Urban frontier; The big shift

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Here is where the process begins here with this new born child another human with everything to lose and not enough time to learn it. The process though is a patient one. It's as old as man himself. It makes parents and plaster poets and politicians and priests on occasion it can turn out a pediatrician you know a physicist or a man to repair the pump on your automobile. The results will differ from time to time place to place but the process itself it is always the same. We call it education. One. Way. A National Association of educational broadcasters resents the big shift an examination of the role of the student in the modern American city. One of a series of programs titled The Urban Frontier but used by the Community Education Project at San Bernardino Valley College under a grant from the National Association of educational broadcasters. These programs were developed in consultation with faculty members of the University of California at Riverside

University of Redlands and a Valley College as well as a core of professional civic and business leaders of the San Bernardino Riverside metropolitan area. Each program is designed to raise some of the issues facing the individual who lives in or near the city. And now the big shift. I look at some of the problems and opportunities of the student. This is a university American style. It might exist. Chances are it doesn't. If it did it would be in a city and it would bear both an American stamp and the imprint of the metropolis that supports it. It's a big school in a big city and it has a big job. This is final assembly for selected people who have been processed through a tax supported system of public education. Only some 3 percent of the original grammar school population of the city have stayed in the system this far. The others. They've gone to work or if they can they've gone to school elsewhere. Some are in the army. Some are in prison.

Still others now are paying their big share of the taxes that make it all possible. Much of education much of learning has taken place long before our students reach this stage. Some things they learned in other schools some they did not. Home church friends newspapers radio television motion pictures comic books all have come to bear on the process. Some of these are figured into the calculations of the system balanced off by the teachers the administrators the superintendents the PTA Zin the taxpayers associations all of which together make up the Enterprise which here is putting the final touches on some of its highly specialized products. For our purposes we'll select three of them. Here is the first. This is Joseph and Tony Morelli. I am a misfit in our smoothly running system. He's 19 years old a little too young a little too bright. He lives with his aunt. He supports her now in his free time he goes to school. It's almost a

hobby with him. The kids he grew up with the gang he used to hang out with these have fallen away. I have sometimes they drop in to tell him their troubles but they all say it's different now he's different. Still dependable in a showdown but. Different. I just I got those and you know it works as an accountant from four till mid 90s on the job the rest of his waking time he spends in class or with books. Occasionally he goes up to visit his brother but not very often. Joy has come a long way. He'll graduate in June. Beyond that. He doesn't know. Ah I see you're back at it. Get the can 21 All right I got a B I was just surprised I can turn handsprings I'll love it yeah yeah. This Geraldine more or Jerry to her friends. Her father runs a garage she lives in a quiet conservative neighborhood respectable rather than prosperous. Her mother is a member of the PTA. Jerry knows why she's here. She's going to be a lab technician. While a school for Jerry has always been a must

college too. She can type 100 words a minute. She takes shorthand. To learn these things in high school even though they were not part of the regular preparation for entrance to the university. Never can tell she said. They might be handy someday. Right. Well you musta made it my duty in chemistry. Yeah how about that. FOREMAN 31 manatees. Yeah right. I mean as a person I just want to know how I grade. Yeah sure sure thing. This is Todd. His father is an attorney. His grandfather Well it's a car but I wanted to go to Harvard. At least that's what his mother said she believes it. It probably will take his upper graduate work there. The only problem is great. Todd drives to school. In a car he really didn't want. It prefers a convertible an old one. But he settled for a two door 55 model. And he may have to drive it for as much as

two years. Eventually he'll be an attorney and that's what's expected of him. That's what he expected Barry. These are three of some 5000. Rendezvous here each day. These three know each other only because they were once seated alphabetically rather than high school. They are here to be taught by the system. One of them in theory at least is open to all. It is expected that certain things have happened during the 15 years that our three students have been in preparation. Certain rules are said to be always in view. These are the things the system tries to build into its products. The first of these has to do with making a living. I run a calculator. Yeah it's sort of the accountants job pays you know. Office jobs are easy particularly if you can take shorthand. I guess I could get a part time job if I had to. Trouble is I don't have any part time. At a job in a gas station over the summer. That's kind of nice you know really got my car fixed up

but crime and the at least some of the people there are really weird particularly if you work the late shift Jacks things can really get hot after the bar. These are not the final economic skills that our students will be expected to exercise. But in each case already the system has helped them to become competent and self-supporting in the world of commerce and. Tech. Then there is the privilege of citizenship in a free and democratic society. And the wealth of information required to exercise intelligently the right. And share intelligently the responsibilities of that citizenship figure a kilometer six tenths of a mile 14 kilometers and roughly eight miles. That's a lot closer than Catalina Island is to the Southern California coast. To me that puts the entire. Economy of Iran Contra right the people entire population if it might have been right. And left the peasant farmers can't afford it now

thankfully never did. Yes now do you want to say what you want to about the Taft-Hartley law. It has stabilized a lot of things something was going to get back to some kind of balance. All right so you think it's a lousy law I don't I think it's pretty good just the way it stands. Never before has it people had to deal with public issues of such complexity as confront us today. And it does not seem that they will necessarily become less complex in the years ahead. These students display at least verbally a very broad and deep comprehension of the issues and problems of their city their state nation and world. The system has filled them with facts and taught them how to get others when and if they need them. It has also taught them the mechanics of government along with some of the past actions and results of various kinds of governments. Then too there are other things the value of a balanced diet. How to make change how to drive a car or find a book A Thousand and One personal skills. None of which is present at age 6

and most of which are to be taken for granted at age 16. And then there are the subtle things the do's and don'ts of getting along with other people. Most of these are learned elsewhere but sometimes the system must teach them. It had to in Joey's case and perhaps only in a city would it have gone to the trouble. For in this city there are lots of Joeys and uniquely The city has had to come to terms with the problems that Joey presents. And so the system has developed methods and labels and trained people to administer them. Come in. I got to know. They referred me to you. What's your name. Really Joseph. Oh yes I think I have your folder right here. So you're a counselor. I never met one before. What do you do. I talk to boys and girls. OK what am I talking about. Well a number of things. Quite a list really. This is your first year in high school isn't it. How do you like your classes.

Look they're dull. They're stupid and bored most of the time. Sometimes I go to sleep. Let's get to the point. My name is Miss Farnham. OK Miss Form want to talk to me because I put the slogan a jerk that shoppers look too much. So let's get on with it. Let's make it easy on both of us. We can talk about that if you want to. I don't feel any necessity to a burden myself at all. I'm doing fine. I get my work done. I turned it. I get good grades so why bother me. It's not your class work. At least not the actual assignments. Joe your it's your attitude. Look counselor I haven't had any trouble before. We're just just one guy. He's said exactly the wrong thing exactly the wrong time. It had been a bad day. As they say. Maybe I was a little unstable C. He asked for it. I gave it to him this far. Morgan ST could have really been bad form in my league. He got off easy. I guess that's the problem Joy. What's that. This isn't your league. So what are you going to do. I don't know it isn't only this fight

I have been where there have been other things. I guess I've been a real disturbing influence a lot of places. Well you can always ship me off to the trade school. That's where you saw all my friends. Maybe that's my speed that's the that's the Leica. No no it isn't. I'll be very frank with you you can do the work here. Some of your well friends simply could not. No matter how hard they try I know I'm smart you are you're very very bright. Sometimes I and sometimes I'm not. Most of the time I was pretty mixed up. What do you want to be a doctor and lawyer do you like physics chemistry airplane off it will you. No I'm serious. You see you can do all these things if you really want to. Yeah that's the spiel they gave me in the eighth grade. It's really up to you. You've got the mind you really have so so tell me now tell me truthfully what is it you want to be. OK I'll give it to you straight. That's the way I want it. OK all right. I just want to be left alone see you know I'm out of my league. I know I don't belong. I

just want to be left alone. I mean it. But I had hoped you'd be more frank with me. Miss Farnham was one of the system specialists and she had before her a great deal of expert information. The file on L.A. Joseph was a fake one. Very quickly she could learn that he lived with his aunt. She had the street address. She knew the city and she had dealt with other files other cases other problem youngsters who also came from the slums and who for the first time were among youngsters very different from themselves. The file also spelled out in letters numbers and symbols a measure of Joey's ability to deal with ideas. He was well into the upper 3 percent. Genius was a word Miss Farnham never used but Joey's problem was not ability it was attitude. A whole series of attitudes towards school toward people toward the world in general. In the back country and even in the days of the little red schoolhouse Joe it would

have been treated as a simple discipline case and the treatment would have failed failed at any rate as far as keeping him in school Miss Farnham also dealt with joy as a discipline case but simple Never. In the city there are a lot of children with Joey's attitudes if not his ability. The system refers to their problems as having to do with social adjustment and in the city there's a lot of adjusting to be done. Some of it but only some. We now ask the school to do for us. Doesn't mean it's easy you know. I know it isn't. But. What's offered here the price is conformity. It's as simple as that. It's simple as that. Yeah. Well I see you again in two weeks Jack. Well just in case you forget I want don't worry about it. Get you excused from class then I'll have to ask you called to the office. Try to be a little more pleasant next time. Today as he makes his way down the halls of the university on his way to his 10 o'clock class Joy has mastered a kind of conformity even though he never

will have the attitudes of most of the people around him. He still is a misfit in the system but now he knows it. But this is not the case with Geraldine home family friends. Her world was radically different from Joyce. Everything about it seemed to shape and equip her to mesh with the schools the city offered more objectively put the schools in fact the system itself may have been originally designed to meet her needs. She did however come to visit Miss Farnham. But it was two years after Joyce call and the reasons were very different. Miss Farnham. Yes I'm jolting more and I've come to see you about taking another semester shorthand. My advisor Miss Holladay says I have to get clearance because it's over in the commercial department and because I'm going to have to drop something here's my problem. I see. Thank you so down Geraldine won't you. Thank you. I I think this can be arranged. What do you want to draw art. I don't need it really I don't have a chance. You're going on to

college I see. Oh yes that's all arranged. Money and everything. Why do you want shorthand. Well you never can tell it may come in handy. I can tie clean up with more shorthand I could work in an office. Summers you know that is if I get my speedo. That certainly sounds very sensible. What kind of course are you going to take in college. Well I. Thinking of being a nurse but I've changed my mind. I've decided I want to work in a medical laboratory you know research. Well here here you are retiring this to your advisor and your needed slip for a late registry there. Thank you. You're quite welcome. Now if you have any difficulty stop back and see me. I don't believe that class is full. Most of them are but I was just on to see Miss Myers. Yes we're terribly overcrowded particularly in the commercial department as the student progresses from grade to grade or from station to station among other things he learns that the system is designed to do its best work for those who know what they want and only need to be taught or simply told how to get it. And lately a new addition has been made.

The student and his parents cannot be provided with an expert opinion as to the value of the exposure. But the halls are clearing. It's almost time for the next class to begin. Here at the university as they did for one class in Taft High. Jerry-Jo and Todd sit in the same room. Here they are called Miss Moore Mr. Murali and Mr. Macklin their three names along with three hundred and seventeen others appear on the list for humanities thirty one eight on a score this course is called philosophy or science. It's listed as humanities 31 a three us everywhere. They are in there and they want me to mentor examination just as when I was forced by my office hours for this car start Thursday's photo until 4pm whiteness of your range preferably at least twenty four hours in the back. This works archery body you see Mr. Turner the division office and bought me something and it worked out.

Oh surely you realize that with 300 Your wife should be probably had probably kept in order that someone else in an age of science it is necessary to say what science is and is not. And also to say how it got that way or what it can and cannot do. And in a democracy it is necessary to say this to all the people and the wonder of it is that all three of our students are here to learn it. The system tries to teach everything to everybody. The Tods and even the Jerries have been educated in schools elsewhere. Other cities and other civilizations have thought that was enough Rome for a while had public schools but they were for a very selective few. Here's how it would have been in a Roman classroom. We'll take our three students and our teacher with us although only two of our students will be in class A might be present but as a slave not as a student or teacher could have been their teacher. And it might

easily have gone like this. The earth all the earth is ruled by Rome. Each land and each people exist under Roman rule. From the moment the sun touches the earth it moves over Roman soil permutations of the phrase leave too much to be desired you're moving much much too fast. You are golden court of expression has snapped. Someone else the earth is ruled by round about a romance all the air all of the earth is. Round all that earth is ruled by Roman law the law for all of the earth. Well make some for the year. This is a woman equivalent of a university of rhetoric Roman style but taught in Greek is the central subject Tod and Jerry attend school 12 months a year with a pause each eighth day and for a short summer holiday their attendance is a matter of form seem to by their families. The students of the rich were accompanied by slaves.

I would suggest that you spend the time thinking about the golden cord. Will Save Us. Yes master. He was a little rough on you just morning. Well at least you didn't get to see me beating again. No I didn't that I didn't call over to call you over to pass the time of day with you I merely wanted you to fetch another tablet for me that one of my sons own. A color as a frame. It's blue. There are two blue ones M.. You're being very irritating this morning. I don't mean to be. There are different things on every day. Then go get the small blue one the one with the sums on that. Small balloon right away. Going to have to beat your slave again. No I can't read and I guess I can't expect him to tell the difference between sums and grammar. Must be very irritating. I don't know why father can't find me a Greek Slave someone who was educated. In the graces that they have. Well it's not for a Roman to be able to sing and dance and look at pretty pictures. This isn't the purpose of education. But it does give him so much pleasure. Even if they are right we are being

infected by graces. I'm sure you're right here. We can put things so Roman who really is caught only a very select portion of the population of Rome. Toddlers in the Gerry's were taught to read and to write and they were taught to use the mathematics of the day to calculate their sums using in a Backus and in the higher reaches of the school system they were taught public speaking. Note that all teaching of the uses and arts of language was concerned with the Greek. Rome was itself captive to many of the ideas that were first hammered out and then later taught in the schools of Athens. And so let's move our classroom still further back in time. Back five centuries before a Roman university was in session with its reading writing rhetoric and simple arithmetic. The Greeks were holding forth with these ideas. Thus it is with the use of the geometry to toss the knees of serene his computer the circumference of the earth and then here is this iris Tarkus of some of us with the proposition that the Earth actually revolves around the sun. But now let's ask the

significance of these ideas. And I should think the two things are involved here. Oily thought it would resonate here present with the other sons of the elite that Athens rested on a slave economy as well as Rome's democracy was heritage but it was only for the few not the many. But if you were a citizen here are some of the things that you had to know if you were to take your place with other citizens. The purpose of your learning to read and write and the reason for your study of mathematics of science of philosophy history music and drama is the answer to your questions. The purpose of all of it is to free you from the narrow confines of ignorance and superstition and to allow you to deal with the real problems of an intelligent life and I'm sure it would be of no interest to a slave whether or not the Earth revolves around the sun or the sun the earth. You need not even be told that in fact it might upset him considerably. I'm sure it would. But why doesn't it upset you. I don't see the world in the same way a slave does. I don't have to spend all my time in

labor. Not only do I have the time but also the responsibility to grow into wisdom. And how do you define wisdom. Was it not SOCRATES That said since we cannot know the ultimate purpose of the universe we can at least know ourselves. You are coming along but. But I think you've missed the central point. You might say that ultimately each of us has to work out for himself a life. One that he will live in terms of goodness or wickedness justice and in justice wisdom and folly. Courage and cowardice. Citizen and state. These are the real problems of living and the more a man thinks about them the better he will act. It's only through knowledge that man comes to virtue the academies of Athens taught all that those of Rome did and much more. The Athenian student was prepared for a world in which music drama sculptor history philosophy mathematics were seen as the logical development of a civilized man with

less than a mastery of these subjects. He was to be considered less than civilized. But let's come back to our own time and our own university. The final assembly point for a school system that for the first time in the history of man is up against the problems of teaching everything to everybody. We are going to be paying taxes to support something called science and you're going to have thrown at your head all sorts of claims that are labeled scientific. And for those of you who may be working out toward the front ears of knowledge you need to be able to communicate the city believes or says it does that everyone should have equal access to knowledge. And this the system tries to provide but has the system or for that matter the city done all that it could or should do. What is left undone and has been done better elsewhere. What would it be like in the ideal school and the ideal city. Basic questions will be with us for a long time and they are not merely

questions for the people who work in the system. The teachers who manage stations the administrators the counselors the staff and management of this enterprise they are questions for the entire city. They are questions for you. You have been listening to the big ship an examination of the role of the student in the modern American metropolis. Here to comment on the problems and opportunities of the student is one of the consultants for the big shift Mr J.W. McDaniel vice president in charge of curriculum and Student personnel San Bernardino Valley College. Mr McDaniel public education is one of the most talked about concerns of the modern city. Close observation reveals that it has undergone and is still undergoing several big shifts. The most easily observed of these is the shift in numbers. More people are going to school and more people are staying in school longer. Education is dealing with more of the young and with more of the

old. With more of the regulars and with more of the different and less perceptible but more disturbing shift is a shift in responsibility. Time was when schools restricted their program to the mind to simplify the matter. We call this the three R program. But now we know that an educated person is more than an educated mind. And so education is taking on some concern for attitudes for social adjustment for work training for recreational training even for ideals. These traits were formerly thought to be the proper function of the home. The Church and of other social agencies schools and teachers did not grab a share in these new responsibilities. They came into them by default changes in homes and other social institutions left children adrift in some ways. Schools have tried to pick up some of these loose ends. Does it might be said that modern education is concerned with all of the

people and with all of the person. One other shift is related to these two. It was formerly thought that the program of education was pretty well determined by the culture. It was the business of the school to develop the culturally desired traits in the pupils. Now the school is looking into the needs of each individual pupil. As one of the sources for its programme of education schools in this sense do not merely put all learners through the same places they attempt to meet the needs of each individual as a unique personality. Their goal is to help each person to do his best. This change has come about largely by the intensive growth of all of the sciences that study human beings. Medicine psychology anthropology sociology have all been busy building a tremendous knowledge of the growth of the human personality. Education itself has become both a science and a

technology. Teachers have really become professionals with skills and techniques far beyond the schoolmarm of early days. Specialists working with the teachers help to discover the kinds of learning needed by each child. The course of study and the methods of teaching are not just matters of opinion. They are tested best methods for accomplishing results. These changes in education have not all happened they're going on now in varying stages and all of our communities. How far and how fast each community moves in these directions is up to the resources and to the will of the community. Thank you Mr. McDaniel. This has been one had a transcribed series of programs titled The Urban Frontier but used by the Community Education Project at San Bernardino Valley College. These programs were developed in consultation with faculty members at the University of California at Riverside. The University of

Redlands and of San Bernardino Valley College as well as a corps of professional business and civic leaders of the San Bernardino Riverside metropolitan area. Written and directed by John Hunter the big shift was recorded in the studios of KBC are on the Valley College campus. The narrator was Paul in engineering and Sohn by Jim Hamlin. This is the end AB Radio Network.