Educational screen & audio-visual guide (c1956-1971])

FORECH.S'X Educational Television by Harry J. Skornia X HE past year has been an encouraging one for all who are interested in educational television and all modem media. I think it has been equally interesting for all who are interested in the pressures which the entire educational community is feeling in the United States. In a sense I feel that American education has been made the "fall guy" for the "educational mess" we're in, to quote many hysterical and otherwise irresponsible critics. Since education in the United States is responsible to local pressures, instead of being controlled by a Ministry of Education or some comparable central body as it is in many countries, the United States public, critics and others cannot fairly blame the educators, as "the others" in this situation. It does, of course, raise a question of the total problem democracy faces at all levels: that of the responsibility of those in charge of any critical part of our nation's organic system, in the face of "public" pressures. Should school adminstrators have yielded to public pressures for more vocational, "adjustment," and similar courses? Or should they have stood by their guns, and insisted on more disciplined education in the basic (science, humanities) sense? Or in insisting on getting through to the students the fact mat mey must continue to study and learn all their lives as if their very lives and freedom depend on it— as they do? Is a review of tbis type of responsibility generally not in order— not only in education but everywhere in our culture? By whom were the public pressures exerted on education shaped during the years when it was becoming "a mess," if not by our mass media— newspapers, radio, television, movies, and all the rest? We now are beginning to suspect that many of the concepts, values, and 'lessons" which these media have been conditioning the public with may not necessarily have been so good after aU. But we have not yet begun to raise adequately the question as to whether the value systems transmitted by these same media regarding our economic and social systems (constant inflation, etc. ) may not be as out-of-step with our times as our education system has been. What is education's role in this area? If commerce-operated mass media continue to assume in these areas, as they did in the case of education and science until Sputnik and Lunik came along, that ours is "the best possible system," how long will it be before the economic, social, and social science equivalents of Sputnik and Lunik will burst above our heads? If sponsored mass media do not show concern in these areas, educators and educational uses of these media must. I see this as a more serious function of educational television, the other new media, and education itself, than any of the experiments in detail or methodology which we now hear about. Education may have abdicated its responsibility once under public pressures and tastes which were shaped by industry-financed uses. Has it learned a lesson from this? Have we learned a lesson as part of this educational structure? Education (which includes you and me) must have the courage to resist such pressures now, as the last bastion of truly basic (not apUed ) analysis of education's function and responsibility in a republic, now that all types of media are available to it. I believe that some evidences of such awakening are occurring. That is why I began this article by saying that I am encouraged. Humanists are finding support in their insistence on the need to develop the spiritual, intellectual, and philosophical man as well as the scientist and the technician. Some are having the courage to say that we should study languages, as many as possible, in order to understand our world better, and take wise decisions on the basis of this new understanding— rather than only to speak the language, or use it to keep from getting "gypped" as a tourist, or as a technical skill to enable us to earn lots of money in a foreign country. In the early days of educational television most of the money came from Foundations. This was good as a catalyst and means of getting education started in the use of new tools. It is not good if its uses are directed too much by Foundations instead of by education itself. Here, too, there is evidence that the educational community is awakening, and having the courage to say that tax money is what we need— that if we want better education we as taxpayers must pay for it. Many are having the courage to take issue with Foundation projects themselves in many respects. This, too, is good. Let us be grateful to the Foundations for prodding such educators into concern and activity. 646 Educational Screen and Audiovisual Guide — December, 1959