Visual Instruction Movement

Early Visual Media

Prior to the Civil War, common educational apparatuses used were timepieces, maps, globes, slates and blackboards, textbooks, and the abacus or numeral frames—most of which were extremely simple and required very little engineering in their manufacture. Visual apparatuses or aids, in terms of their early role in elementary and secondary schools, also included field trips to museums—providing such aids as exhibits, charts, photographs, illustrations, lantern slides, and maps.

As the Civil War came to an end, there was a flood of educational publications in the form of journals, reviews, and weeklies. States began to publish their own educational journals to keep teachers informed. Commercial producers and distributors of such new visual media as stereographs, lantern slides, maps, models, slide films, and motion picture films envisioned an extended market for their wares and eventually christened this new movement visual education. All contained articles and advertisements from the school furniture and apparatus companies with enticing illustrations and glowing sales claims—all of which were likely instrumental in persuading many in education to see inherent instructional value in the new apparatuses that were becoming available.

The film industry began in Chicago in 1907, when Albert S. Howell, a farm boy from Michigan who had studied engineering at night, and Donald H. Bell, a movie projectionist, developed one of the first precision film projectors. The first films for instructional uses were usually theatrical films for general purpose or entertainment interest. Later, as the motion picture industry began to expand, it was thought that theatrical films had educational value as well. The earliest forms of educational film were the newsreel, travelogues, and scientific motion pictures.

The use of film in education was brought about by the success and popularity of illustrated lectures on the lyceum and Chautauqua lecture circuit, establishing academic respectability for the use of lantern slides and film in the classroom. World War I provided impetus to the visual instruction movement by the effectiveness and extensive use of films: The [Page 850]Committee on Public Information used film media to disseminate information concerning activities of the federal government, and the War and Navy departments had organized film divisions for the twofold purpose of supplying informational films to the public and preparing officers and men for war.

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