Many schools around the country would love to get their hands on some modern educational technology, but they just can't afford it. I'm not talking only about expensive and sophisticated computers. Most classrooms don't even have a VCR or TV set as permanent classroom equipment. Of course, the school usually has such items, but there are often scheduling problems, and equipment that is moved from floor to floor and room to room is often out of commission.
This yearning for electronic hardware is what makes a proposal by Whittle Communications of Knoxville, Tenn., so attractive to many school districts - especially those with economic problems. Whittle is about to offer a I 0-minute daily TV news program to be shown to students in schools. The program would be specially prepared for those of school age and would feature 20-year-old anchormen and women. Schools that participate in the program would get approximately $50,000 worth of equipment - TV sets, VCRs and internal school cable TV wiring. All this would be free.
How can Whittle afford to do this? Each 12-minute program would include two minutes of commercials directed at the student audience. Whittle would charge the advertisers for these commercials. And eventually, if the program is successful, we could look forward to 40 million American schoolchildren watching special TV news programs - and the commercials that sponsor them - on equipment provided to their schools.
This has stirred quite a controversy. Should students - who are minors and constitute a captive audience - be forced to watch commercials on school time. Defenders of the program - including school districts that are participating in a pilot project - say that two minutes of commercials is a small price to pay for all the equipment that will be made available and that can be used for many other educational purposes during the day. They also cite the benefits of having the students watch I0 minutes of news programming. In addition, they claim that teachers could use the commercials to educate students about the nature of advertising.
Perhaps supporters of the program have hit on a new idea that could solve many of our educational problems. Take the question of teacher salaries. If the Whittle proposal turns out to be successful, perhaps we could move beyond this limited beginning. Most school districts find it hard to pay high enough salaries to attract and retain a full and competent staff. In the future, advertisers might pay teachers to wear certain brands of clothing, or teachers could earn extra money by slipping a few one minute commercials into their lessons. Or, more subtly, a teacher might periodically turn to a student and say, "Mary, those are beautiful jeans. They make you look terrific. What brand are they?"
In a more serious vein, the Whittle proposal is a dangerous one. There's the question of using a public school with compulsory attendance for commercial purposes. There's also the fact that teachers may be forced to show programs that they do not believe will do their students any good because the district superintendent or school principal has ordered the use of the program so that the equipment is not pulled out of the school.
Ten or 12 minutes a day sounds like a small amount of time -- but given hectic school schedules, it is not. An hour a week is a lot of time. Many schools faced with mandates to teach a given number of hours of English, math, science and other essential courses. The one hour a week for these TV newscasts will push something else out. Before these programs are brought into the schools, the public and the profession need to know just what is being replaced.
Still another fundamental question has been largely ignored in the debate: Do kids - or, for that matter, adults - really learn about history, geography and current events by watching TV news? The overwhelming evidence is that they do not. Americans watch more TV and TV news than almost any other industrial nation. Yet, all surveys show that we're largely ignorant of history, geography and current affairs. When done well, video can be a powerful learning tool, but most TV news shows - with a few exceptions, like "The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour" and occasional network specials - are more entertainment than education. News items are not used unless there are pictures to accompany them. Everything must be reduced to small sound bites so that the show moves. Back ground information and complex ideas are avoided because they are "boring." People who watch TV expect action or they tune out.
One last point: Poor urban districts will be under the most pressure to find merit in the Whittle proposal. But they should resist the temptation. Their large populations of disadvantaged students will be the ones most harmed by a formula of less academic time and more advertising time.
I am a strong supporter of educational technology needs to be used when it can better achieve educational purposes that the schools and the profession have thought through. In this case, we're asked to take away from time that could be used to teach history and geography and give it the dominant motive here is not educational but commercial, and it should be rejected.