Jazz of the past; Pee Wee Russell

In its visiting scholars series WBAY he presents a visit with an historian part to the visiting scholars program of the Cleveland public schools was developed under the direction of Superintendent Paul breakings and was designed to bring teachers and students into direct personal contact with outstanding scholars in visit with an historian part 2. We bring you the second of two interviews with Dr. Charles R. Keller a scholar in the fields of history and social sciences. Dr. Keller served as professor of history and chairman of the history department at Williams College. He initiated the John Hay Fellows program and directed it until its conclusion in 1966. For several years he has been traveling extensively in the United States visiting the secondary schools observing commenting and being welcomed as a consultant in the areas of history and the social sciences. He currently refers to himself as a friend in residence at the Fairfield and Greenwich Connecticut high schools.

Dr. calories interviewed by Cecilia Evans of WB O.E. Dr. Keller one of some of the existing experiments and new programs in education that you've seen in your visits to schools throughout the United States. Certainly the new programs in science in mathematics in foreign languages. In English and even in my field or the social studies are really noteworthy particularly when the emphasis is put on students finding out things for themselves rather than being told what I've sometimes talked about. A new three R's of education that I don't like restraint rote memory and regurgitation. Oh I have to remember that. And I'd like to talk about the fact that every once in a while I

see a really nice search inquiry discovery. So there's a new mood there but I suspect the missus bribes because I'm in the field of humanity is that the most exciting important development that I see in education today is the appearance in schools throughout the country of interdisciplinary humanities courses for both go to college and not go to college students. How do those operate articular How do they set up one of the interesting things about them there's no pattern. I could tell you about a course that considers three cities in ancient Athens. Renaissance Florence modern New York or

I can tell you about a course that is change developed as it's concerned with change in the 20th century which starts with our town and goes onto West Side Story. You get a group of teachers working together. An English teacher history teacher music teacher an art teacher and a science teacher. And you really study in a period let's say like romantic the Romantic period the beginning of the 19th century and it comes alive for kids. It sounds fascinating. It is. The students get involved. It's relevant. It helps with that. Who am I question up to this time there's been too much just exposure and involvement is very different kind of thing for from exposure so that I

like the spirit. I like change in spirit and I see it. There's organizational change through you know Team D gene and modular schedule email and that sort of thing. I like your experiments when Belzer done away with. I think we've been bellowed out of a really big trash when you're old something's going on and all of a sudden the bell rings Belden Jaiden thinking stops. That's right and it did the day it was in a class that I visited which should have gone on but the bell got in there you know. Pavlov's dogs. Time to start time stop and the bell rings. I like the emphasis that I see in some places not many but a few on Wonder

education as Wonder on education for enjoying things for the sake of enjoying them rather than for the sake of getting marks and grades. Not all not out of a sense of duty or competition but because it's exciting that's right areas south right. You know there's a poem of Sara Teasdale two lines by a. Children's faces looking up holding wonder like a cup. Oh yes yes life has lovely moves to sell. That's right yes that's right. Now I think this could be true of the high school student in his way. And I think important you know and Emily Dickinson that wonder is not precisely knowing and not precisely knowing not its that kind of thing I don't see it enough but every time I see it

and a student says I wonder. Watch him. He's in the right direction. So anytime I see that kind of experiment in education that kind of development in education I see it most in these humanities courses. That's why I like or I'll tell you another development I like we're beginning to catch on to the fact you know that we repeat American history the fifth grade the eighth grade and the 11th grade. I have a parents of three children and they said please come around to our house someday. We have one child in the fifth grade one in the eighth grade and one in the 11th grade you ought to be around when they're studying American history. Let's stop by at so we I see a beginning of a movement to have what we call American studies in the 11th grade where you really take a look at a period in American history from the point of view of art.

Music literature and history and I could tell you about some interesting courses I know about in that direction. I know there's a lot of just standing still. There's a lot of not moving but here they are here where people are at it and the students are responding. They'll respond well to sort of approach you've been describing would give a student a feeling of the spirit of the times in the sense of a life that was lived right rather just terribly important. Yeah you know I mean I think it was Mr. Dooley wasn't it that wonderful older man of the early at the beginning of this century who said that what he'd like to know is what a civilization lived of. Not would have died of. I like that very lovable Mr Dewey. That's right. Storms ought to know about him. Yes he was Finley Peter

Dunne. He was a lot funnier than a lot of our current comedian that's right as you refer back to history doctor killer. What would you say were the three most important historical events of the past 30 or 40 years. Would you let me go back to 19 0 1 when I was born. Yes. Because this is kind of my life. Well it seems to me that when we realize that what this world has gone through since 19 won two world wars a depression the emergence of the United States into the world the. The events that have taken place on the earth I don't wonder that young people are kind of bothered. It's been a

tremendously Howard Dean experience in many ways. And here we are. And it seems to me we should know where we are in an undeclared war right now and you know we never thought this kind of thing would happen. And then we've got this space age you know it's on it's on the way. Just the actual spending of the money and the kinds of effort we're making these are tremendously. Important developments and this is the world that young people have to live in. And then they're told to that god is dead. Then there's an ape and they have to live in that kind of a world easier hereon were it were years and yet at the same time tremendously exciting with all sorts of opportunities still there you know we used to say the

American frontier was closed. When I was a freshman in college in 1919 some of us said we were sorry we were living so late in life. We got all the problems of the world have been solved. Not a good surprise is how how wrong could we be. You talked about the perpetual tension that the current generation is living under. What do you think are the most important social political and economic problems than the pupils in this and the next generation will have to face. Well they're going to have to live in a world in which they're taking over before very long. Young people are the future. They're going to have to live in a world which has. Struggled economic difficulties.

They're going to have to live in the situation where they are where they are pretty soon going to be the older generation. And then what's going to they going to be have less alienation you know between the older and the younger generation and we have the day how are they going to do. Do you feel there's always alienation between the generations. I think there's more than there has been right now and I hope that we can lessen that. I think there's more and it may be because the young people are raising questions that we should have raised a long time ago when you know the older generation is not being flexible enough that we're artists and. And maybe the young people are the people who are who are raising the right questions. One of these days they're going to be the older people. I hope they have less in the area nation. We have on our hands the problem of solving the tremendous race problems of our time.

People living together it isn't easy and we haven't done as well as we might have done so it's up to them. We've got rich and poor. How are we going to do it we've got the problems of our cities you know how are we going to are we going to live together when we almost have a megalopolis from Boston to Washington and they say it'll extend from New York to California. That's right. These problems are the ones that people young people are going to have to face up to but the same time I want to stress the fact that they're going to have wonderful opportunities to not just problems I don't want to take a headache approach you know the problems approach is a headache approach to life. And I'm not a headache approach that's why I don't like the problems approach to history. You don't even think that word should be used for hospital. Well

all right. If there are problems there are also opportunities. And I never use the word problems problems of democracy bother me problems and opportunities of democracy. It seems to me that's the way we ought to view things. And this is something we need to remember that democracy alters problems and opportunity very definitely in our education to prepare young people to face up to both the problems and the opportunities both of which promise to be great. Thank you Dr. Keller. In visit with an historian part to you for the second of two interviews with Dr. Charles R. Keller the visiting scholar series is produced with the Cleveland Board of Education station WABE O.E. FM by Charles Siegel engineer Dennis basic. Your interviewer was Cecilia Evans. This is Levi speaking. This is the Board of

Education station in Cleveland WB O.E.. This is the national educational radio network.