Address by Commissioner of Education Earl McGrath, The Need for Improving the Preparation of Our Teachers in the Effective Use of Audio-Visual Materials

THE NEED FOR LMPROVING THE PREPARATION OF OUR TEACHERS IN THE EFFECTIVE USE OF AUDIO-VISUAL MaTeRials* For several hunored years, the only way we could achieve mass communication was tnrough the use of words. Indeed for & hundred years the basic curriculum of nmericun education was the three R's, readin', riting, rithnetic; in otner words, the development of verbal literacy. It is not surprising therefore that W3, as educutors andi teachers, were reared in the verbal tradition, to be glib with the use of words, and to use words almost exclusivaly in putting ideas across. This has led to many verbalisms for situations in which the children knen the correct words, but had not the least ideu of what they meant. Verbalioms are not. too important, but when they lead & whole generation to ask what is the meaning of democracy, they become very important. We no longer need to depend wholly on words. within the past fifty yeurs, there has daveloped new media of communication, new ways of putting ideas across. We know of the interest of our children in the motion pictur9, the television show, and the picture maguzine. Ne have known that & map can explain to the people the irregularity of our coastline far better than any number of words. Ne have not known nearly so well that pictures by capturing the flavor of real life situations can, with equal effectiveness, give meaning to such concepts as "the internependence of peoples". *address by Earl James McGrut th, U.S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security agency, wishington, D. C., at a mesting of the Department of Audio-Visual - Instruction, hhoh., atiantic City, New Jersey, Murch 1, 1950.