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https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/comics-old-school-distance-learning-tools/>
"During World War II, as American airmen bombed Germany and marines stormed
Pacific islands, Disney animators in California were drawing educational
cartoons. The company’s beloved characters had been drafted into service, too.
While Donald Duck learned how to file his income taxes in
The Spirit of ’43
(“taxes to defeat the Axis”), most of the studio’s work went into creating
specialized military-training films. In 1944 88% of the 150,500 feet of film
Disney produced went to the highest-tech parts of the armed services: the Navy
Bureau of Aeronautics, the Army Signal Corps, and the Army Air Forces.
(Disney’s prewar production had been just 27,000 feet per year.) These films,
which combined technical drawings with cartoon characters, veered in tone from
serious to silly. The drawings were also printed in paper booklets, allowing
soldiers and pilots to study in their down time.
Disney’s work was part of an unplanned experiment that spanned the American
armed forces. Elsewhere artists put comics to the task of teaching crews how to
maintain guns and pilots how acceleration and oxygen deprivation affected their
bodies during flight.
Military training is just one example of how comics have been used in informal
education for generations. But despite having taught us scientific principles
and helped us understand the weather, comics have maintained a persistent
reputation for being crude, cheap, and unsophisticated, if popular and fun.
Advocates for comics have never been able to shake the vague suspicion that
someway, somehow, a medium like that can’t possibly be good for serious
learning."
Via Esther Schindler.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
