ASCENDANT STAR

The advent of the moving picture in to the common life of every citizen was hailed, like the later arrival of the radio, with confident predictions of the wonders to be wrought by each in education. Realization of these hopes has been late in coming. The last two years have seen the arrival of the radio agricultural college in Wisconsin, and the filming at Yale of the "Chronicles of America". The signing of a five year contract for Harvard University with the Pathe Exchange, Incorporated, by President Lowell and Vice President Pearson of Pathe is at least significant of the growing recognition of the moving picture as an educational medium.

Pathe has observed that the true market for the serious educational picture is not in what Roxy has called the "cathedral of the movies", where the arrival of the travelogue is the signal for a general exodus, but rather in the high school scientific course and the small college whose endowment does not permit sizeable expenditures on the more specialized studies. Under the new plan it will be possible for students at a college which gives no courses in anthropology to study the subject in about the fashion that an undergraduate here does. The gap between high school and college methods of instruction and of subject matter will be in a measure bridged by the preparation of another anthropological film especially adapted for pre-collegiate use.

In this as well as other movements for the more general dissemination of knowledge, Harvard has been prompt to make itself available. Lacking whatever exotic qualities make a great college picture, the University may give a more important account of itself when the big scenes are shot in the buildings on Oxford Street.