The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

As Viewed From Here Editorial "The teacher each year understands her children, not more, as she might reasonably expect, but less" Teachers, Your Gap Shows! • When we noticed that teachers tended to differ from parents in their conclusions about whether small children should see motion pictures to teach them what to do in case of an A-bomb attack, it puzzled us. Teachers didn't want to use such pictures below the sixth grade, but parents approved them even for first-graders. What caused this difference in judgment? Could it be that teachers don't know these children? Is there really such a gap between teacher and parent understanding of what children are like in today's world? Is there an increasing gap between teacher and child? We wondered. While wondering, we happened to read some startling words that gave us new insights: "... the teacher . . . each year understands her children, not more, as she might reasonably expect, but less . . . This is the normal accompaniment of the fantastic rate of change of the world in which we live, where children of five have already incorporated into their everyday thinking ideas that most of the elders will never fully assimilate."* Startling? Margaret Mead, the writer of these words, continues, "Teachers who never heard a radio until they were grown up have to cope with children who have never known a world without television . . ." We were reminded of a television survey just made in an elementary school. In this school 59 per cent of the youngsters had television sets at home and another 25 per cent were watching television , programs regularly. In this same school two of the fifteen teachers — only 13 per cent — owned television sets. Parents with television are certainly in a much better position to see and comprehend what is happening to children today than teachers without television. The gap is not only beginning to show; it is becoming disturbingly apparent. Now, we wouldn't be so presumptuous as to suggest that teachers acquire television receivers and subject themselves to the programs that are shaping the lives of their pupils. Whether or not thev buy and watch television is strictly their own private business. But in a world changing at so fantastic a rate, they must be fully aware of the risk involved in trying to teach children they do not know. Margaret Mead asks, "How can we set up some pattern which will enable the teacher to grow through the years instead of becoming stunted and distorted, affrighted by the increasing gap between herself and her pupils, which is not a gap of chronological age but a gap of difference in period?" — PCR * From The School in American Culture by Margaret Mead. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1951, 48 pages. 218 Educafional Screen