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The educational power structure as it were the superintendent the principal the national associations and so on. I do not think I am afraid of potential solutions to the enormous problems confronting them. Do not automatically think of what is the role of instructional television in helping to solve this problem. And we saw the project on the improvement of televised instruction to full of opportunity one which would help in upgrading if you will our own capacity given place we would in fact be worthy of it. On the other hand some lever in place which many of us hardly think there's anyone in this room with this great thing that
perhaps Mert and so this required a director of very unusual passages. Along a very extremely helpful consultant and discussing these matters Dr Nelson Dr Nelson is retards. I work as hard. I go back to my job. Illinois Doctor Nelson seems to work and does in fact work. Now that he's retired I'm afraid this will bring on a collapse within a short period of time. But at any rate the doctor is retired he's simply a consultant education consultant. Many organizations and I repeat to you now
he has in the past for his retirement been for many years with the Scarsdale high school at that time and as far as I know. In the country then went on to become treasurer and Associate Program Director for the fund for the Advancement of Education Program Director of the education vision of the Ford Foundation the honorary doctorates from several major institutions and still has significant appointments with major projects and activities involved primarily with education about the country. So finally I asked him not finally. At first we asked him if he would serve as director of this project. He reluctantly
retired on a full time basis. Very well. But he would again to do that. Finally we want to make this perfectly clear. That's Dr. Nelson. I think I should make it perfectly clear. He has accepted the acting director of the project until such time as we can find out a replacement for him. Those of us associated with the project wish that this were not the case that we were not so to speak under the gun to get a replacement for him but it may occur. We will shortly and this is because this is solely due to his request. Well with this said
I think it's now appropriate for me to turn the roster over to Dr Nelson who will discuss with you the concept of the development of the project on the improvement of televised instruction. Thank you very much Chuck. As of 10 o'clock this morning I made myself listen to you no way. So far as any Evy was concerned because I became a dues paying individual member of the individual members division of an AB So whereas I would have had to say friends and fellow educators which I would think would still be true I can now add to this fellow members of an IEP and I suspect that I am the youngest and the newest on the shortest in membership in the
association but I'm proud that this affiliation represents merely a new act in the expression of confidence and faith in the enterprise for which the Association and its various divisions have stood. From the beginning. In listening to Dick Bell comment about his having doctors academic robes to Dong foundation garments these of the project I find myself a little wondering what my own attire at this point should be how it should be described having DAW foundation garments. I'm not sure what kind of drapery I now have around but whether it be diaphanous or more solid I can say with all great confidence and assurance that the enterprise in which we together are associated is one to which the full commitment
of each and every one of us is certainly clear. And when I say this I want particularly to say that it would have been far more appropriate excepting on a strictly pro forma protocol basis if what I am about to undertake saying were being said by either Dick Bal who is the two thirds time associate director of this project or by Lew Rhodes whom I think everybody here knows and if by chance or anybody it doesnt Dick. I let him see the cut of your jib. I mean Lou thank you. Thank you. Thank you Lou Rhodes who has come to us on a full time basis as assistant director of the project. And from the Post director of the Central Michigan Educational Television Council and as a member of the faculty of the University of Central Michigan University.
I'd like to begin by making one comment which goes back a decade 10 years ago when I was a freshman member of the staff of the education division of the Ford Foundation. Haris cornea and I talked at length and on many occasions about the development of a proposal the development of an operation which in its basic and essential ingredients was a forerunner of what we are now calling the national project for the improvement of televised instruction. Hari I believe correctly perceived at that early date that the future of instruction in and through the use of television was not going to stand or fall essentially And basically in terms of our technological sophistication as important as that is but rather in terms of the perceptions and the
insights which this brought to bear upon the whole an enduring process of learning. And I were able to name this project. I would not call it by its rather interesting alphabetical designation P which suggests if it is pity that we are and evolved in one would hope there would be at least a pitty pat that goes with it. But I would prefer to think of it as a project for the improvement of learning because in the long run we in the field of education I'm sure are committed only committed to instruction as this is a support for and a necessary antecedent to an accompaniment up the process of learning. But education being then a dynamic process that is unique and inherent and universal to the individual. If we wish to improve
learning and to do so through the improvement of instruction as an organized approach to learning we cannot afford ever to dismiss the priority of what is learned and what takes place in the field of learning. Television them as perceived by some of us among which number I would include myself is not basically the end of our purpose. It is at its highest point a highly important complimentary inspiring initiative resource to improve teaching and through the improvement of teaching or instruction to improve learning. And so I would make my first I think and perhaps most significant comment about the orientation brought by the present staff members to this project namely that we would place the emphasis upon
instruction in the first instance. That is our number one priority here and on television as a highly important and significant resource a port for instruction. But we are not as I see it likely to place our major emphasis upon the improvement of the technology or the hardware. Although like not aging the tremendous importance of this to the quality of what we can do to improve instruction. And so there are a number of priorities at the present time which we in our last two months of discussions have begun at least tentatively to identify priorities with which as of the moment we believe this project should concern itself. We think number one priority in terms of the services to be rendered through field Sultan team is
to institutions school systems colleges universities those institutions which either are already involved in the use of televised instruction or have reached a point of commitment to entering upon the use of televised instruction. These field consultant teams we believe can most effectively and immediately be useful in the mainstream at the level of the Elementary and the secondary schools and school systems of the country. May I add public and private sectarian and nonsectarian as well. And so I think the number one priority in the incidents up time so far as the dirty hands technique of action is concerned will largely concentrate in the months immediately ahead beginning we hope at so early a time as February the 1st in the sending to requesting schools and school systems a field consultant
team up from three to five persons who will remain on site for a period up from three to five days. Working with in a workshop or relationship with the local school people either in terms of improving the televised television operation they now are a party to or in refining and perhaps making more realistic their plans for anticipated use of television. The second priority as we see it is the priority. Of trying to somehow or other by I was going to say hook or crook. Perhaps it will be both get ahead of the law which presently confronts us in America's classrooms one and a half million teachers prepare done train and a time an under teacher education
programs either at UC didn't do the use of television and its arrival on the scene or since its arrival essentially OBE Libbie as to its existence and in the long run we believe that teacher education must in and of itself become an active in participating and utilizing partner in the enterprise. This I would suspect in terms of the experiences that most if not all of us in this room will have had in one way or another. We have somewhat different level of problem fraught with different kinds of difficulties and with essential e a different kind of institutional culture. So that while I would not suppose that what this project will in fact accomplish even at its best in the field up teacher education is likely to occur so rapidly so significantly or so widespread. I base as is more likely to
be the fact in terms of the Elementary and the secondary schools. But certainly we regard these two as priorities of attention out of effort. There is a third priority which I think we must also recognize and certainly one that we have grappled with here a bit namely how do we touch a functioning believable mutually complimentary and supportive basis with the other sectors of educational enterprise also interested in the same basic kinds of problems with which anybody is concerned and with which I in particular was concerned. To say for illustration that we can't possibly hope to establish a structured working relationship with all of these organizations I think would be obviously a truism. But to say that we should not undertake to
touch base for purposes of promoting meaningful dialogue communication understanding the resource of insight and of initiative of imagination as to what can be done I think would be to rob this project of the very root sources of its ultimate and long range of vitality. And so we have already taken a number of beginning steps in this direction. We have consulted with such groups as w c d e. We have talked formally with representatives of EO T. We have talked with a number of others and Lou in particular more frequently than have I. We have had a one day meeting of a single day ad hoc advisory committee a broadly representative of various areas of concern about televised instruction and we intend to broaden and to continue and to cultivate all of the opportunities which either circumstance
or insight give us the opportunity to touch base with in relation not to ask a committee of the hope of American education to make the critical policy decisions or the critical action to say but at least to plow into the into the milieu into the plight of our concern and consideration all of the relevant insights which people anywhere organized or on Orchid snoops may have to contribute. This in itself is a large order. Now included in these groups. Let me at. Many of us I would suppose I'd spray specifically the three present members of the staff really. That if we're talking about instruction and talking about education and talking about teacher education per se and specifically you can't very well think in these terms and in these areas
unless you also take into account the insights the experience and the commitment the participating commit the articles of faith of people who are in other terms regarded as scholars. I don't want to get into a pettifogging distinction between the scholar on the one hand and the practitioner on the other. But let me illustrate specifically one aspect of this. One of the most brilliant young women I've ever known a graduate of one of our distinguished private women's colleges in New England with a 50 year MIT degree behind her from Harvard imbued with a Great to see you know an idealism to teach and to teach in the elementary school taught following her mit year at Harvard for two years in a what Harold Goren's would have called and still would call a Brahmin community. In other words a star's day a suburban community. But this did not
satisfy her own sense of commitment to the feeling that she ought to be playing a more meaningful personal role in the hard problems of our inner cities. And so in her third year she went to a large Midwestern city that has this problem in abundance and on the first day of the opening of school as a fourth grade teacher she found herself confronted with 40 or 45 black faces. Now this was completely foreign to her experience. She was not born and raised in a community where this was a common denominator of the culture. She did not attend institutions where she was cheek by jowl with it. She'd had none of our pre-professional clinical experience in such a setting and a first two years of responsible teaching at not brought her in contact with it. But using her common sense she began to get in communication with the group and for the first two or three days it went beautifully. But on the fourth day in trying to extend this area of communication she
said to the youngsters began this line of questioning what does your father do. And I need not tell you who are here present that this immediately rang down the iron curtain of communication and it was not until two weeks later when the mother of one of these youngsters said to her you ought to know your difficulty is a very simple one that you asked an embarrassing question which the majority of these youngsters could not answer and I would submit to you that even had this radiant and able and devoted and committed teacher had any realistic exposure even theoretically to what could have been perceived in cultural anthropology or sociology you might well have avoided this kind of impasse and traumatic experience. So to say then that as weird ball business problem of instruction of learning of individuals in our society today in terms of the
realities of the ethnic and the culture and the political mobility. Yes. Upward if you will horizontally if you wish. It is imperative that teachers be attuned not only theoretically but clinically prior to embarking upon fully responsible classroom experience to the realities of our social and cultural and political changes. Not one of these is quite clear. It seems to me that the problems that are quite evident with regard to the economic change in our society until quite recently indeed it was two years ago more than 50 percent of all the gainfully employed people in this country were engaged in producing things and less than 50 percent were engaged in providing services. But as of the latest report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics 51 and a half percent of all gainfully employed people in this country are engaged in improved fighting services less than 50 percent are
engaged in producing things and to the first great economic and cultural revolution in this country the move from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy. We are now facing an iron in the beginning stages of a tremendous new revolution of economic and social and cultural nature. The revolution from an industrial economy to an increasingly service oriented economy. But in a service oriented economy the importance of education more education a better education becomes a critical a critical factor in determining how far indeed the individual will be able to maintain some degree of freedom and of Independence. To those who looked upon television as a resource for learning and for teach as so many of my administrative friends of the past have done and I am sorry the state continued to do looking upon it as a source of
problems rather than as a resource for tracking the inevitable problems they confront. There is a need for an almost about the face reorientation of the attitude of a perception in education. So in the group that this project presently perceives a need to drop on as a resource people as been taught are the people in the social and behavioral sciences. The anthropologists the demographers the psychologists the sociologists and yes the economists and the political scientists not merely the humanists and certainly not merely. The physical scientists are all important and so we've been trying to touch base with this sector of American concern and American wisdom and educational contributions to be made.
And there is forth another priority which is of a completely different order which perhaps it would be more seeming for someone else in the E.P. to refer to but I dare say the effort the $300000 Grant made by the Ford Foundation to support this project was made for support over a three year period. This grant was made in November of 1964 and we are now well nigh at the end of the first calendar year. So ostensibly we have two more calendar years to go on to the present grant but it was coupled with a if not an active invitation or at least a very strong indication of probable hospitality on the part of the foundation for a second and continuing larger grant for a longer period of time following the expiration of the present Grant. Let me be very specific and if I urge I'm sure you will correct me Bill. While there is no commitment to making a further grant there is at
least a commitment to us to explore seriously with anybody this possibility. Well 1 priority then we need to bear in mind is that if this is a project which has a potential and hope for longevity beyond two more years the movies we might not ought to be the kind of moods which does not proceed from mad food temporary short range objectives. They ought to be the kind which will open up perceptions and ideas for the longer haul they ought to be the kind that could lay a sound basis for the longer effort. And if you look at it in these terms it may be that to my case in terms of the immediate will be most clearly honored if we take into account the longer haul and the longer need and perhaps the great advantages.
If I were now to go beyond this and try to essay any more of a report to you it would be a report on what we hope to do which is no reported talk. It is really a profession of faith. But I would like to conclude within the limits of time and of your tolerance and of my wit and by saying we hope very shortly to have the opportunity to meet with and to talk intelligently with the board of the instructional division of anybody. This we have not done at this point feeling that we wanted at least to have some of the kinds of pertinent questions about which guidance from this group could be particularly useful. We also hope to have in the relatively near future constituted an ongoing we call it permanent
but permanent is a relative matter. An ongoing national advisory committee to the project. I'm sure that if I were at liberty at this point to divulge the names of some of those that we hope will receive and accept invitations to serve on such a board there would be enthusiastic endorsement and approval of this group. For those whom we have at the moment in mine we hope to have the development of the at least skeletal Cod drain field consultants and field consultant teams identified and to have had one or more multiple day workshops for these people during the period between now and the middle of January and hope to have been in a position by the 1st of February to begin our first honest to goodness field consulting
work we have left till a little later date. The development and organization of regional or national seminars in this field. Although that was clearly a part of the commitment under the proposal and the terms of the Grant finally let me say I appreciate no end Chuck MacIntyre's Porth right factual and accurate comment relative to my own present relationship to the project. I described this to my wife the other night as a national project with a full time assistant director a two thirds time associate director and a sometime acting director. I look forward to the success of the project in substantial terms of its having a full time director because it deserves that time and attention. But to
the ongoing work of the project in the program it would be my fervent hope and intent to maintain as active and I would hope as contributed by relationship to it as time and circumstance justified. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Lester. I think there may very well be occasion for discussion of questions and the like to any of us here. But it is two o'clock and some of you may want to leave so let's just take a minute or two for those of you who want to go to other meetings. Go and open up for discussion. RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT
RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT. Of course. Sir John replied that I thought it was her daughter after Oprah.
I'll bet some of you are stained presumably to take advantage of the invitation to participate in discussion from the floor. Or are you simply sitting around to visit with people I'm not just sure of what you're doing. You're welcome to visit if that's what you want to do. This was the first.
Well I presume you're around to visit with each other. Are there some question or discussion. Yes yes. We don't want to keep you away from that either.
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Series
1965 National Association of Educational Broadcasters Convention
Episode
Instructional Division Luncheon
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-ws8hk710
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Description
Description
No description available
Date
1965-11-02
Topics
Environment
Public Affairs
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:40:46
Credits
AAPB Contributor Holdings
University of Maryland
Identifier: 5503 (University of Maryland)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:30:00?
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Citations
Chicago: “1965 National Association of Educational Broadcasters Convention; Instructional Division Luncheon,” 1965-11-02, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-ws8hk710.
MLA: “1965 National Association of Educational Broadcasters Convention; Instructional Division Luncheon.” 1965-11-02. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-ws8hk710>.
APA: 1965 National Association of Educational Broadcasters Convention; Instructional Division Luncheon. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-ws8hk710