School Reforms and the Uses of Film in Swiss Schools During the Interwar Period

My PhD dissertation focuses on the history of the uses of film in Swiss schools, from its beginning in 1914 to the Second World War. It aims at investigating a practice which has been neglected in film
historiography, yet widespread and extensively debated at the time. I intend to show how, despite its spectacular and at first “popular” dominance, film was increasingly theorized as a way to mediate
knowledge, parallel to the much-investigated discourses of its legitimation as an art form.
I will analyse the exhibition practices basing on the films, the projectors, the architecture of the projection rooms, the commentaries made by the teachers and the school programs. As numerous discourses emerged reflecting on the ideal pedagogical use of film, my aim is also to confront the exchange of ideas on classroom screenings to the actual technological transformations, to the economical and “logistic” constraints. I will describe the technical, institutional, ideological and psychological parameters which led the pedagogues to consider cinema as a tool compatible with the new vision they had of education. This approach will allow me to develop a broad, theoretical and epistemological reflexion on educational film.
I argue that the integration of film into the curricula is mainly a result of its perceived compatibility with the dominant pedagogical ideas of that period. In that respect, I will investigate the influence of the renewal of pedagogical thought through the so-called « progressive education » movement, which developed internationally and had a strong base in Geneva through the Institut Jean-Jacques
Rousseau. Influenced by the recent findings of psychology and moved by the new needs of an industrial society, progressist pedagogues intended to introduce major reforms to the school system, focusing on the activity of the children and encouraging the use of visual aids to foster it.
My first results show very diverse and personal uses of film which challenge the idea of its gradual institutionalisation at that time. This variety of practices led me to choose the methodology proposed by Maria Tortajada and François Albera, drawing from Foucault1. The two scholars suggest using a grid to analyse the cinema as a “dispositif”, constituted of three terms (the representation, the spectator, the machinery) whose relations are to be determined, and which has to be reconstructed in each case. This methodology will allow me to articulate significant parameters of the educational screenings, as for instance the content of the films, their integration into the curricula, the commentary made by the teacher, the architectural space of the classroom, or the type of projector used.
More globally, my research will show how the Swiss society reacted to the emergence of a new media at the beginning of the last century, and hopefully serve as a basis to understand the recurring
controversies regarding the introduction of new technologies in schools.