Tijdschrift voor Mediageschiedenis

Samenvatting

After the Second World War, films destined to be shown in the classroom were increasingly used by primary and secondary schools in the West. These shorts were used as didactic aids in additionto regular teaching of compulsory curriculum subjects, such as geography, biology or history. The main producer and distributor of such items in the Netherlands was Stichting Nederlandse Onderwijs Film (n.o.f., or Dutch Foundation for Educational Film). In this article, Eef Masson gives us an impression of the rhetorical breadth of the material which the foundation distributed. In particular she focusses on the ways in which the textual strategies of the films relate to the didactic matter which they were meant to (help) pass on. Starting from the assumption that texts, in their rhetorical aspect, are always geared towards bringing about or maintaining a communicative exchange, Masson claims that a distinction can be made in terms of whether talking films, in this process, focus their viewers’ attention on facts or skills that are academically ‘relevant’, or instead divert or temporarily divert their attention, thus ‘sugar-coating’ the metaphorical ‘didactic pill’.