The Home Front:
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The University of The Living Room IT IS FOOLISH to call this a miracle. It is too normal a product of American energy. What I am talking about is educational...
...Later come high-school classes with regular fees, examinations and credits...
...You would expect them to try to head off this new competition...
...For one period, some distinguished teacher supplements and supports the regular instructor...
...that is what we have been taught to expect of capitalists...
...Educational television proposes to thaw it out and put it on the table...
...It is true that they have been running radio stations...
...The British and Canadian Broadcasting Corporations have offered the pick of their store...
...The heart of this lively affair is in Washington, D.C.--though it has nothing to do with the Federal Government...
...There are, first, the in-school programs...
...Near Pittsburgh, a class of 25 penitentiary prisoners is taking such a course...
...Educators are thinking of the other great orchestras, laboratories, museums, playhouses, zoological gardens and lecture halls...
...It must have cost in the neighborhood of $250,000...
...151 channels are waiting...
...Rut it is the leaders of commercial radio and television who have caused the sensation...
...For the after-school periods there are, first of all, the entertainment for young children--plays, fairy tales, animal shows...
...But this is not the main staple of the program...
...Louis put it this way: "What we are talking about is nothing less than bringing the nation's greatest teachers and the finest elements of our culture into the living rooms of millions of people...
...And there are plenty of other cases...
...But there is something about this that goes against all the old teaching...
...No wonder historians say it is the greatest invention since printing...
...The service in these new community education centers is first-class professional work...
...School is lifted beyond the level of routine...
...If there is any such thing as democracy, this is it...
...It didn't cost much, and it mattered little whether anyone listened...
...A year ago, it could exhibit only the merest samples...
...But this is different...
...This sort of broadcasting is show business--and closeted teachers had never made much of a show in the big, bright world...
...In Pittsburgh, it was found that about one person in a hundred had heard that city's great orchestra...
...In Cincinnati, it was the Crosley Broadcasting Corporation which contributed the land, the tower and the transmitter site plus maintenance...
...The best of the educators' own productions are made permanent on film or kinescope...
...Television can serve as the pipeline to everywhere and everything...
...The wealth of the world will be at the beck of the set-owner -and there are 30 million of him...
...And, moreover, the biggest big businessmen are excited about this thing...
...What I am talking about is educational television...
...Adult shows of all sorts raise the educational level, increase the earning power, make life more worth living...
...Good programs from everywhere are being salted away...
...Or some demonstration or a view of some historical or geographical object of interest may enliven the day...
...Many universities have had them...
...It has a staff that can give real help to any town that wants to take a flier in education via the airwaves...
...The educators are by no means deserted in a strange land...
...Within a month or two, there will be five more stations...
...It consists of people with big money and big ideas working together...
...There must be millions of people to listen to what it takes millions of dollars to produce...
...They have an astounding way of jumping in to raise money and even to do real work...
...A start has already been made at putting away for future reference the best that can be culled from the prodigous production of commercial television and the moving-picture industry...
...Two years ago, it existed only in dreams...
...Television projects required big businessmen and pedagogues had never shown much of a talent for million-dollar affairs...
...A sort of standard way of doing things is already developing...
...Back in 1952, a businessman in St...
...This is no stuffed-shirt outfit...
...They are not afraid of a million dollars or of a big job...
...Many of the technical employes are boys and girls who have had their training in the old studios, towers and control-rooms...
...It was natural that people should say it couldn't be done...
...The first is that we have a new breed of pedagogues...
...A good deal of the planning has been done by the commercial television men...
...Up to now, we and all the other countries have kept a good part of our learning and culture in the deepfreeze...
...That is where educational TV's National Committee holds forth...
...Well, in a short time we have found out a lot of things...
...Today, it has eight well-equipped broadcasting stations and is serving upwards of 15 million people...
...The people got the idea, raised the money, did the organizing and will do the bossing...
...But that merely meant that a professor delivered his lecture before the microphone...
...As they say in Pittsburgh, it belongs to everybody and is owned by nobody...
Vol. 37 • December 1954 • No. 49
