THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

premise was expressed in a slogan: «for universal civilisation,
universalist education*. 77 For the kind of synthesis-oriented
•education he proposed, great emphasis needed to be placed
on teaching media. There should be, he believed, «didactic
•charts and tables* which displayed diagrammatically, schematically
and therefore in a simplified form, all that had to be
taught. Moreover he showed himself to be firmly convinced of
the value of film in teaching. Visualisation on the screen
-will become a fundamental teaching method*, 78 he declared.
At the Museum-Center would be established a finding list of
important educational materials, and the problems of preparing
and distributing abstracts of this material were carefully
•examined in his study. A collection of syllabi, anthologies,
annotated bibliographies, and, one imagines, text-books, would
be begun also. Summing up one major point, Otlet expressed
his appreciation of the potential value in education of recent
technological developments. He wrote:
Mechnanical instruments: these instruments will have a great future in
teaching. They are automatic auxiliaries to the teacher, the extension
of the word and the book. Without a doubt, they are a long way from
being perfect, but what marvellous progress has already been made.
The gramophone has assisted the teaching of language greatly ... It
can do the same for music. The Pianola will permit the acquisition of
an extensive knowledge of music, of works which one should hear.
Machines for projecting fixed dispositive plates or microfilms (photoscope),
the cinema in black and white and in colour, with texts interspersed
in the film with the possibility of interrupting it, will allow
knowledge of things and actions which should be seen.
The radio (broadcasting . ..) with its personal apparatus and its great
speakers, its musical programs, its lectures, its courses, will permit
one to be in direct contact with the outside world, to receive messages,
to observe the usefulness of foreign languages, to attempt to understand
them ...
New Teaching Equipment: education based on the considerations developed
here will necessitate the development of teaching materials. The
poor material which educational establishments use to-day, will no
longer be satisfactory. 79
'Otlet envisaged the production of new kinds of text books by
international co-operation and in the next few years he himself
"worked on the production of such material. With all the new
materials, new methods, the enlarged aims, teaching establishments
would become, he believed, «a little world».
a microcrosm, schools for infants at the primary level, colleges, lycees,
athenees for young people at the secondary level. Static objects, functioning
objects, materials to be observed, experimented with, used for
construction, simple charts for the class room cupboard, a laboratory,
a workshop, the school museum. In the form of manuals and publications
this material should be the result of collective work, of a continuous
collaboration involving teachers of all countries, of all levels,
and of every educational speciality. 80
Charts, diagrams, schemas had a particular importance
for Otlet. They permitted the representation of complex wholes
295