A dear friend was kind enough to think of me recently when the library was discarding some older books and she spied “Education in the Kindergarten” by Josephine C. Foster and Neith E. Headley, published in 1948. I have been enjoying it so much this week! There are several passages that I plan to share during the year, but this one just has to be the first:
Motion-Picture Projectors
“The motion-picture projector is seldom the property of a kindergarten. The machine is usually owned either by the school or by the school system. Motion pictures provide wonderful educational opportunities for older children, but so far as kindergarten children are concerned, they are often confusing and confounding. The action, in most cases, moves so quickly before the eyes and so much takes place in a short period of time, that the five-year-old often gets a very distorted idea of what is really happening in the film. If the five-year-olds as a group are to see moving pictures, it would be well to limit the experience to very brief showing which can be run through more than a single time. It is not in the interest of five-year-olds to go to a general school auditorium for the viewing of a forty-five to ninety-minute film. There are, of course, some movie films which supply in a simple and direct way desirable information and interesting entertainment for five-year-olds; but most of the materials could better be presented to the kindergarten children through still films. Films cost around $50 to $60 and can be rented for approximately $3.50 per day.”
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