DURING recent years, in the relatively new field of visual education there have appeared various enterprises and organizations whose. greatest visible asset at the start was a formidable array of eminent names. Such names undoubtedly—and very properly—command quick attention from the educational and educated public, which makes for an early start toward success for the organization or enterprise so inaugurated. These names, however, while they suggest value in the forthcoming results or productions, cannot create it. The proof of such value must always wait for the public's examination of the product itself; and the public's final judgment, whether favorable or unfavorable, will depend upon the results achieved, not upon the names behind the enterprise.
The Educational Screen, Inc.—as the newest development in the new field—proposes to follow a new procedure. We shall offer the product first, and the names afterward. The product is this magazine—and nothing else. The names, when they appear a few numbers later, will show a personnel of about 30, comprising a Directorate and a Producing Staff.
The Directorate is composed of educators—from University professors to grade school principals—and of business executives and experts in the publishing field who have long been connected with established publications.—The members of the Producing Staff—many of whom have already worked character—are college graduates, with the single exception of the office-boy, and have all had substantial experience in formal teaching as well as in the special field of the new magazine.
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Therefore, to the friends of American education, we offer this first number of The Educational Screen to be judged solely on its merits, without the fictitious value that could be gained by the glamour of printed names.
There is a host of intelligent readers in this country who will recognize at once the new note struck in these pages—who will feel the sincerity that is behind our efforts—who will realize the immediate value and the future possibilities of such a publication. These are the readers whose approval we are after. When we get it, we shall be on the only sure road to winning the approval of everybody else.
