NET Journal; The Beginning of Life

The following program is from NET, the National Educational Television Network. Good evening. I'm Dick McCutcheon. Tonight you will see what, in many respects, is a remarkable film. Remarkable notably for its subject matter and the way in which it is treated. Remarkable for the technical progress it represents. And the fact that it is about to be shown on American television is certainly remarkable. The film is the beginning of life photographed in Sweden by Leonard Nielsen. And after you see this film, we will discuss the status of sex education in the United States, with Dr. Mary Calderon, Executive Director of the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States. Father George Hadmaier, Executive Director of the Paulist Institute for Religious Research, and Mrs. Sally Williams, Coordinator, Family Life and Sex Education, Anaheim Union High School District, Anaheim, California.

Right now, let's look at the beginning of life. Thank you. This is how life begins life out in the world.

But inside the woman who is now going to give birth to her child, it really began 38 weeks ago. On that occasion, there were several hundred million firms on their way to the one waiting open. It has just been extruded by the Aubrey and received in the funnel shape opening of the Aviduct.

Now, for 12 or perhaps 24 hours, it's capable of fertilization. The firms are fast swimmers, at least four to five inches an hour. That may not sound very impressive, but for a human swimmer it would correspond to 100 lengths or so in a 50 yard long swimming pool. And the liveliest firms can go on like that for two days. They get fewer from the liquid around them. To help with the camera, we now have the speed so that we can follow the movements in more detail. The germplasm is situated in the head. The head of every sperm has its own particular mixture of the future father's characteristics. And then, of course, there are the important sex chromosomes, either X or Y. X gives a girl Y gives a boy.

On account of this mass production of sperm, it's not so surprising that some specimens are not absolutely perfect. It's quite usual to find, for instance, the occasional sperm with two heads. Swimming ability is not always what it might be, either. Here's one with no less than three tails. This does not help it to swim three times as well. This one's tail is a rye and it can only flounder about in a circle. And here we have one that didn't have time to get rid of superfluous cytoplasm before it reads completion.

It's too heavily loaded. As a matter of fact, there is no great danger of deformed children resulted from isolated unsuccessful sperm such as these. It seems that they just don't reach the ovum. On the way up to the ovum from the spot in the vagina where the sperm arrived on ejaculation, there are a lot of obstacles. They first find themselves up against a tough barrier of mucus. The mucus is like a protective plug in the uterine opening, which is the dark hole we see in the middle. If you take one drop of mucus and allow it to dry under the microscope, you will see how there appear crystal patterns like frostwork on a window. The most beautiful patterns are obtained as here in the middle of the menstrual cycle when the ovum is extruded. But from the fifth to the seventh day when menstruation is just over hardly any crystal patterns are obtained at all.

The sperm then struggle against a barrier of mucus and do not get through. The nearer we get to ovulation, the more beautiful the patterns become. On the day that the ovum is extruded in the middle of the menstrual cycle, the formation of crystals reaches a peak. It is a sign that the molecules in the mucus are arranged in long bundles like the wires in a length of cable.

Between them there appear what seem to be channels of water along which the sperm is able to swim. The mucus is both a plug and the passage. Now the path is open up to the other duct where the ovum is waiting. But as the sperm swim up the passage, the passage closes behind them.

Shortly after ovulation the mucus plug once again becomes tough and difficult to penetrate and the crystal patterns dissolve. The sperm have reached their goal that is the hundred or so that reached the ovum. Only one will fertilize it. The germ plasm of that sperm fuses with that of the ovum and forms the hereditary characteristics of a new human being. The ovum divides into an increasing number of cells. During the journey down through the oviduct the cluster of cells grows into a vesicle with a human embryo on the inside. On the seventh day the vesicle settles down under the surface of the uterine lining. There it begins to grow and puts out root-like processes in all directions that become implanted in the uterine lining and penetrate into the mother's blood vessels.

In order to come into direct contact with her blood where there is a steady flow of oxygen and nourishment. Inside the vesicle there is a being which as yet has not acquired very many human features. 26 days after fertilization the human face is only a large cavity between two frontal projections, two cheeks growing inwards along the center and a large lower jaw. The length of the body is 1-eighth of an inch. 28 days after fertilization 14 days since menstruation fail to take place. The large heart is clearly visible as is the first primitive blood circulation. The heart has been beating for about a week. A month has passed since fertilization. The child has bent forward.

As yet there is not so much of a face that it needs to lift its head. The head is the whole of the horizontal part where we now see clearly the primitive brain through the thin skin. The small black circle is the eye. In front of the eye we see the cerebrum or forebrain which is not particularly impressive at this stage. Here are the roots of the placenta which absorb nourishment for the growing child. The roots lie in a pool of bloods on the mother's blood vessels and through their surface layer oxygen and nourishment stream in while carbon dioxide and waste products pass out. The surface layer is also a barrier against a lot of infections and poisonous substances. During the child's fifth week the seventh week of pregnancy we began to get an idea where arms and legs will appear. Two buds appear on each side of the body. They are the dark spots we see here. The arm bud on the left level with the large round heart and the leg bud by the curve of the tail.

At the end of the fifth week we began to make out the shape of the arms. The eye is a black circle. It is the dark pigment of the retina we see. The cerebrum is still not very impressive. The thing that looks like a mouth with thick lips is the ear to begin with that is far down as this on the throat. We can now see in the hand the five ridges which will gradually become the bones in the palm of the hand. The fingers will go out from here. The legs are far behind in their development. We develop from the head downwards and learn to grasp things long before we can walk. This small balloon is the yolk sac. In mammals it does not contain any yolk and is used for the production of blood corpuscles.

Later on they are making a blood corpuscles will be the business of the liver and spleen and afterwards of the marrow in the skeleton. So far the skeleton is not complete. 6 weeks old and less than an inch long. The mother's menstruation misses out for the second time. The child has got a small nose and fingers.

The toes are beginning to form. Through the large vein in the umbilical cord blood containing oxygen and nourishment streams via the liver into the body. The blood with a low oxygen content and containing waste products is pumped out through the two arteries in the umbilical cord back to the placenta. The eyes are still open. The fingers begin to grow. The object that looks like a stern mouth is the outer part of the ear. The face has been forward on the breast. The eyelids begin to form towards the end of the second month in the beginning of the third.

We see a side view of the eye from the black pigment at the bottom. To begin with the growing brain is covered only by thin layer of skin. But during the seventh week the network of vessels begin to cover the crown. In the wake of the blood vessels come connective tissues with cells which will eventually form the bones in the skull. Two months old an inch and a quarter long. The eyes will soon close and not open again before the seventh month.

Two and a half months of the pregnancy have passed. Two and a half months of the pregnancy have passed. Two and a half months of the pregnancy have passed.

Two and a half months of the pregnancy have passed. Two and a half months of the pregnancy have passed. The skeleton has so far been a collection of cartilages but during the third month they began to turn into bones.

In the case of the long bones as here with the forearm for instance the bone tissues grow from the middle outwards toward the ends. The cartilage growth is ahead the whole time. becomes a kind of chase. Bone chases cartilage and so the long skeletal bones get longer and longer. That's how we grow. For the continuation of growth more and more small centers of bone growth like these began to form an increasing number of bones. At the end of the third month small centers are visible in the hand and fingers. For a long time here I put out the The whole of its development in the uterus, the child floats weightless in the fetal waters

like an astronaut in his capsule, enclosed by protective fetal membranes. Fetal waters are a relic from the primeval ocean where all life began. All life still begins as it did in the waters of the ocean. That's not what it is. It's natural. These woolly hairs cover the child's

skin like a downy pelt from the middle of pregnancy and for some months after. Perhaps a relic from our furry ancestors. When four months have passed, a lack of space starts to get noticeable. Of course the child has been kicking ever since its muscles developed, but now it finds something in the way the whole time.

The mother feels the feet as quick and... Now the child moves about constantly when it's not asleep. It can turn... and it can also suck its thumb as just as this boy is doing. A complete little human being is lying in the uterus now after more than half the period of pregnancy has passed. The only thing left to do now is to grow from ten to twenty inches from a pound to more than six and to repair for the move out into the world. The day that is to save the birthday, which we curiously enough celebrate is the beginning of life, is almost four months away, but life has already begun. This is a new theme.

Oh, God. Oh, man. we've 31 yards. Oh, oh, oh, you see me? I will take the Our guests in the studio have shared with you the experience of seeing this film for the first time.

And now I'd like to ask each of them their impressions, Father Hagmar? Well, for my way of thinking it's almost an intrusion to attempt in a few human words to describe this marvelous and miraculous thing that we have just watched. I don't know where we're going to go in our discussion, but one of the things that clergyman involved in sex education programs in the community, especially in interfaith or with other secular organizations, is the objection that we seem to leave behind the religious side, the spiritual side, or the theological side. And often in dignity and parents will say you haven't mentioned God in any of this.

Well, in terms of what we've just seen and surely in terms of the new emphasis in theology developing the arrival at what God is and the wonders that he does through an examination of his world is particularly exemplified by this film. We don't have to really, anyone that has the faintest notion of what God might be, tunes in on the eloquence of what he has done. And I think, among other things, is one of the greatest theological presentations that I've seen. Dr. Kelton, anything? Well, you know, when I see this film the first time I feel now right after it, like when I'm on a hot summer night lying on my back looking up and plunging deep into the outer world of the firmament. And this gave me exactly that same feeling of life. This is life at its most majestic, awesome, magnificent, and what a privilege for a human being to have been granted by the wonders of science and the wonders of a person or persons who did this film to assist at it, to look in on it.

I get the same sense of incredible privilege. I've had four children, and then after I had two I became a doctor, and I remember that same sense of awe when I helped at the first delivery and saw this being emerged from the woman. And part of what I'm doing in Sikhs is this wish to share, to extend others, this same privilege of participation on behalf of themselves in this gift of life that is ours. And this film certainly gives me the same feeling as Father Hagma is exactly. And I want young people and old people alike to be able to see in it the majesty and beauty of living of which they are a part.

This is William, how did you come? Well, I could think of as my seventh graders, a wonderful, this would be to enhance their feeling of reverence towards the creation of life, to really understand what the intricate process really is, that this would be a tremendous asset to use in the classroom, not only with our youngsters but our oldsters in our situation, our senior high students to create this reverence and understanding that Father Hagmaier has referred to. In the context of sex education, the status of sex education in the United States today, do you think the film generally will be received as you three have received it? Dr. Calderon? I have great faith that as we observe it in our organization, which we call seekers for short incidentally, I have great faith that people are indeed reaching for something more than the purely mechanical, the purely physical, the purely materialistic.

I find this particularly in the young people. And I think there will be no problem with the young. I'm sure Sally and Father Hagma as they've experienced. The problem may be in some of the older people who are too used to seeing only the surface of things and don't want to look beyond. And they may, by their own fears or their own rejection or their own expression, spoil this for the young. And that will be too bad. But I think in the main, it will be greeted with great warmth and an understanding that this is one more step forward in understanding ourselves and our role in life. I would hope that in the communities where the classrooms or wherever this film is to be shown, this question would not be asked with a great deal of solemnity. How is everybody going to react to this? Because then they begin to say, well, what is the matter? Is there something we should be watching for that we will be offended by or disturbed by?

I think if someone tuned in, I don't care who it is, I could think of very, very few people. They would have to be pretty out of it to tune in on this presentation and not be caught up in it and become thoughtful and respond. I'm only remarking what was told to me about the life photographs when some of these appeared. You see, there were clear expressions of, oh, this is horrible or oh, this is very upsetting to me. And I was always sorry for such people, they were older people. I don't think we ever got that from the young. What did your kids react to life pictures that appeared in life? In the book, also, Nielsen's book. Well, we use the book in the classroom and our pictures are almost faded as they impossible to see because they are on all of our bulletin boards in the various classrooms and our students have a tremendous response. And the warmth and reverence they feel towards this developing life, the ability that they realize that they now have in their own bodies, that they are respecting this. And some of them only see the pictures in the classroom.

Unfortunately, they cannot view these things at home. We are hoping the more our parents visit in the classroom that they'll begin to understand. The problem that we see it is really, our adults do not discuss anything that occurs below the ways, no matter what it is. And this is the basic problem with them. And now I'll mention her fears that the older generation might object. And keep it from the younger ones. That's one of the problems in sex education, teaching the teachers. How do we free teachers who represent another generation from their own attitudes towards sex? All the other generation believe me. There are many people of all ages married, unmarried, who are ready and able to interpret to the young what is being made available to them. Mrs. Williams can do better than I can on this because she's right in this training of teaching.

Well, what is the practical problem of teaching the teachers? Well, the practical problem gets down to personnel and money. But in order to actually implement a program of teacher training, we have to teach our teachers the same way as we are teaching our students. That is giving them time, developing a dialogue, helping them to change their attitudes, letting them talk with the experts in the field, question them, assess their knowledge, and to help them think through the way they believe, so that they can meet the challenge that they are going to face with their students in the classroom, so that our teachers challenging each other, so that they can really feel secure and able to handle any and all questions that our students want to pose. And some of them are very deep-seated kinds of concerns about all of human behavior and basic humanity. This must be a very, for some teachers, it must be a very personal kind of questioning.

I know I've had experience, too, in talking to teachers and people of all professions, as a matter of fact, just as Father Hagmar has and Sally Williams. And what I find is, again, this eager reaching out on the part of most of them. In a sense, this whole approach that sex is a basic part of life and sexuality is who you are as a man or as a woman, not just the series of actions under given circumstances. This adds new dimensions, permit people, permit people of the older generation to expand, which they were denied when they were children. And they can see now more reality, more meaningfulness to their own relationships in life. Yes, there's a problem in discussing the training of the sex educator, because immediately we think of those specializing in some of the social sciences as having maybe some prerogative. And the biological sciences.

And then we get to Sally's point that the person who is trained is perhaps the first question that was one was to ask, who is this? And then how equip him or her for the job. So often the person may be quite adequate, but the language is unfamiliar. Or the idiom is unfamiliar in terms of this or that socioeconomic group they're working with. Or the subject is not that familiar. Internally it is, the comfortable with it, but after all this is new. We haven't had anything like this on television and in the classroom. And part of the church is teaching until quite recently in the dismarry and the seekers that are attempting to open this up. Is the general feeling here that because sex education is being directed at the classrooms, that the family, principally the parents, have failed in this area? I want to speak to that. No.

I don't think the failure is the parents in the sense that nobody has been prepared. At least of all parents to do this kind of awakening job. And no one is trying to replace the parents. We are simply trying to make it possible for parents to do as much as they can and will. And then to supplement and support and complement their efforts so that no child will grow up with the same kinds of distortions that I did, for instance. I think that it's very important that all efforts not be focused only on the classroom, but be extended out into the whole community. So the parents, churchmen, doctors, teachers, nurses, we're all beginning to talk and understand the same language. This is the seekers approach. Sex education is going on all the time with everybody. At all ages, in all situations, we are communicating our sexuality to one another in some way or another. And the mass media, of course, are making their contribution. Sometimes it isn't very good.

And so it's not so much a matter of what one person does sex education. Is it the family or the community or the church? But it is a matter of helping each to do the best job that they can do. I believe that parents in certain areas of this field are not the ideal sex educators of their child. I think that there are certain things that the adolescent must come to know about sex and comfortably discuss that ideally speaking, he can better discuss with someone who is not so emotionally involved and hasn't this history of, you know, can't take for so many years to think about. I don't know how to talk about that. Has it worked this way? Yes, very much. We have adult classes in our evening high school. But what essentially we have done is brought the conversation out of the locker room. They are talking to their peers, and this is what only the school can really supply in terms of sex education, that we have the peer group, and we can channel their discussions in the classroom

so that it is under guidance of a qualified teacher, so that they really are discussing something that is effective and rather just sharing ignorance as is the typical locker room one. That's an important point because all of the studies have shown that most sex education of young people is gotten from the peer group, from their own friends, and it's usually been miseducation or false education or very traumatic education. Well, in Abington Township, Pennsylvania, I understand that sex education program was turned down because one school official said that information would be incorrectly transmitted from one child to another. Is there any validity to this at all? Well, what we have to do is not to turn down programs in order to be able to correct misinformation, which is all around us anyway. Everywhere we go, there's misinformation about sex and its role in life. As Father Hagmar said, it's there, and our children are getting an enormous amount of sex miseducation.

They come into kindergarten with a lot of sex education. What time do we start? We start at birth. What time do we start? I mean, what time should we start in the schools? In the schools. At the free school or kindergarten, whenever the child comes to school. And this current program with, let us say, the adolescent and the young adult, helping them to be more comfortable with their own sexuality, learning the proper terms, talking easily about sexual matters with each other, how husband and wife, and with the youngsters in the home. We'll hopefully create a new generation of parents, these youngsters who are growing in a home, where this is much more accepted and comfortable and warm and positive and hopeful and joyous and whatever words you want to use, when their time comes to be parents. They will be able to contribute in those preschool years, and great many things that I feel. A healthy sex education must build on, you can only do so much.

If they have been seeing masculine and feminine roles lived in the home day after day in unhealthy or alienating ways, then when they see a film like this, they're going to put that in context with what their mother has already said about her experience in giving birth. She may never accept it, she may just have communicated to the children. These attitudes communicate themselves very early, and all of the studies show that the major masculineization or feminization of the child occurs in the first four or five years. I'd like to throw this open for all three of them. Is there any one strain in the American character or American life today that represents a major obstacle to a successful program of sex education? I have in mind specifically perhaps the so-called Playboy philosophy of free love without guilt. No, that's a very small proportion.

I think perhaps the major obstacle is the fierce individualism that's born and bred into our bones. Because we were born in an individualistic society, right in 1776, and nobody's going to tell us what to do. Nobody else, and it's difficult sometimes for parents and adults to accept the help that is offered to them in this job of bringing up their children. Now that would be my major obstacle. Well, I think in our situation we have found the main obstacle was ignorance of what is sex education. That's true. That they think that all sex education is is discussing the Genital Act, and it's such a narrow concept, and when they have an opportunity to learn all what sex education can be that it is truly human sexuality, we find that our people who were in opposition in the beginning are now our staunch supporters. So I would say really ignorance of what it can be.

Yes, picking up your playboy philosophy question, I think this is an interim phase, this particular concern of young people although old people are more. We blame the young people far more than we should. They're behind the playboy as much of not more than the young. But if we have a more mature, more healthy attitude towards sex as a culture, then I think the playboy emphasis, the certain aspects of it will fade. The most interesting thing about Hefner and his philosophy is his hostility, his anger rather than the kind of sexuality that he is selling. Above all he is saying, don't let them tell you that this is bad as I was told. That he was. He was raised in a very narrow, a puritanical little village and he's been reacting against this ever since. Well one of the most positive and constructive forms of his reactions are the really great articles that he runs in playboy magazine. The discussions between clergymen, I have great respect for this.

There is some feeling that sex education is an attempt to impose a morality that has been abdicated to some extent by church and home. Let me just quote what one young girl said, and it's very good. She said, the trouble with adults is that when they do sex education, they're not really trying to educate us, just trying to control our morals. Now Sally and George Hagmaier and I know that when our motivations show through at the seams, when we're not approaching young people with respect to their intelligence, to give them the pieces of the puzzle, but to try and live the wisdom in themselves, develop for putting that puzzle together, they tune us out. They're not going to listen to us. And that's why I think trying to teach morality at the same time is educating about sexuality isn't going to work. And this is the other side of your question. Is there opposition in the community to this? Very often the enthusiasm for it comes from, I would say, somewhat inadequate motives that the community is getting upset about increasing illegitimacy,

venereal disease, premarital sexual experience, and they think a sex education program is going to knit all this into the bud. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you back to Anna mine. Have you had this happened to you? This feeling that sex education is the cause of community elves? No, they're still very hopeful that we will cure the community elves, but we are not giving them any assurance that we will, because this is a very broad subject, and I would like to get back to the morals, and our program, our whole approach is that your sexual morals are no different than what your total morality is, so that we do not like people to try and force us into a position where, when you talk about morals, you're only talking about sexual behavior, because it's much broader than this, and we find that our students respond to this kind of approach. And to really search the kinds of value systems that are operating in our country and in their families,

what is an effective one for them to live by? And take a look at the consequences of living by a particular value system. They're very individualistic, and they have to take a look if we all behaved in that manner, what would our society then be like, so that they are drawing on what they have from their church and from their families and exploring this in the classroom, and we hope that they will come up with a morality that they believe in and live by. What is the feeling sex education has been obligatory in Sweden for ten years? What is your general feeling about making sex education obligatory in this country? In the first place, it's been obligatory, but honored more in the breach than in the observance. There's a great deal more to be understood about the Swedish situation than we could go into at this moment. But as far as making it obligatory, I just think that a good educational system has a curriculum to which there are no exceptions, and this is part of it.

Now, obviously, in a democratic society, if a parent felt really strongly, I suspect that that parent could go and have that particular child excused, and I believe that's true in Anaheim if the parent wishes. But you haven't had many or any requests, have you? Well, we run about five tenths of percent out of 31,000 students. And they usually evaporate within the next year. Yes, they're usually yes. You would create more problems by trying to force something that they did not want. They wouldn't learn under that kind of a handicap. I think that one of the things that sex educators are doing in school systems is to help every teacher, or as many teachers as possible, to be aware that regardless of the subject they teach, they can make a contribution in this area. I think when we speak of Sweden, I remember visiting Sweden and attempting to get a look at a classroom that was teaching this. And the teacher said, Father, we would rather you not come in because we don't want to make a big deal of this subject.

This is taught very casually. It is taught ideally speaking by the history teacher who examines some of the sexual sagas of the past, by the literature teacher, which is obviously a great deal of information and experience there, social studies, as I say to some of the math teachers. It may be if you're the kind of person that can talk best to the kids, you can take a little time out. And as you discuss the budgeting of the family finances, you might get into children, the number, spacing, and all of a sudden, there you are. And if they are comfortable with the subject and the kids are comfortable with the teacher, the math teacher may be the best sex educator in the place. Or the Latin teachers. Or the Latin teachers. But the Swede got themselves reexamining their whole curriculum and courses and the training of teachers. And I think in the end, we're going to come up with very much the same approach.

I think we're just about at the same place. In New York City, the separation of boys and girls in sex education is a recommended, where desirable. I didn't know that. Now, what is the general feeling of this table about separating boys and girls in sex education? Well, we do not separate the boys and girls unless it is going to enhance the learning process. And this is the teacher and the students' decision. At this point in time, our students are adamant against being separated. Because how can you talk about human sexuality when there are two kinds, male and female, and you put them in separate rooms. It just isn't profitable to talk about it. So that they're adamant against being separated. I think that perhaps for some of their own effectiveness in learning that it might be well for us to do it. But at this point, it would only be isolated to incidents when you would separate things. That must be.

Very interesting experiences on campuses of some private boys boarding schools, where there were literally no females, practically. And we'd get to the point after three or four days of discussion where they would see, well, Dr. Calderon, how do the girls feel about this? And there I would be having to interpret what I think girls feel, when the girls ought to be saying it directly, because this is the way you lay down communication and trust. Did you agree? Yes. Oh, generally speaking, I certainly would have them together. There were a problem. But I have come across, there's a minority group work that I've done, where this is so unusual that in the early stages of our discussion, I found it more helpful, especially in terms of the questions. Both the boys and the girls wanted to ask to keep them separate, especially the young, the fifth, sixth graders in there. They get to tittering, and it's nothing. I don't think it does any great damage, but I find it easier to work. I wouldn't have largely depend on the attitude of the teacher. Oh, and the security, yes.

Very often the children themselves will tell you that it's like a class. Well, part of the thing we need to be aware of is our girls have an opportunity for sex education, and when you put them in the middle grades together, the boys and the girls, you are forcing the boys to show their ignorance in front of these competitors. And boys aren't supposed to be ignorant about this, anyway. So that they need an opportunity to bring their learning up before they are together. And I think this is the basic problem. You start on the seventh grade, however. Wouldn't that be true in lower grades, do you think? Yes. Additional awareness of girls or boys. I mean, the difference in the maturing age at that time, sometimes makes it easier to deal with them separately. Some of the girls are much more mature than the boys at that stage. And I don't think that's a part of our culture. I think we have fenced our boys off from any opportunities to learn about people and how they feel and the intricacies and sensitivities of human relationships.

And right now, I think we have gypped our boys in this. I really do. We've kept them out of a great and wonderful thing. I gather from what all of you have said tonight that we've gypped our boys and girls for a long time. Both of them are. Yes. Thank you all very much for sharing what I think you'll agree was an experience tonight. Our guests in the studio were Dr. Mary Calderon, Executive Director, Sex Information and Education Council of the United States, Father George Hadmaier, Associate Director, Paulist Institute for Religious Research, and Mrs. Sally Williams, Coordinator, Family Life, and Sex Education, Anaheim Union High School District, Anaheim, California. This is Dick McCutcheon for any tea journal. Good evening. This is N-E-T, the National Educational Television Network.