NAEB Newsletter (Oct 1958)

people with the courage to take issue with nonsense- people who feel that controversy is not necessarily bad—that open, intelligent, concerned discussion of controversial problems is essential if we are to chal¬ lenge the people of our nation to intelligent problem¬ solving. It will be people who believe our educational, social, cultural and economic systems are to be used, influenced, and kept dynamic for the greatest good of our people—not merely be complied with or ad¬ justed to. If these objectives are to be achieved, our As¬ sociation must be transformed into a nation-wide movement and effort, guided by and listening to the best minds in our nation. As educators and educa¬ tional leaders we must here propose, and resolve to perform, in a manner worthy of the needs of our age ■—or abdicate to others who can and’ will do so. We need to counteract the concept of education, now so often falsely conceived of as odd bits of in¬ formation or culture, or “success gimmicks” aimed at increasing the individual’s income-earning potential or popularity. We need to resist the concept of science as essentially “vocational education.” We need to think of education as an organized, life-long effort, to enable man to realize as richly and fully as pos¬ sible, his full human potential for citizenship in a free society. The eyes of millions of people in new-born and backward nations are on us. They look to us for leadership. How we use mass media in our present situation will in part determine whether or not we as a nation deserve or continue to exercise world leader¬ ship. The influence which educational television and radio (if adequately developed can exert in this total problem should not be under-estimated. Though far behind us in this area now, within the next ten years, it is our belief that Russia will be illustrating to the world what can be done with radio and television as a part of their educational system. We would hope that it will not take a Sputnik in this educational area as well, to awaken us, and cause us to become organized in making maximum use of our presently still superior electronic resources. There can be no serious question in the minds of intelligent people regarding the superiority of de¬ mocracy, based on belief in the importance of the in¬ dividual. But, to quote Woodrow Wilson: “Demo¬ cratic institutions are never done—It is a strenuous thing this of living the life of a free people; and we cannot escape the burden of our inheritance.” How¬ ever small the part we can play in meeting the educa¬ tional needs of our nation and the world' may be, we must meet it wisely, courageously and promptly. NETWORK NEWS —Bob Underwood At this month’s NAEB Annual Convention, time has been set aside for listening to network programs (mainly present and future series); also, there is to be a “What’s Your Problem?” session. While I hope you don’t have any real problems with the network, I would appreciate your dropping by our network booth. Potential network members are invited to come by, examine the network materials which will be available, and discuss the possibility of receiving network service. I’ll be happy to explain the net¬ work’s operation to any NAEB member, and for you Associate members we’ll have a catalog of net¬ work programs which you may obtain for broad¬ cast over your local station. I am very happy to report that the response to the fourth quarter offering has been excellent, in¬ dicating that we are offering the type of programming desired by stations. If you have any suggestions on the type of material we could add to our offering, I’ll be glad to hear from you. As of this writing I am working on the offering for the January - March period of next year, and it, too, should find a good market among network sta¬ tions. Once again we will be offering nine hours per week to all full-time stations plus a bonus series and some special one-shot programs. I’ll have more de¬ tails on this at a later date. The response to our appeal for tape returns has been good, but there are still a number of stations which could send back large numbers of tapes. If you are a responsible person at one of these stations, will you please see that the network tapes are returned regularly? Your help and cooperation is deeply ap¬ preciated. Submissions still are a bit slow in the fifteen- minute class, so if you have any series in this time 6 See You In Omaha NEWSLETTER