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In celebration of International Education Week, staff from the UCLA Film & Television Archive have curated a small selection of footage from the Hearst Metrotone News Collection that features student activities from across the globe. This lighthearted selection of newsreel stories reveals a window into international student life over three decades.
The Hearst Metrotone News Collection at the UCLA Film & Television Archive is one of the largest newsreel collections in the world. In 2023, The Packard Humanities Institute launched a website (newsreels.net) in collaboration with the Archive to share the Hearst collection for research, study and public access. With nearly 15,000 newsreel stories currently available, the project’s eventual goal is to make the entire Hearst newsreel collection viewable online.
Titles and descriptions are taken directly from the original Hearst documentation.
1931: “Japanese Kids Do Mass Drill”
“School children of Beppu perform flag exercise in sections; first come the girls and then the boys.”
1933: “Chinese Co-eds Give a ‘Kitchen’ Recital”
“Girls of Shanghai U. use only household utensils for instruments in new kind of orchestra.”
1947: “Trolley School!”
“In Berlin, a school for street car motormen opens. Trolley operators are trained with all that old-time German thoroughness.”
1948: “School House on Wheels!”
“The Little Red School House travels by rail in Northern Ontario. Canada brings the Three R's to youngsters in isolated sections, right on schedule, in a unique school car.”
1949: “School Days in the Land of the Nile!”
“Students of the University of Cairo get their archaeology first hand as they join excavation work at the Temple of Djoser.”
1963: “British Students Hail ‘Silly Season’”
“Higher education in Britain enjoys a respite from the serious, as Southampton students sail anything that will float. It’s part of the local University Eag, and later it’s the turn of the landsmen, who stage a unique piano ‘Grand Prix.’”
1965: “Push-button Classroom”
“Fifteen primary graders go to school to computers in experimental classes at Stanford University's Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Studies. With the aid of computers and cathode tubes they're learning arithmetic; next year reading and languages.”
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