Film Didactics

Two didactic principles

The films that the NOF distributed in the 1940s and 1950s are characterised by two different, and seemingly opposing, didactic principles. The first entails that viewers are directly confronted with the lesson subject, so that the facts or skills that they need to learn can be instilled into them. Films that abide by the second principle take a more ‘roundabout’ approach, avoiding a scenario in which the students are disturbed by (or at the very least reminded of) the fact that the film is intended to teach them something.

Direct confrontation

Films that adhere to the first principle focus the viewers’ attention directly on the phenomenon, the process or the skill that the lesson revolves around. They often seek to raise the viewers’ interest by emphasising that which is remarkable, surprising or admirable about it. In the geography film Twentse textielindustrie, for example, the angle and movement of the camera underscore how impressive machineries are, how abundant raw materials, and how practiced and efficient the movements of the experienced workers.

Films for gymnastics and swimming use such means as part of a strategy to make specific skills seem enviable, so as to encourage viewers to imitate them. In the central part of In de bruine boon schuilt een plantenleven, time-lapse (or Zeitraffer) techniques are used. These have been deployed for decades by scientific cinematographers, including the Dutchman J.C. Mol. A fast-motion effect during projection entails that the movements of the germinating bean and growing plant become visible, but it also makes for a magical spectacle.

Fantastic situations

The idea behind the second principle is that since the lesson material can be perceived as a bitter pill, it is better to sugarcoat it in some way. For this reason, many classroom films use fictional stories – stories that usually have very little to do with the knowledge the films need to convey. Hansje en de Madurodammers tells the fantastic story of a young boy who, in a dream, ends up in the theme park Madurodam. After drinking a bottle of magic milk, which causes him to shrink to a fraction of his normal size, he is chased by a ‘giant’ – a man of regular proportions. The choice of story is entirely random here, for the events in the film are of no import to the writing exercise that, according to the instruction booklet provided with the film, should follow the screening.

Combinations

Most NOF films, however, combine both strategies. In De grote karekiet: nestbouw en broedverzorging, the scientific account of a bird’s life cycle is briefly interrupted a little while after the film begins. For minutes on end, the camera follows two boys in a sloop who have spotted a bird’s nest in the reeds. They get out of the boat, take a brief look, and then get back into the boat to continue their journey. This way, the viewers are given a little break: they are briefly relieved of their duty to absorb the didactically relevant facts. At the same time, the film explicitly seeks their attention.

The boys in the film, after all, are the same age and have the same interests as those watching; therefore, they are interesting by definition. Alle water is geen drinkwater and In de bruine boon schuilt een plantenleven do more or less the opposite: their central argument is embedded in a fictional story about a young protagonist. Didactically speaking, this framing story is not very significant; however, it does offer an (attractive) entry point to the more ‘serious’ lesson material.

More information

In her book 'Watch and Learn: Rhetorical Devices in Classroom Films after 1940' (Amsterdam University Press, 2012) Eef Masson discusses these and other rhetorical devices used in the NOF’s films. 

Related pages

NOF – Netherlands Foundation for Educational Films

School cinema visits deemed ‘inappropriate’

NOF Films

An educational device