The First Amendment; Inner City Journals

WGBH Boston in cooperation with the Institute for Democratic communications at the School of Communications at Boston University now presents the First Amendment and a free people. An examination of civil liberties in the media in the 1970s and now here is the director of the Institute for democratic communication. Dr. Bernard Rubin. Our subject tonight is to look into the area of educational training regarding media education in specific and particularly as it pertains to minority groups in urban areas put in a non academic sense it would be. Can we train people so that they would be adept at least up to the paraprofessional level for the younger people getting their stories over to the newspapers radio and television stations. Or can we train older people welfare mothers and other such groups so that their rights can be protected and they can get across to

the media what they want fairly and justly. Without following the pattern that is too all too evident today being victims of the media. I have three guests to discuss this today who know what they're talking about. Two are from Lee Boston University School of Education their associate Dean Paul Warren who is in charge of research and development programs there. He is a director and developer and developer of the federally funded programs which call for community collaboration especially as they do so in the urban setting. He's currently completing a book which examines the conflict inherent in new program development and implementation and is a well-known writer in this area. My second guest is Karl Dean associate professor of education who going to Boston University. Cal I think is particularly interesting for this purpose because he's been among other jobs in other jobs

director for the Peace Corps programs in Nigeria and in the Cameroons where there are technical problems in regard to training programs. He's also been supervisor of social studies and student teachers and is a member of the academic freedom Committee of the National Council for the social studies. My third guest is the the staff assistant at the institute. Ms Jean Rinehart whose background in the theater and in production in Washington D.C. in New York and is also a teacher in speech and dramatic literature with experience in several New York State community colleges. Let me start out with this first question which is kind of a repeat and I'm going to throw this out. Paul Warren Paul. Can we use the techniques from the modern schools of education to practically help inner city people to be better

trained for using the media. That's a good question. Bernard I think unfortunately in. Some ways it's a very easy question a very difficult question to answer. Can we yes we can. Can you do it practically. Yes you can. Is it possible given the rewards reward structures that traditionally have governed the institutions of higher education. Secondary Schools. Is it possible is another question you say you have a basic conflict here and perhaps stretching a point to the degree that a lawyer might take objection is that the notion of freedom of assembly as regards a classroom is a notion which those who have been either economically or socially disenfranchised. You are not able to take advantage of. They don't have the money to assemble programs that

are designed or not designed to practically a system so that you have on the one hand institutions who have a fairly good track record in terms of the role of producers of knowledge who have a significantly weaker track record in terms of the utilization of knowledge and I think that the task confronting training institutions is to look more closely at strategies and techniques by which we might utilise knowledge. Let me just put that in as I received it. You're saying I guess that most universities exist as training grounds for elites of one kind or another economically socially and their interests and concerns are. I thought level of the middle class and above are you not. Yes a in with with one modification because I'll take objection with Paul Goodmans notion of a community of scholars. It's very difficult to

identify a community in a university. You're probably well aware there are many communities. An interesting research study that has just come out and is in its printing stage by the National Institute of Education has shown on the one hand that individual faculty are very interested in working with groups other than those with whom many of them have worked in the past or are very interested in the utilization of knowledge. However it is simultaneously shown that institutions of higher education don't traditionally reward this type of behavior they reward the publication of articles and the time honored acquisition of knowledge and so consequently that where they think they will differ from university to university there may be a desire to practically assist individuals who have not participated fully that in fact there are some institutional constraints that mitigate against the chances for success of these books.

Well that's very interesting because changing the incentive system seems to be one of the things we have to keep in mind. You've had a lot of experience in extension programs. How have these ever. Been invested with inner city problem. Or do you agree with Paul that most of this work is at least was school of education point of view from all schools of education something apart from their regular programs. A very interesting question Bernard. However at this time I would like to take slight exception or to offer a slight did more to Paul statement about the eight leads or people who talk about the ivory tower. It's basically my work at universities University Virginia Colorado Boston University for a number of years. I'm happy to report that we have people who are working part time taxi drivers longshoreman lady

bartenders people who are babysitting in the present time my class and I have a young woman who cleans houses on Saturdays and Sundays and if there's some slight of idea out there that all of the youngsters with whom we were good come from homes with incomes of 50000 to 100000 hours. I would like to suggest it's otherwise it would do the majority come from homes of a ten thousand and above. Because of the nature of being associated with a private college which at the present time is charging about thirty five to thirty six hundred hours to a sion now it would almost be impossible except for the scholarship system that we have at the school. So we have we have another kind of incentive program that we need an incentive program from whatever source for the already financially be reffed private colleges among other colleges and universities so that they can enter this field if they

chose to. This is correct to permit I don't know what type of financial support you would like for it. Talking with my colleagues associating with them I've always been more than happy. But did you have to be to get to the inner city will say to the ghetto people Chicanos blacks and so on and so forth the American Indians. It's going to take a more massive operation then than anybody despite good will on any individual's part has been able to apply. Is this true or false that there we're going to need some some way of getting the professorial group not just in schools of education but from all schools involved in a really practical way with 10 percent of our population. I think the track record would show the professorial group in the past decade has been involved in a number of instances. The results or the carrot that was offered was not financial

insanity it was the fact that the people were concerned not only concern from the point of view of what can we do but basically from the cry from the request from the people out there can you do this for us. It was not us suggesting to them this needs to be done. But then coming in and saying right here is a problem we have. Will you help us out soon. This could you can tell you give me one example of a little ostrich example of where. There was a coordinated program to to accomplish a definite goal of uplifting a group from the inner city or from a deprived group. Whether or not you were involved it doesn't make any. Well Paul himself has been involved with several of them and they partially had him in mind. I can though one of the most interesting experiences along that line was with a project I directed in New York and the many other such universities and

been involved with whose intense I think I've been very honorable in which programs were designed by and large I might mention with the support of federal dollars particularly private institutions City institutions have slightly better track record in that community colleges even slightly better than that. The point is that the two types of questions were raised one academics made assumptions about the motivations and needs of those who I refer to as the disenfranchised that were not always accurate. Two that the institutions were not structurally equipped to change programs rapidly enough because it went through a sort of rendering of identity witness the controversy over open enrollment in New York in the bitterness about the historic role of the universities

so that they have ended up really settling down in some of the community colleges I see some of the interesting item about the current financial stress is that they can phrase These are the best of times worst of times that the worst of times is forcing institutions to I think look at better ways to meet the needs of the client groups and I see some flexibility and see some institutions and in the past would've thought of certain programs not conforming quote unquote to those hypothetical standards of meritocracy beginning to address programs. They need people you know in hard. How does this comport with your own experience when it comes to to getting practical knowledge about how to handle yourself with media. Going from an educational point of view. Well I think it's extremely important to give people the opportunity to actually perform to act. It is not the same thing as

studying a textbook. And I think working primarily in a standard educational manner is probably not going to be as effective as an active program. But I was thinking. Back in the mid 50s which is quite a long way back to go now there was a very active and successful program on the part of Syracuse University with minority groups in the city and helped them with housing problems and simply getting a voice. And I think perhaps one of the reasons they were so successful is that they were kind of given a dramatic opportunity by the work of Saul Alinsky in Rochester. It just sort of gave a kind of motivation and direction to what is well known for direct action program not to pick up on what Jean says. Obviously there's a disparity here between our traditional students and the needs of

inner city people when it comes to mass media knowledge. They really not have to know how to approach City Hall and their problems get their publicity over or take their young people and and get them trained for newspaper jobs or get them trained for radio station or television jobs. What innovative methods could we use that we haven't tried before. If we assume that Jean is right and I for one think that years there we have to look upon them as students who don't meet the normal criteria whether they are brilliant in art but they don't meet our standard criteria for college at the at the first blow. There are thousands out there that need to be trained right away without worrying about what other courses they found. Paul at the risk of heresy. I would contend that the first step that institutions might take is to reassess the programs along the line of the freshman 1 0 1 or basic scales

focusing on basic skill acquisition in which they have assume that to. Improve communication skills can be taught in a massive lecture hall as if all of the students in that massive lecture hall were foreign students. I would contend that there are there is the technology. We know enough about differentiated staffing small group or large group work tying Bassam basic skill acquisition into a very real and immediate problems. We've known this for a long time that we can move and breaking the notion that all students must acquire basic skills in a lecture hall that seats 200 people. That's for openers. I think secondly that the particular opportunity. That is at the. Is available to institutions of professional schools where in fact the needs within professions are being

reassessed that and there are greater degrees of freedom because of the recognition that their performance is what counts rather than where have you been in the past. To go more toward a performance orientation and begin to look a bit more carefully at the notion of equivalency for past experience. Right now again I'm sort of using this building blocks and I think we're arriving at a central conclusion here there is talent out there. Performance counts. Action to defend your rights council. Under the First Amendment we can use cassettes to train people as due to learning we can use booklets in pamphlets we can use community halls for lecture halls we can get out there and start community newspapers. We can train editorial writers. Now getting back to you Carol deems agreeing that we can do all of these things because I think this was your point and they were doing a lot of them. You know traditional format. Are we prepared to go beyond anything we ever did before.

You know to to suddenly upgrade if possible say within the next decade. Deprived people so that their voice in the public media becomes just as great and if they don't have trained people it never will be. Well a quick answer to that is yes. However what I'd like to suggest at this time as that seems to be the thrust that we're operating in somewhat of a vacuum here and the youngsters have not had experience as direct performance experience as with the press. Well I for example on a professional level Columbia University had a journalist training program for minority groups that was aborted after a very short time and very few students. No that's quite true about Columbia University I'm coming out from a different context. You mentioned earlier that I'm a supervisor a student teachers throughout the metropolitan Boston area. And within the metropolitan area many of the local high schools publish their high school newspapers. But we're

talking about power a paraprofessional training can we up where you know these are youngsters in high school who are getting somewhat of this experience in the same type of thing that assess them to write editorials. Surely it would be useful with other people to express themselves that in many of your typical social studies classes although youngsters are not preparing to become newspaper reporters they do have practice and writing letters to the editor or hypothetical letters to the editor on all sorts of are their teachers trolling colleges you tell other teachers trained well enough so that they can get to a to a more practical level for the I hate to use that phrase but it's used by almost everybody so I will. Real world. I'm glad you raised that issue with respect to teacher training. I think that we have so many facets to it it would be difficult to come up with it neither yes or no answer. There are there is evidence at this

time at the elementary school level in some communities elementary youngsters submit a copy to their local newspapers what's going on at the school on either a weekly or monthly basis. And if elementary school youngsters can do this type of thing I see no reason why it's not generalizable to a broader population so we can do it. That's the general conclusion of this panel. I think can be done and I'll get back to that institutional constraints for example printing High School in New York one of the supposed keys to its success was a relationship with the union. And the question becomes one that if you are to the second question I would ask if all of a sudden. I think you can teach individuals who have been passed by by the structure if you were to provide them with the skills you can provide them with the awareness skills you can provide them also probably with the production skills as regards the media. But to what extent can they

break in to the media. It is a critical question which is an institutional constraint. To what extent will if we are talking about field experiences which we refer to will the various fields which are incorporated in the media fields participate in the training along with institutions of higher education or community education agencies. Are questions which must be addressed I'm sure Jeanne from her experience in New York has some notion of the nature of the relationship between training and then what can a person do in training to what end. Well I think there is a lot that wants to be sad. Like getting the opportunity to do science is another problem. Media is not. Been holding out open arms and I think that there was just a problem of finding the way. I think one of the questions we have to address is what are the most accessible media instruments at our disposal that people can get to a couple of

them are the fact that we have in places like Boston and our own University Boston University we have a leading school of education very well-known and reputable highly reputable school of public communication weve got to take these media talents and mix them because after all anybody is teaching in any phase of a university is a media person whether you're teaching in the Philosophy Department or the Education Department or the communications school does make and if you're a media person there is a tremendous need out there. But what I'm worried about is that we don't have the same developmental latitude as less developed countries have who say look we're not so sophisticated in education let's look at the trump card and see what it calls as we turn it over. It says that we're not doing something. One of the worries that that I have is that we never really admit that despite the magnificence of our educational pattern as regards the poorer people of our community those who are economically deprived that there is a

social deprivation that goes along with it. In which the institutions of higher education play their part. PL Yeah I did. At the risk of oversimplification the parallel with lesson developed with the board developing quote countries is an interesting one and Cal may want to speak on it. I think the critical difference in him getting back to the question of institutional constraints is that priority number one that is recognised by the institutions that function within these nations is to address the needs of the nation. In some cases defined by a government and not necessarily appropriately at other times defined by the people. I would contend that the power of the client or or the person in need of training in the United States given the history of higher education in this country is not the same therefore the reward system is not the same. Now if we could reawaken the spirit of the land

grant colleges which were designed to meet needs in the areas of agriculture that were designed to meet certain training needs if we could wait. The sense that it followed the war in terms of the educational benefits. If we could even get perhaps as ephemeral as it was that the notion of a new frontier again I think that you might get some energy into the system. I don't see that energy in the system at the time. Now during the Camerons in Nigeria's Peace Corps director what you experience from there do you see anything that we might apply from that from all the lessons you learned personally from that experience. Well basically it was an education project in attempting to work with the students in those countries. However there were radios throughout the area and let me happily add that the Kaduna had a magnificent TV station. I was not in the Cameroons. However let's go back and look at

that trump card. I don't know what color it is what suit it is and that sort of thing possibly what we're talking about here is the university's responsibility to the broader community. And secondly even more importantly what type of message is it that the community wants to get across that it's been able to get across through the various media either print or electronic. What's bugging the people out there what would they like to have say that how can we help them to say these things. And. As Paula suggested we have some expertise in this area. But what I would like to see is do. Bernard has talked about a conference that's coming up this spring with seas inviting a number of guests from many areas to identify those but us we ourselves need to do some homework to get a sense of the feeling not that we're

so nation that we can anticipate these things say what they are but to turn the card around and say look what is it that you want to talk to us. And then we can fit in we can fit that bill but what we need is some statements some statements of expectations desires of man sort of thing from the people. Well so. Adding to incentives we have this period of responsibility. Reinhard to this this combination of incentives and responsibility do you think it will move giant institutions of education to action. I don't know what it takes to get high and institution particularly one that the joy and educational institutions have for more opportunity for innovations than they have taken. So I think

maybe the supply seems to go in waves and maybe we're due for a little more action on this front I think. Paul Goodman spoke of the university because Cura of the society and universities really does have a responsibility and a role to fulfill. I hope the time is right for them to accept it. I think the idea of. A. Message coming from people extremely important. You can't impose it you we can't adjust them to what we would like the message to be. We have to listen to them and help them speak. Well if I were listening to this let's say I was a young young person young man or woman. Who wanted to get involved with the media in a very very strong way. I would probably say to myself I don't really understand a lot of what they're saying on this program but I do understand that

they're giving me hope that there is a new education in the educational world that is caused by the recognition that the First Amendment not only depends upon writers going by courts but on participation. And if I can participate. I'm I'm ready I'm willing is like the father of Eliza Doolittle who used to say things in triplicates. I'm ready I'm willing I'm wanting to get started. I think that this finality represents this discussion today. I certainly want to thank you very much for it. And I want to thank Carol Deen. I want to thank Paul Warren and Gina Rinehart. This is going to droop in saying good night. Whatever made of GBH radio in cooperation with the Institute for Democratic communications at the School of Communications at Boston University has presented the First

Amendment and a free people and examination of civil liberties and the media. In the 1970s this program was produced in the studios of WGBH Boston.