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

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Teaching Labor La>v With Taped Case Recordings by Stanley M. Jacks I J URING my first ten years in teaching I paid little heed to audiovisual materials. I was aware of a few films and recordings but those I had seen were not impressive and I was not inspired to pursue the possibility. A chance occurrence in the summer of 1956 broke the ice. Driving home one night from an evening class, I listened with rapt attention to a radio program —part of an NBC Biographtj in Sotiml series— on the life of John L. Lewis. Beginning with the recorded reminiscences of oldsters who knew Lewis from his first days in the mines, the story of Lewis' life unfolded in a tightly edited sequence of spontaneous comments by reporters, union and management leaders, government officials and others who had observed Lewis through the days of the 'Herrin Massacre', the formation of the CIO, the break with Roosevelt and up through the post-war drive for the miners' Welfare and Retirement Fund. The recording conveyed to the listener the sense of being an observer of actual events. The experience was immediate, authentic, dynamic. The next day I wrote NBC for a copy of the Lewis recording. I was very pleased at the hearty response it got from students and I received an extra dividend when it occurred to me one day that I might produce a tape recording of my own design. In 1957 I began production of a tape recording based on a National Labor Relations Board proceeding using the actual participants to relate the story. I was interested in testing the effectiveness of a program employing the technique of the Lewis recording but confined in its scope to a particular problem area in one of my courses. I wished, in other words, to put the spotlight on a specific phase of labor relations practice. I had for some years been lecturing on labor law in the Executive Development Programs at MIT. It was a brief course centered on the National Labor Relations Act, the most comprehensive of the federal labor laws. I used the case method of instruction, the cases being Labor Board decisions and decisions of the courts reviewing acts of the NLRB. Authors of legal casebooks have not developed the panoramic case study which traces a problem from the raw material stage up to final disposition. The process of drawing the issues, the translation of 'life' into legal categories, the difficult problem of proof, all these a concealed from view. Yet of all the stages in a leg proceeding, the intermediate stage— between raw fa and decision— is likely to hold the greatest illumir tion for the layman. At this stage he can at on see the situation in terms with which he is famili and, as it were, in legal transliteration. I had been gathering background material for depth' write-ups of particular cases when the Lew recording suggested a new approach. Tape recordii the experience of the actual participants in a ca would add a unique dimension of reality. The pro lem of conveying the way people felt about a situ tion, often so hard to do in a written case stud would be solved. The 'atmosphere' surrounding , entity like the NLRB would emerge more or less n; urally, thus assisting the student to gain insight in the ways of a world with which he had little fami arity. Essential concepts would be clarified by the ii of a medium which conveyed experience with a mil mum loss of immediacy. While I found the notion of a recording intriguir I never conceived it to be a talisman. Given the co plexity of the learning process, it has always seemi implausible to me that all difficulties would yield one teaching method. Hence I had never been, r am I now, an advocate, in an exclusive sense, for a one method of communication. Recording an open NLRB case was not seriou considered. It seemed obvious that the participati of the parties, their counsel, NLRB officials and judi could not be secured until the contest was closed. 1 interesting case of the two Mount Hope Finishi Companies was recommended by the director of i NLRB's New England regional office. A leading t tile finishing company had closed its Massachus* plant in 1951 and a company operating under the sa name and similar management opened in North Ca lina. The Textile Workers Union alleged a 'runaw: namely, that the northern firm had moved soutli evade the union which, a few months before, won 1 gaining rights in an NLRB election. The alleged r away in 1951 came after a bitter strike resembling some ways, an employee revolt against a benevol autocracy. In fact, research disclosed background cumstances with dramatic ingredients sufficient a full-length play. The issue of fact and law raised by the Mount H'l case were not so intricate as to tax the comprehens of the hstener. Moreover, the issues of the case w revealing of some typical difficulties encountered the NLRB in discharging the functions entrustec 484 Educational Screen and Audiovisual Guide — September,