NAEB Newsletter (July 1958)

report reads: “Remember, in this endeavor enthusi¬ asm can carry you a long, long way!” ***** Enthusiastic note from Minnesota: KUOM began May 2 a year-long series of programs and promotions to mark its 20th anniversary of 40-hour-a-week broadcasting. This has triggered considerable cover¬ age in news columns, and a number of special features. All of which points to a neglected technique on the NAB list: “Celebrate Something.” WASHINGTON CONFERENCE PROVES SUCCESSFUL “The national welfare will be saved by assuring that each state has the resources and the technical as¬ sistance to build and operate a comprehensive edu¬ cational television network (to serve) elementary and secondary schools, collegiate institutes and adult educational purposes.” Thus, Dr. John E. Ivey, vice president of New York University, proposed a national federally aided ETV network to over 70 participants of the Confer¬ ence on Educational Television and Related Media. Held May 26 - 28 in Washington, D. C., this was the first joint meeting in nearly eight years for the NAEB and the U. S. Office of Education. Leaders in both education and educational broadcasting ex¬ changed views to determine the status and trends in their individual fields, and to chart a course for the future which would give a clear relationship of each to the other. Through talks and discussions, the conference provided an excellent study ground for both the edu¬ cators and the educational broadcasters. Most ap¬ parent in the sessions was the mutual effort, as stated by Dr. Ivey in his proposed solution, to . . make possible the greatest exposure of the nation’s top in¬ tellectual manpower to all fields of education.” In his welcoming message, Marion B. Folsom, Sec¬ retary of Health, Education and Welfare, pointed to the broad possibilities for future classrooms opened up by educational TV. He said, “It is an exciting prospect that through television an inspired teacher may reach unlimited numbers of students, and with teaching materials at her fingertips that heretofore could not be given general classroom use. We know that there is no substitute for the devotion and cap¬ abilities of a good teacher,—but television may bring greater opportunities for the good teacher to reach more children.” Discussing the problems of higher education and teacher preparation Ohio State University President Novice G. Fawcett concluded that “thoughtful, creative application must be the goal, if the mind is to be stretched more nearly to its potential. Too much teaching is merely word-deep; it has not been a real encounter. Television can go in one eye and out the other unless the content and the techniques em¬ ployed really engage, involve the learner. He added, “Successful education demands that there must be a certain freshness in the ideas dealt with. These ideas must be new or they must be in¬ vested with some novelty of application to present conditions.” Dr. Fawcett suggested the home and community “can increasingly re-enforce the work of the school and, with the use of the television medium, might ap¬ propriately begin to capture some of the responsibili¬ ties that the schools have been forced to assume in the past.” In preparing programs with a fresh approach, however, it is generally agreed that a great depend¬ ence is placed on the ETV teacher. An Evanston (Ill.) Township High School teacher, Miss Wanda B. Mitchell, summed up the problems involved in re¬ cruiting these teachers, labeling them confusion, fear, and lack of time. Although many persons think of these problems as groundless, Miss Mitchell said that teachers frequently look upon ETV with the in¬ decision of Hamlet: “TV or not TV; that is the question Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The pressures of increasing enrollments Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by electronics end them. To grunt and sweat under a weary life And make us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?” Airing another point of view, Dr. William G. Carr, executive secretary of the National Education Assn., advised educational broadcasters to disregard the use of television as an answer to the teacher short¬ age, and to concentrate their attention on the ques¬ tion of the use of television as an instrument to aid good teachers. He stressed the idea that “quality is going to be the watchword of American education as our horizons expand.” In his talk, Marshall McLuhan, editor of Explora¬ tions, Toronto, Ont., gave mass communications a further impressive role in meeting today’s problems. He said that the largest modern activity is “the con¬ suming of information electronically processed.” However, he warned, “Today our natural temp¬ tation is to regard the new media as aids or distrac¬ tions to the older studies. We have not dared to see them as themselves, new art forms which can become direct objects of study. For us to do this with press, radio, and TV would be fatal to our earlier achieve¬ ment in writing and print, because it leaves the JULY, 1958 5