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

\ has become an almost complete misnomer for the product that we are now talking about. The modem basal textbook is really not a textbook at all in the old sense. It could far better be described as a "guide to learning." Perhaps with the adoption of such a title children could be more readily led to discover that what we now call a te.vtbook is in reality a teacher in print, a human personality who is interested in them and is trying to help them learn by themselves and to help their teacher help them to learn. What Affects Textbook Patterns? Two major elements in tlie educational world today support the hand of the pubhsher who would avoid textbook patterns and who wants to make progress faster than tradition and the usual educational lag would permit. First, as a result of the national shock occasioned by Sputnik I, we have turned the spotlight on education. In the fields of science, mathematics, and foreign languages we have drafted distinguished scientists and scholars from universities and commissioned them to go back to the public schools, to reacquaint themselves with boys and girls and to figure out what kind of reorganization of subject matter in their various disciplines and what new teaching procedures may result in learning break-throughs. We should not be surprised if the teaching of reading, the teaching of the humanities in general, and of the social sciences get similar drastic shock treatment in the very near future. Whatever may eventually come of it, this massive stirring of the educational pot has aheady resulted in a wholesome re-examination of traditional practice. The second element that can affect textbook patterns is the present rapid multiplication of other media of instruction. Audiovisual devices have come upon us so fast that few of us have been able to assimilate or to assess them. From all sides we hear extravagant claims for each of the new devices. Each has its enthusiastic proponents who see in the particular instrument to which they are committed the panacea that will solve all educational ills. The harassed school superintendent discovers that his community is beginning to judge his progressiveness and his fitness for office by the amount of electronic hardware with which he equips his schools. He must be able to point with pride not only at the hues of his erstwhile blackboards and the variety of beautiful pastel shades on the walls of his classrooms, but at electronically controlled language laboratories, all kinds of projectors of visual aids, elaborate public address and television systems— and now teaching machines. People seldom ask what he is going to do with all this equipment, what kind of teaching it is capable of, just how it fits the learning needs of the boys and girls in his school. We are going through the gadget age of education. Electronics is king; technology is at last pulling education out of the horse and buggy era. New Media and "Systems" Approach Like the school superintendent, the publisher is under pressure from the public to join the stampede. Not long ago I was told by a stockbroker who had made a specialty of the publishing industry that one of the criteria that was being used to measure stock value was the extent to which the publisher was promoting machine teaching and programmed learning. It was implied that if we were not already in the business in a big way we'd better get in— and fast. If by now you have concluded that I am opposed to the use of the new media in education, you could not be more wrong. On the contrary, I see in them opportunities for the improvement of teaching and learning such as we have never had before. The danger is that emotion and hysteria will result in our letting the machines run us instead of our running the machines. If that happens, we may find that new media education turns out to be just another educational fad and is soon gone with the wind. I think it will not happen because I beheve that we are recognizing more and more the importance of finding out how we can use to best advantage each new device that is put before us. The new media are already forcing us to go back to fundamentals and to ask ourselves again those simple questions— What am I trying to teach, why am I trying to teach it, and how can I best teach it? If, at the same time, we analyze and understand the teaching capacity of each of the many instruments at the teacher's disposal, if we know where each one best fits into any sound scheme of teaching and learning, then when we have answered that last question— How can I best teach it?— we wUl know which of the new media to use to help us to do the job. This is perhaps what is being called the "systems" approach to teaching and learning. Whatever its proper name, I am certain that any combination of 712 Educational Screen and Audiovisual Guide— Decembkr. 1962