On the significance of technology in relation to modernity see Patrick Joyce, The State of Freedom: A Social History of the British State since 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

⁴² British Broadcasting Corporation, New Ventures in Broadcasting (London: BBC, 1928). See also Michael Bailey, “‘A Broadcasting University’: Educated Citizenship and Civil Prudence,” in Governing through Pedagogy: Re-educating Citizens, ed. Jessica Pykett (New York: Routledge, 2012), 65–79.

⁴³ “Foreword,” in An Exhibition of Mechanical Aids to Learning (London: The British Institute of Adult Education, 1930), 4–5.

⁴⁴ As compared to the US, for instance: Orgeron, Orgeron and Streible, Learning with the Light Off. In the summer of 1937, Sight and Sound noted that “[t]here are even less [sic] projectors being used in schools in this country than had been commonly assumed”. “Projectors for the schools,” Sight and Sound 6, no. 22 (1937): 94. A BFI enquiry revealed that only 916 projectors were being used for educational purposes in schools and similar institutions and by Local Education Authorities while there were approximately 32,000 schools and colleges in England, Wales and Scotland. Projectors were primarily used in primary, senior elementary and central schools (n = 567), most of it 16 mm silent (n = 254). Results published in “The Cinema in Education,” Sight and Sound 6, no. 23 (1937): 152. The primary school was nevertheless called “the Cinderella of the visual education movement”. Alexander Mackay, “Primary Schools and Films,” Sight and Sound 6, no. 23 (1937): 158. To put this further into perspective, and to relativise the “novelty” character: 1936 marked the 40th anniversary of the first commercial film display ever given in the UK by Louis Lumière (on 20 January 1896). “The Lumière Celebrations,” Sight and Sound 5, no. 17 (1936): 15.

⁴⁵ J.R. Orr, “The Commission on Educational and Cultural Films,” in An Exhibition of Mechanical Aids to Learning, 13.

⁴⁶ Commission on Educational and Cultural Films, The Film in National Life: Being the Report of an Enquiry Conducted by the Commission on Educational and Cultural Films into the Service which the Cinematograph May Render to Education and Social Progress (London: Allen and Unwin, 1932). See also Elaine Burrows, “A Historical Overview of NFTVA/BFI Collection Development Policies with Regard to Gender and Nation Questions,” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 51, no. 2 (2010), 343–9; Bolas, Screen Education, 12ff.

⁴⁷ Commission on Educational and Cultural Films, The Film in National Life, 9.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 13.

⁴⁹ It goes without saying that resistance in relation to tradition also plays a role, as has repeatedly been discussed. See, for instance, Antonio Viñao, “Do Education Reforms Fail? A Historian’s Response,” Encounters on Education 2 (2001): 27–47. As regards film, this is nicely described in H.L. Beales, “A Report on History Teaching Films,” Sight and Sound 6, no. 21 (1937): 43: “The teacher’s castle is besieged by wireless and the film from the outside. And the teacher is human. He wishes neither to be interfered with nor to be speeded up. He has the old craftsman’s distrust of new-fangled and perhaps ‘labour-saving’ mechanisms. […] [H]e has had little time in his examination-ridden world for mastering new techniques of exposition or chasing, it may be, the insubstantial ghosts of an illusory efficiency.”

⁵⁰ Commission on Educational and Cultural Films, The Film in National Life, 8.

⁵¹ See also F. Wilkinson, “The London and Manchester Reports,” Sight and Sound 6, no. 23 (1937): 160–1.

⁵² The recommendations following the Birmingham experiment, as mentioned above, explicitly point into this direction.

⁵³ Commission on Educational and Cultural Films, The Film in National Life, 52, 143. One might even say a “film-going generation” for “the bulk of the mass audience was drawn from the working classes [while] it was particularly important to women, children and unemployed”. Jeffrey Richards, “Cinemagoing in Worktown: Regional Film Audiences in 1930s Britain,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 14, no. 2 (1994): 147–66 (see 147). For many, the cinema was a weekly leisure activity. Richards, “The Cinema and Cinema-Going in Birmingham”.

⁵⁴ Robert H. Cowley, “Audley Road Senior Mixed School: Report on Films Shown on Jan. 23rd. 1935” (January 1935).

⁵⁵ Bruce Woolfe, “British Educational Films: G.B. Instructional’s Programme Discussed,” Sight and Sound 2, no. 8 (1934): 131; “Notes of the Quarter: The Place of Films in School,” Sight and Sound 3, no. 10 (1934): 50.

⁵⁶ The company was established in November 1933 as a subsidiary of Gaumont-British Picture Corporation.

⁵⁷ “Notes of the Quarter: Exhibitions of Instructional Films,” Sight and Sound 3, no. 10 (1934): 49; Margery Locket, “Teachers and G.B.I. films,” Sight and Sound 3, no. 11 (1934): 127.

⁵⁸ “Questionnaires,” Sight and Sound 3, no. 10 (1934): 48.

⁵⁹ Wilkinson, “G.B. Instructional’s Programme,” 79.

⁶⁰ G.B. Instructional Ltd, Advance List of Productions 1934 (London: G.B. Instructional, 1934), 3.

⁶¹ Locket, “Teachers and G.B.I. Films”, 127. A second presentation took place in London on 21 June after which the programme was repeated in Bristol, Brighton, and Cardiff on 26, 28, and 29 June respectively. “Notes of the Quarter: Exhibitions of Instructional Films”, 49; “Notes of the Quarter: The Place of Films in School”, 50.

⁶² The notion of background film is discussed in the next section.

⁶³ “Questionnaires”, 48.

⁶⁴ The appendix to this article contains the filmographies of the five films shown during the 1935 experiment in Birmingham as well as short biographies of some involved in the making of them. The practical-realistic bias of senior elementary schools explains why Roots and Wheatlands of East Anglia were selected the most (as previously indicated, The Thistle was only available towards the end of the experiment) and Shakespeare was contested the most (although this was also due to technical problems). Moreover, the popularity of Roots could be explained by the popularity of the Secrets of Life series. Wheatlands of East Anglia was one of the most successful educational films of the time and often seen as the ideal type of a film on (human or economic) geography. It was called “the most perfect” film for educational use in Wilkinson, “G.B. Instructional’s Programme”, 80.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 79–80.

⁶⁶ D.B. Moore, “The Film in the School. To the Editor of the Birmingham Post,” Birmingham Daily Post (January 30, 1936).

⁶⁷ See also “Birmingham Education Experts Approve School Films. Cinema Lessons Scheme Soon. Plan for Portable Projectors to Tour City Classrooms,” Evening Despatch (October 5, 1935). The school was involved in the 1935 experiment but unfortunately no report is available.

⁶⁸ The film was released in 1936. A filmography based on the review in the Monthly Film Bulletin is added to the appendices. See also http://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web/Details/ChoiceFilmWorks/150240957 (accessed November 18, 2015).

⁶⁹ Ronald Gow, “Making Your Own Teaching Films,” Sight and Sound 1, no. 1 (1932): 26.

⁷⁰ George, “The Film Must Go to School,” 126.

⁷¹ G. Buckland Smith, “Wanted – A Sympathetic Understanding,” Sight and Sound 8, no. 30 (1939): 86.

⁷² Based on Urban, The Cinematograph in Science, 52.

⁷³ Ian Aitken, “The British Documentary Film Movement”, in The British Cinema Book, ed. Robert Murphy, 3rd ed. (London: BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 177–84. Touching on the documentary’s realist, predominantly public education remit, see Brian Winston, ed., The Documentary Film Book (London: BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 15.

⁷⁴ John Grierson, “Art and the Analysts: Notes on the Valuation Factor of Criticism,” Sight and Sound 4, no. 16 (1935/36), 157–59 (see 159).

⁷⁵ Van der Eyken and Barry Turner, Adventures in Education. Compare with Bolas, Screen Education, particularly the section on “Classroom Pioneers” (21–6).

⁷⁶ H. Ramsbotham, “A Message from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education,” Sight and Sound 3, no. 11 (1934): 124–5.

⁷⁷ A.C. Cameron, “Films in Junior Instruction Centres,” Sight and Sound 4, no. 14 (1935): 85.

⁷⁸ Catherine Fletcher and G.J. Cons, “Actuality in Education,” Sight and Sound 6, no. 24 (1937/38): 179. On the relation between documentary and educational film, see also Winston, ed., The Documentary Film Book.

⁷⁹ The film was, however, not meant for the classroom but for the school hall or the local theatre. John Grierson, “The Artist and the Teacher: Their Function in the Making of an Instructional Film,” Sight and Sound 1, no. 2 (1932): 45–6. See also Jack C. Ellis, John Grierson: Life, Contributions, Influence (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), 51–2.

⁸⁰ J.L. Hardie, “Foreground and Background,” Sight and Sound 7, no. 25 (1938): 43.

⁸¹ J. Fairgrieve, “Using the Classroom Film,” Sight and Sound 3, no. 11 (1934): 131.

⁸² Hardie, “Foreground and Background,” 43.

⁸³ Hollick, “Report on Three Sound Films”.

⁸⁴ Hardie, “Foreground and Background,” 43.

⁸⁵ Max Kaufmann, “What are the Essential Characteristics of an Educational Film?,” Sight and Sound 4, no. 16 (1935/36): 188.