National Association of Educational Broadcasters convention highlights; Sterling McMurrin

But here also are the dangers which many fear the possible depersonalize ation of instruction. The breakdown of the human relationships which ideally at least after Additionally characterize the schoolroom. These relationships are often assumed to have an important relevance to the effectiveness of instruction. In addition to their obvious intrinsic worth and their value in the personal and cultural cultivation of the individual at least the dangers of dehumanization are real for the school as they are real for all our social institutions. If they fall prey to a technological order in which these are dominated and determined by me. And such is the power of our rapidly developing technology that such an order is a real possibility. If we fail to contend intelligently with the question of purposes and goals the means of instruction will inevitably influence the shape of both the Ammons and subjects of instruction.

But the ends of education the purposes for which we establish and maintain our schools must be continually defined and redefined on the basis of genuinely humane consideration. This is not to deny the close relationship that it should obtain between means and then it is not a proposal to abstract the determination of ends from involvement with specific and practical means. Professor do is case against the separation of ends and means is probably the most important insight contributed to moral philosophy in modern times. It demands respect here as elsewhere. If our ends are to well avoid the risk of an abstraction or absolutist. In the determination of educational purpose to ignore the actual and possible concrete means of instruction from the users of the books

laboratories radio television or computers to the deployment of teaching personnel are the patterns of school architecture would not be unlike ignoring the social fact of our lives or the realities of race prejudice. Well uniting the curriculum for educating urban people. That means will inevitably become a fortune and it is clearly evident from a glance at the obvious impact of modern industrial and transportation technology on the common values of our society. But this of course come directly to the crux of the problem. How can the means of instruction play a proper role in fashioning in more a larger ends of education than the proximate goal of instruction without becoming the dominant factor in the mix here. The ends we seek must be genuinely relevant to the means which we can confidently and effectively employ. We should

leave no corner turned in our explanation for a more effective means yet of these means our methods and techniques become the T4 that shapes our end. We will already have sacrificed the personal and humane to the departure of technology. This is the great problem we face as we survey the future of educational technology. And. Success here will surely require a larger investment of talent and energy in the investigation and the determination of educational purposes than we are after him to make the purposes of education cannot be deduced from cosmic principle. Nor are they a family if there's a body of absolute values laid out eternally in some Platonic heaven some educational scholars seem to suppose

they are not irrelevant to metaphysical considerations there are certainly they are certainly involved intimately with and in some instances identical with elements of moral philosophy and value there. But it could be arrived at occasional purposes from philosophical theory as have so often been in our schools of education in the past. We will fail to produce anything genuinely viable and relevant as a body of principles and left that theory is brought into some meaningful relationship with the fact of personal and social experience with the needs interests and aspirations of individuals for the failures successes and goals of society with the established personal and social values and the criticisms of those. I started our whole I need more time and I have it down.

I'm pleased to report I hope to get it down to two fold by the end. When the question is asked What is the purpose of education. What are its chances to water the commitment energy of our schools properly directed. The answer must be sought across the total spectrum of human interest experience and value in our society education concerns first the well-being of the individual pupil and student capabilities for a productive and happy life in which you can pursue an interesting and satisfying vocation and which is potentialities as a person are enlarged and fulfilled. But it concerns as well the strength of the nation that social solidarity industrial and commercial power its economic integrity political wisdom and military conflict its total strength for security and survival. And it concerns the quality of the culture the

substance of its values the intellectual artistic and spiritual norms by which we live and by which our judgments are made and our purpose is defined. The meaning of education for our society is found in the all important question of how we are to achieve and preserve a genuinely free society. In which men are authentic persons who are masters rather than slaves of the forces which shape their world. How to Think on these large matters can be useful in seeking perspective motivation and direction for the work of the schools but the schools must shape their instructional programs to fit more immediate goal. The proximate ends which lie within the near reach of the child. These goals are tied to the basic types of personal experience the cognitive the affectation and the volitional. The worth of the various instructional

instruments and techniques must be judged in terms of their effectiveness in achieving these goal and that is in achieving all of these goals school education is essentially an intellectual enterprise and the cognitive function of instruction lies at its center of cognitive task is not only the achievement and communication of knowledge. It is discipline and the habits of reason in the ways of knowing a discipline in perception in the inductive deductive an intuitive processes. And in the techniques of analysis and generalization it involves both sensory knowledge and abstract thought and for the lower schools it entailed especially the cultivation of the skills of literacy. Reading writing and oral expression and computation which make the acquisition of knowledge possible. The APIC the function of instruction

concerning which we know far too little but which relates to much that is most precious in the experience of the child and in the total experience of our society is concerned with the dispositions of the practical life the motives passions the aesthetic and moral sensitivities the feelings of concern appreciation sympathy and attachment. But between the victim and volitional functions and goals of instruction no clear line can be drawn volitional goals have to do with the Will decision and action with commitment struggling and striving. These cannot be divorced from the passions and sentiments or from knowledge and the processes of rational thought. At the present time we know far more about the processes of learning that are geared to cognitive instructional goals than we know those relating

to emotional and volitional experience. My point in mentioning this matter is that far more adequate knowledge in these latter areas is quite desperately needed if we are to intelligently evaluate the new technology. And I may say there's no point in looking to the commission report for this knowledge. Because if I am properly informing people in your field and in the field of experimental and educational research generally this kind of knowledge is not yet available. We have just began to touch the surface of this immensely important problem and one I think which lies right at the center of your responsibility. Here we are in danger of a very serious error of cognition and its related functions are not the whole story of instructional goal.

And as we move toward new techniques of instruction often employing army and electronic instruments we must develop methods of evaluating those techniques not only for their effectiveness in communicating factual information or in cultivating the various knowledge skills but also for their impact on the emotions. The imaginative and creative powers the artistic and moral sensibilities. It is important to know for instance not only whether individual lived into his instruction through the use of videotapes or computers will importantly facilitate the learning of historical or scientific data. But also whether it will have an effect on the student's intellectual initiative is independence of mind or his artistic responsiveness. We are sometimes in danger of seriously neglecting the non-cognitive facets of

life not only in the schools but in social life in general Occidental culture has a long tradition of preoccupation with knowledge reason and abstraction and habit of mind that has produced a verbal conceptual type of education that relies heavily on language and language skills the ability to use words and mathematical symbols and to engage in logical discourse with complex ideas. It is for us to achieve Mark educational achievement. The inner life of feeling and appreciation and the countless moral a steady and spiritual values associated with that life. These are far more attention than they now commonly receive. Will the new technology services in these areas of learning what mix media teacher and machine should be used and when if.

At any rate we must be ready to answer a few pointed questions of our automated visual Adil cyber machine questions which I'm going to read as involved with Mr Harley in developing Mr Harley and others in developing in connection with the project. The Committee for Economic Development. So I'm borrowing a few words changing and distorting some of the proposed techniques be effectively employed in the cultivation of an open inquiring mind. Or do they tend to produce conformity Dartmouth too ism and regimentation of thought. Is the proposed technique capable of communicating and facilitating an understanding of complex concepts or is it usefulness limited to the management and manipulation of simple ideas. Is it capable of cultivating

sensitive insight. Originality analytical facility and creative intellectual skill. Employ is an artistic and moral sensitivity and appreciate. It is not my intention here to labor the specific issues with which the decision makers must contend in matters pertaining to educational technology. But a few miscellaneous guidelines may be in order to confront a concern for speed efficiency accuracy and economy must be balanced by the concern for educational quality and humane values. The new technology like any other method is justified only where it produces education of higher quality. The diversity of the curriculum and the multiple purposes of education require a variety in teaching the methods the instructional uses of television programs

or computers have limitations as do the more conventional techniques. Those limits must be carefully established by achievement testing and experimentation. Both the uses and abuses of the new technology must be clearly known by both teachers and administrators. For most purposes a mixture of techniques has proved more desirable than concentration on a single particular technique should be evaluated in relation to specific tasks they may not be applicable to the whole process of instruction. It seems to me that this matter of mixture of techniques is something that those of you who are involved in the firing line of technology must take very very seriously. Sometimes it may mean giving up part of your empire or influence or sharing your empire with others in the interests of improving

instruction values of the new technology must in every case be carefully weighed against the values of conventional methods and technological methods before judgments and decisions are made affecting large changes in instructional patterns. Comparison of methods is a complex task involving differences in instructional goals as well as in subject matter and techniques. Judgment or decision on the new technology must be made on the basis of extensive experiment and expert analysis looking into this field over the past two or three years is that we are just at the beginning of this kind of experiment and analysis rather than at the end. Of persuasion of rhetoric and the desire for institutional stays. It involves an understanding of the whole complex of human side effects etc.

research and experimentation in this area are expensive and difficult. You very well know what that amounts to. An adequately designed for the effective employment of mechanical or electronic visual techniques in our instructional system cannot be made apart from considerations involving the pre-service and in-service preparation of teachers. I have personally been astounded at the slowness with which schools of education. I have realized that television for instance is a part of the educational process and that some way or another they have to begin to educate their teachers for its proper use. The structure and deployment of professional and para professional personnel technical assistance and after the story reprieve will remain and now is just a final word. Two things should never be forgot. First that there is a point at which the student needs a teacher

really. Second that the values that accrue from the intellectual interaction and social relationships with other students should not be lost. The problem of educational purposes and instructional goals and the means refuting them has far reaching implications for our society beyond its immediate bearing on the quality of instruction. The central issue of our time is the question of means and then this I think is in the long run. The central problem we face in our kind of culture. It asks whether in the future we will live in a humane society or in a technological or where we live in a society in which we are established by consideration of the human values which we associate with intellectual moral and spiritual freedom with individuality uniqueness and spontaneity. A society of persons in which the autonomy is personality is both sovereign and sacred. Or will it

be an order of whose ends are determined by our mean by our techniques. Our ways of effective manipulation are mass actions and rituals are automated and cyber needed technology. Our need and demand for efficiency in organization and order in which the individual is a mule's to collectivism diversity to sameness freedom to regimentation and where persons are eventually transformed into things. This is an overstatement of the alternative worlds which we face but we do in fact face two worlds. Their world of boundless hopes and a world of deep menace and the hopes and the menace do not lie entirely in the future they are already with us and are profoundly true of us. It is education more than any part of our civic and cultural life where we must face these promises and threats first because they are basic to the

quality and character of education itself. But even more because where education goes there are the foundations of our culture. Already we are affected in some degree by the tyranny of our technical means. And we expect that this condition will become increasingly grave as we refine and expand our techniques. Whether they are techniques of human organization and social manipulation or the techniques of our remarkably sophisticated technology the automated machines which extend our physical capabilities and the electronic devices which extend our mental power to this condition will become increasingly grave. That is unless in some way we reverse the trend and drying up of the vast and difficult problem which our own and

create. I would say at the present time you are the people who are in the best position to see this trend reverse the same effort and inventiveness which have produced our material technology. Must be invested in defining the goals of our culture and civilization and exploring the ways. For ensuring that our purposes will rule our techniques and will not simply be determined by the ways in which our technology will be placed under the dominion of our purposes. This is the great task of education. We guarantee to progress that if yours is the full benefits of an advancing technology and yet to preserve and enhance the humane quality obvious civilization whose humanity is threatened by that technology to fully succeed in this task. Our schools must effectively employ the

instruments of instruction which the technology provides but employ them always as means only and never as or as the chief determiners offers it. Just think. Of them. You have heard Starling MCMURRAN speaking at the 1968 convention of the National Association of educational broadcasters held in Washington D.C. In November highlights from the end a big convention were recorded by WMUR the American University in Washington D.C. for presentation on any are the national educational radio network.