Spectrum; 32; TV in Samoa

Cut one, fellas. Cut one, fellas. Cut one, fellas. This is the island of Tutwila, one of five islands in American Samoa.

It's a stopping place for tourists on their vacation swings through the South Pacific. Tutwila is lush, green, and hot. In the island group, more than 20,000 Samoans live the life of their forefathers, comfortable, relatively well fed, and until recently having little contact with the modern world. But this idealic existence is changing. Pongo Pongo, the capital of American Samoa, now sports three gas stations, about 20 general stores, and even an ice cream party. The American dollar has taken its place in what was formerly an agricultural economy, and there's a new spirit of Western initiative that's sweeping through the islands, changing customs, and the Samoan culture as it passes through. I'm David Proud, Science Editor for National Educational Television.

We've come to Samoa to observe a unique experiment, using television technology to help an underdeveloped people take a giant step from the primitive to the present. The use of teaching machines is hardly new. Work done by Dr. B. F. Skinner and others in this field has been going on for years and proven highly successful in some areas. Audiovisual aids such as television aren't new either. Educational television is well established in American academic structure. What is new about the work being done here in this building is the extent and thoroughness of the program. Educational television here is not an adjunct to the regular system, it is the regular system. The expressed aim of the educators here is to utilize the best of the old, providing constant classroom contact between teacher and student, and the best of the new, expert programming by educational television specialists, giving the students a constant high level of academic material.

Here's the way it works. The years curriculum is decided upon by a joint board of American and Samoan educators. This curriculum is turned over to educational television producer directors and TV teachers. They're the ones that work out the proper presentation of individual lessons. The television teacher then does the program. It's broadcast to the outlying schools where Samoan teachers, with specially prepared study guides, work with their classes both before and after the program. An American principal lives at each of the schools. She's responsible for evaluating the program content, whether it's reaching the pupils, or whether it's too high or too low for their comprehension. To further train the Samoan teachers in the use of this new tool, TV for teaching is another problem for the principal. And then the meetings, constant feedback from the schools to the TV people and vice versa. The experiment has been going on for one year now. The U.S. government has poured nearly $5 million into the program and airlifted 50 highly trained technical people to run it. Is it working? That's what we'll try to find out today.

Well, this about ends our conference again for this week. And I think what we ought to do is talk over a little bit about how we're going to start Monday and what we're going to do. Do you have any ideas on that, Blair? This is Dr. John W. Harrell, director of education for the American government in Samoa. His job is not only to administer to the hundreds of American and Samoan educators on the island, but also to blend teaching and television technology to create a whole new method of training young minds. The man who's responsible for making this wedding of teacher and machine work is Blair McKenzie, director of television. His job to take a South Sea island with virtually no communication system, either electrical or physical, with remote villages in no central government and build a modern educational television system. This is Fosanga to Mara Leanga. She's an American Samoan who has been teaching for four years. For the past 12 months, she's been a television teacher for subject, Samoan language and reading. Fosanga attended teacher training college in Samoa and spent four years in the United States. It's her responsibility to utilize this new teaching facility, television, to actually bring the lessons to the children.

Mrs. Marge McKinney is a school principal. Her base is in the jungle several miles away from the nearest town. It's one of 25 schools on the island where television sets are the basic educational tools. Her job is a dual one to work with her Samoan classroom teachers and help them fully utilize the television lessons and to constantly evaluate the lesson material being broadcast to make sure it's fulfilling her students needs. And this is Chief Pula. He's Dr. Harold Samoan counterpart and serves as assistant director of education here. It is Chief Pula's job to try and satisfy his people's educational needs while preserving a distinct Samoan culture. His work with the television teachers includes a close supervision of curriculum material and working with local village chiefs to obtain maximum backing for the educational program from parents. Now, I think that that's about all we have for this week. So I think it will meet again Monday.

Dr. Harold. David. How are you, sir? I'm very fine. Have a couple of questions for you. Well, we're used to those. Dr. Harold, what is the aim of your program? Well, I think very simply it's to see if in one generation grades one through 12 if we can't raise the educational level of the Samoans to stateside standards. But why television? Well, television enables us only to do what ought to be done if it could be done without television. I know it's a little early. You've only been in operation for a year, but could you give us some kind of an evaluation of the program from your standpoint? Well, one thing we know for sure that television helps us to get more mileage out of the talent that we have available among the Samoans and from stateside personnel. It also provides equal opportunities for all children wherever they are over the mountain in the Bay Area. What about the terrain? Doesn't that pose a problem? Samoa is awfully mountainous.

Well, the engineers deserve the credit. We have very good reception in all of our schools. What about your educational personnel, sir? Where do they come from? They are the cream of the crop that can be recruited from stateside schools and we have excellent personnel over here as the nucleus to guide the project. Are you geared to train Samoans to get into the project more than they are now? This is one of our dual aims, certainly a priority aim, and that is of training the Samoan teacher as a counterpart of teaching the child. It takes 16 years to train a teacher, and we feel that the two have to be done side by side. And this, again, is where television makes possible what could not be done in any other way. I know it's a little unfair, but what is your primary problem right now? Well, I think we'd all say that our primary problem now is, for example, in three months, we have to write a curriculum. It's time.

We wish we had two or three years to prepare, but time is a luxury. Well, we have a very dedicated group who are working day and night, and it's really surprising which you can get done when you set your mind to it. Well, Dr. Harold, we're going to take a look at that group today, and they're working and what they're doing. Well, we're very glad to have you here, and our facilities will be open to you. Thank you, sir. Welcome. Okay, Mike. Let's keep that one. Hi, Dave. Thank you. I thought I'd catch it at home. I hope you'll excuse the clutter. We're just a bit mixed up here. We've had to tear out a good bit of the initial equipment in order to install the second phase. And that's why you see the wires draped all over the walls and the floor is all torn up. It looks like an operating master control, let's be sure. Blair, how did this all get started? Well, the basic idea was born almost four years ago, conceived by Governor Lee,

and me working with the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, the NEB, got the approval of the Secretary of Interior, the various congressional committees, got the funds for a feasibility study, and then finally got the appropriation which really underwrote this whole program. What kind of equipment do you have here? Well, here in master control, we have four film chains and ten television tape recorders. On each side of this building, our two television studios, four all together, each studio equipped with two three-inch image-orthy con camera. I think we've got a very fine setup of good equipment. You're really equipped to do all the programming that you're doing. And how much programming is that today? Well, when we get back into full production, we will be doing better than 200 programs a week. We come on in the morning between 7.30 and 8, instructional programs, so 2.30 in the afternoon, these are followed by in-service training programs for the teachers, and then we have three to four hours of programming in the evening,

adult education, information, and some general programming of an entertainment pipe. It's a full day. Pretty full day. Are you the first television to be in Sima? Yes, the only television here, actually the only television in the South Pacific between Honolulu and New Zealand. Well, after having spent a few days going over this terrain and living on the island, I imagine problems you face when you first came here were just incredible. We had some pretty fantastic problems. Let me show you a picture of the island. You see it on the monitor over there. Yeah. You can see the island, the white dots represent the villages on the island. We are located on the harbor of Pangopangou, the harbor almost bystecks the island. That's the circle with the black ring around. The black circle. There's a ridge of mountains that runs from one end of the island to the other on the north shore. Oh, hi. Well, running up to 2,000 feet or better. The only flatland really is on the southwest corner. These mountains are what gave us our problems. First, with the schools, the problems of getting an antenna installation in,

when some of these villages were nestled down in these valleys, we had to run coax cable as much as a thousand feet to an antenna installation. Then we had the problem of getting the transmitter and our broadcast power installed on top of one of these mountains. Bob, would you show us that slide? That's it. This is on the top of Mount Alava, 1600 feet high, just across the bay from us here in Pangong. That picture really doesn't do it just as it really first up there. It doesn't look like anything really spectacular here. The transmitter building is actually mounted on a razor-backed ridge and it's cantilevered out over the side of the hill in both places. We had to have a tramway constructed in order to get this equipment and material up there and get men up there to operate it. I understand at the beginning, you were hauling people up on a bucket. Yeah, well, in the initial stages of the tramway, we did haul them up in the 55 gallon oil drawn attached to the cable. What about the climate glare? Does that give you any troubles with equipment? Not too much here in the building because the building is all air-conditioned, humidity controlled.

In the schools it does, the very, very high humidity and the great amount of rain we get here does give us trouble with the maintenance of the television receivers. I think we're working on a problem to make this though. Good. What is the function that is carried out in this building? Could you run through it for me? Yes. In this building, we bring together the producer directors and the teachers. A producer director here really is a teacher of sorts. He works with the teacher after the curriculum is finished, after the general concept of study and instruction is completed. Together as a team, they bring into being the television lesson. Just a second, we can show you a part of this too. Switch to studio, three players. You can see what's going on there. These are the pictures that I'm going to use for this lesson. First picture, second one, the third one. I'll sign a list, use this in a second. All right. This is one of our several Samoan teachers.

She's working in this studio with her producer director to get all of the visual elements coordinated for their lesson. As soon as they're all set, they'll record this lesson. We record all of our lessons, Dave, in order to control the time and to control the production quality within the unit. Well, actually then, you're using all the tools that are available in television to do this school lessons and you're taking all the educational materials as well. Combining them. Yes. We have here all of the facilities, all the graphic art, photography, research library, stocks of visuals, everything that is needed from both a production standpoint and an instructional standpoint to combine them all into one meaningful instructional unit. What's for the future as far as your concern? Well, just this expansion of facilities here. Expanding our offerings in the coming school year into the high school level. That'll practically doubled in your facilities in here, will it not? Just about will. We will be working on probably approaching a 24-hour day

in order to get the volume of material produced. Thanks very much, Valera. I'm going to go up and meet with one of your school principals to find out what happens on the other end. Very good, Dave. This is the station's library. It serves as a reference point for information and storage space for the hundreds of props needed to put on a 35-hour-a-week in-school programming schedule. Here, too, is where school principals meet with the television teachers to discuss school problems. Well, that's right. I don't have that little following. That's fine. Thank you so much. Marge McKinney is one of those principals. She has head of a 268-pupil school in the village of Ili-Ili. Hello, Marge. Good to see you again. Hello, Dave. Glad to see you. Marge, I know that you have a wealth of experience. Well. 35 years in the Cincinnati school system, teaching everything from second grade to college.

What brought you to Samoa? Well, for the last 10 years, I worked with educational television in Cincinnati. And I've always been interested, of course, in education. And I've been interested in communications. It seemed to me when I discovered how much you could do with television and how effective it is in teaching. That if the people in education could combine their know-how about teaching and learning with this marvelous electronic device, we might come up with some answers for a lot of questions. And this experiment here in Samoa, this project, is one of the most significant things, not only in television, but in education in the world today. So I wanted to be a part of this. Well, I saw it in action out at your school the other day. Right. And we took the films and I'd like to go back over it and recreate one of your days. I'd like to see that film. How did it turn out? Well, that's the school.

I never did get the name of your school, Marge. It's called the Lupa Leili School. The school serves three villages. So they couldn't call it Ealy Ealy School. And there is a legend that this is a place of flying pigeons. And Lupa Leili means a place of flying pigeon. So that's the name of the school. Well, now the school consists of six of these buildings called follies in a circle around a central square and the children are inside each class. Not trying. How many classes do you have? We have ten classes that are ranging from first grade through the eighth. Do you have much trouble with weather? Well, most of the time the weather's nice, but sometimes we have trouble. Eventually we will have some curtains, I'm sure. And this is your house right on the school grounds. And that's Melissa, one of the workmen who's worked to put the spural grounds in the shape that they're in now. That was just a mud hole when you came. It was a mud hole. In fact, we couldn't get back to the house at first. And you're living room with that native top up on the wall?

Where'd you get that? That was a gift from a family in the village. And school is called in the morning. This is Pasamino who just finished the eighth grade and he's pounding on the pate. And he's calling the children to school. That pate is also called a fish drum. And it's traditional in Samoa to send messages and to call people in this way. Boys and girls seem fairly eager to get there. They just walk in and line right up, don't they? They come sometimes six thirty in the morning. Are there parents for a year for them to have the... Yes, they are. They're very much interested and they seem to feel that the television is very effective. They're quite happy over it. The flag raising ceremony. That was quite an impressive sight. This is traditional in the Samoan Village schools. And so we've carried it over. That's a Samoan flag below the American flag. It's a beautiful flag, yes. We sing America Samoa as sometimes when the weather permits. I was particularly impressed with the coordination march.

The way each morning is in this meeting, you met with the Samoan teachers, the people who actually have the contact with the children during the day. It's kind of a briefing session. It isn't a formal thing, but I get out there at seven o'clock every morning. I talk, oh, I study the guides myself, so I know what's coming up. These are the guides that tie right in the middle of the program. The study guides, the TV study guides, that come in and come for every lesson. That's Tafao. That's Tafao. He's one of our primary teachers. And this is Veneta. She's one of the upper grade teachers. Tafao has taught only one year, but Veneta has been... Well, that means she taught the pre-television schools. Thank you. Has she had any trouble making the transition? She hasn't. No. In fact, I've been surprised at how well all the teachers have made this transition. A few have had great difficulty, but the teaching is very different from the traditional teaching in Samoan schools. See, they use the method of standing up and telling the children and then letting the children tell them what had been said.

A wrote method of learning. That's right. And of course, we're trying to use the very modern method of having the children assimilate what they learn and understand it and use it in various ways. Well, now here Tafao is performing what is certainly an important function. He's kind of pre-setting the children for the television program. He's preparing them to get the most from the television lesson. The study guides, which are sent out by the television office, provide this information. They say, to get ready, we suggest you do this and then they tell some things about the television lesson. Then they give suggestions as to what to do as a follow-up. So that we're sure that the lessons are used in the right way. So this kind of a session between the teacher and the pupils is before the television show and following the television show. That's right. Both times. My job is to help the teachers to use the television to the best advantage and also to help them to learn modern methods of teaching.

Yes, you're actually there to utilize the television fully and also to train the teachers, are you not? That's a double function. I have a Samoan principal who does a lot of the administrative work. Well, I noticed while we were waiting in the room there, we started to go for the television set. The room immediately got quiet. The children's faces turned up from their mats and their small desks and they started to watch. They're interested and they don't want to miss any of it. You notice they sit on the floor on mats. That's traditional with the schools. But they're ready to listen. Well, Veneto was mentioning the other day that I asked her whether or not the children really viewed this as an entertainment device. No, no, they don't. And she said far from it that they really didn't know what it was as an entertainment device. The only time they'd ever seen television, it was a teaching tool. That's right. That's the first thing they haven't seen television at all until they saw it in school. And this is rather typical of the attention.

You know, she doesn't take her eyes from the sight even though she yawns. That's seven o'clock in the morning. I can't blame her. I was yawning too. Now, this is a Samoan language lesson. That surprised me a little bit. I thought that one of your primary functions was to teach English. And yet, the lessons and these primers that were handed out by the television people are all in Samoan. Why is that, Marge? We teach beginning reading in Samoan. You see, all beginning reading is based upon the children's experiences before they come to school. So, of course, their experiences are with Samoan. And they know the Samoan language. But we do teach them the skills which are necessary for reading in any language. At the same time, they have two lessons in oral English every day. So, they're acquiring a good understanding and speaking vocabulary in English. Now, later on in a year or two years, when we start to teach them to read in English, they can combine these skills, these reading skills, which they've learned through the use of Samoan language,

with these skills in speaking and understanding, which they've learned in the oral English. Going into this other classroom where Veneto was teaching was a particularly interesting thing for me, because I think it showed another use to which you were putting television. The lesson at this time was in life-saving, which is hardly part of a regular curriculum, although I know you have this huge health and hygiene program that's going out over the set. It's a community service, really, that you're performing, isn't it? Well, we use the television in every way that we possibly can use it to help the people and to teach the children, and they do live near the sea, and they do need to know about artificial respiration, which was the theme of this particular lesson. What other things do you cover? Are there health problems and sanitation problems and things like that? They've done quite a lot with these problems, with the health and sanitation, keeping the homes clean, the grounds clean, the homes are pretty clean,

but picking things up off the ground so that they don't have empty cans for mosquitoes and this sort of thing. Marge, what particularly do you find in television good for? What subjects? English? Well, it's good for all subjects. It can be used for any subject, and you see we are using it for all subjects, and quite successfully. The fine staff at the television studio are using this electronic method to teach practically everything, and it's amazing what's happening in the classroom. Marge, thank you very much. I know that you're very happy here, and I hope that you'll, your next two years, will be just as full of promise for you. Well, it's a great challenge, quite interesting, and I'm glad to be here. Thank you. Of course, the answer to whether this project really works lies up in the mountains and valleys of American Samoa, because that's where the children are,

two thousand of them who must be taught. Chief Pula? Hello, Pa. Hello, Pa. Chief Pula, you've spent 36 years teaching American Samoa and children. What do you think of the new project? Well, to be frank with you, the program, especially, you're just beginning with it, it's very good. Do you think it's getting through to the people, to the children? Well, everybody, especially in villages where we have our TV set, we have, I think, almost 90% of the people in every locality, you've seen, want to enjoy this program. What about the parents, sir? Are they behind the project? Are they carrying it through at home? Well, most of them, especially those who now begin to understand, because the first objection parents had, how could this box take the place of attention?

So once that was conquered by, when the parents were briefed by our Palanghi principles in the schools, they understood it, and they are all for it now. So the parents really are backing up. Palanghi is a Samoan word for a white man. For white man. I see. Well, I have just really one final question to ask you, Chief. What do you feel are the educational needs of Samoa going to be in the next 10 years? According to the population, not at 10 years, we are going to double up the population here. And it's going to be the major concern of the Department of Education to produce mortgages. And we know from the economical point of view, we cannot send away very many people to the United States to be trained as qualified teachers. And through this media of television, we believe we'll solve the problem.

So if we are going to concentrate our program, you know, only teaching the youngsters how to speak and how to understand all the subject money at school, but also should be concentrate on the training of our personnel. Thank you very much, Chief Pula. This is David Proudit for National Educational Television in Pango Pango, American Samoa. . .

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