Tool or Exploitation? : TV Sends New Signal to Schools

Last spring, Gahr High School Principal Nadine Barreto witnessed the unimaginable.

Instead of grousing about their teachers, two students who were waiting in her office to be disciplined were debating the case of John Tower, the embattled defense secretary nominee.

As far as Barreto is concerned, there is no question about what sparked the Cerritos students’ apparently avid interest in the news. It was “Channel One,” a daily television news program that was shown in a seven-week test run last March at Gahr and five other high schools across the country. Stories about Tower, the Eastern Airlines strike and Japanese education, among others, were served up by youthful anchors in a 12-minute video blitzkrieg, embellished with flashy graphics, music and maps.

‘A Whole Consciousness’

“High school students don’t read newspapers or watch TV news,” Barreto said recently. Watching “Channel One” gave them “a whole consciousness about another world other than their own.”

At the other test high schools in Kansas, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Massachusetts, the enthusiasm among local educators was just as high. Despite such positive reviews, however, state and national education officials, from California Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig to the National PTA, were aghast. They charged that the show was exploiting a captive teen-age audience for commercial gain.

“TV is a powerful tool,” said Honig, an advocate of technology in schools. “That’s why we want to fight this battle now. We want television to be an educational tool, not a tool of commercial interests.” Although television has been used in schools at all grade levels since the 1950s, educators still wrestle with how to use the technology to the fullest advantage. The advent of “Channel One”--which already has spurred imitators--has stirred old questions about the usefulness and propriety of the medium as an educational aid. To many educators, teaching with television, as with computers, can help students succeed in an increasingly technological age, while to others, it is a frill that good teachers do not need.

Beamed via satellite by Whittle Communications, a media company based in Knoxville, Tenn., “Channel One” is being offered to schools free--along with $50,000 worth of additional enticements, including a television for every classroom and two video recorders. Each school also receives a satellite dish that will pipe in the Whittle program. Schools can keep the equipment for as long as they show “Channel One.”

The catch is that the schools have to broadcast all 12 minutes of the program at the same time to most classes--and, to the horror of many prominent educators, that includes two minutes of commercials pitching such products as Coca Cola, Levi’s jeans and Ford.

Shortly after its debut, the program was banned from public schools by officials in California and New York, which had not even participated in the pilot project.

Observing the brouhaha over “Channel One,” Ted Turner announced that his Cable News Network was plunging into the classroom, too, but with a commercial-free, 15-minute daily news show called “CNN Newsroom.” Three other cable programmers, Discovery Channel, C-SPAN and the Arts & Entertainment Cable Network, also are offering new shows geared for classroom use.

Some observers say the new educational thrust is intended in part to help repair the tarnished image of the cable television industry, which is under fire in Congress for allegations that it is an “unregulated monopoly.”

Others, however, attribute it to “the quiet revolution” of the videocassette recorder, which has helped reawaken educators to television’s potential as a teaching tool.

“Televisions and VCRs are common audio-visual equipment now,” said Linda Heller, director of educational services for C-SPAN, a cable channel that began airing educational short subjects on government affairs last week. “Schools are looking for more ways to utilize this equipment.”

Earlier this year, ABC News began marketing interactive video discs that team up computers with television to give teachers and students access to news clips from its archives. The computer drives the video disc, which contains an hour’s worth of news stories on subjects such as the 1988 presidential election and the civil rights movement. A teacher can call up a clip of Rosa Parks talking about bus boycotts in the South in the 1950s, for instance, for a lesson on civil rights leaders. Or a student can use the video disc to compile a video term paper.

The video disc is “much more useful than CNN or ‘Channel One,’ ” ABC News spokesman David Bohrman said. “They (teachers and students) can control it and use what they want. It makes TV a useful tool, instead of a passive device.”

According to Paul Saettler, a Cal State Sacramento professor who has written a book on the history of American educational technology, televisions were first foisted on teachers in the 1950s by the business community. The idea was that “master teachers” would be shown giving lessons in their area of expertise, which would reduce the number of teachers and classrooms needed and allow education to be delivered more efficiently.

But the attempt fizzled, mainly because teachers, who were still needed to run the television, were unwilling participants.

“Most teachers felt neglected because they were forced to stop everything they were doing (and) tune in at a particular time,” Saettler said. “They felt like assistants. So they were hostile. There was a lot of resistance.”

Most schools have had at least one television for years, although many use their sets only for special news events and, occasionally, to baby-sit classes. Today, observers say, the majority also have VCRs. And it is the ubiquity of the VCR, they note, that has put teachers more in control of, and more apt to use, the television.

According to the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, the video recorder is, after computers, “easily the second-most prevalent new technology” in schools. Ninety-one percent of schools nationally have VCRs, compared to 95% with computers, a study last year by the federal technology assessment office showed.

‘Real Revolution’

Because both “Channel One” and “CNN Newsroom” are broadcast in the middle of the night, teachers must preset their VCRs to tape the shows, but they can play them back at their convenience later in the day.

Said Gary Rowe, vice president and marketing director for Turner Educational Services: “The VCR represents a real revolution in the way the television screen can be used. The teacher decides when to switch it on and how much to play. That is a totally different way of using television. . . . We expect the results to be very different this time than what had been the case in the past.”

Another change, other programmers say, is an emphasis on making the programs “teacher friendly” by allowing more flexibility in when shows can be used. Under federal fair-use guidelines, schools can tape and show any publicly broadcast program once within 10 days of the original air date, unless the producer grants an exemption.

Fair-Use Doctrine

Although many teachers are unaware of the fair-use doctrine, those who have knowledge of it say that it discourages television use. Teachers need the flexibility to use a television program when it fits in with course outlines.

“Say you’re working on rocks in science,” said Samuel La Zarus, who teaches sixth grade at Vine Street Elementary School in Hollywood. “If there is a program on about the human body, it has little value to you then.”

In response to teachers’ complaints about taping restrictions, Discovery Channel recently announced that it will permit teachers to legally show its new hourlong classroom program, “Assignment: Discovery,” up to a year after the original airing.

Discovery has also deleted hard-sell product advertising, substituting “PBS-style billboards” of sponsor greetings that, because they will air at the beginning and end of the program, can easily be edited out. The show, which will feature regular Discovery Channel science and nature documentaries shortened to about 25 minutes in length, will be shown five days a week starting Sept. 18.

“Slowly but surely, the educational community is realizing the importance of television in the lives of their students,” said Nancy Gallion Stover, Discovery’s director of educational services. “That creates a new marketplace for programmers. . . . The question is, what is the right way to use (television) in the classroom?”

Among those who believe that they have the answer is “Channel One” founder Christopher Whittle, 42, whose $185-million Whittle Communications media company built its fortune on magazines for hair salons and doctors’ offices.

The idea for “Channel One,” Whittle said recently, came from a teacher who said schools needed a “Today Show” for teen-agers.

‘Lot of Resonance’

“That had a lot of resonance with us,” he said. “So we put an R and D (research and development) team on the idea.”

When the show finally made its debut last spring, Whittle admitted, he was unprepared for the uproar. But he said “Channel One” will return next March, this time aiming for 1,000 schools.

He freely acknowledged that making money is at least as strong a motive behind “Channel One” as providing an educational service--and he sees nothing wrong with that. He said he expects his company to earn $90 million from the show’s advertisers next year.

“Some people in the education establishment are acting as though there are no commercials in American schools,” Whittle said. “That’s flat-out denial. . . . There is not a service provided to American schools that is not a profit-making operation. So to say a news service can’t do that, I don’t understand the logic.”

Requirement Dropped

Whittle has since dropped the requirement that all students in a school watch the program. The company has also expanded its satellite offerings to include up to 1,000 hours of non-commercial educational programming and information for teachers, which conceivably could include “CNN Newsroom” and Discovery Channel shows, Whittle spokesman David Jarrard said.

Despite those improvements, critics of “Channel One” remain relentless. Peggy Charren, president of the Cambridge-based nonprofit advocacy group called Action for Children’s Television, has called it a “pact with the devil.” New York state’s Board of Regents banned the program outright, saying it violated a state constitutional prohibition against using school property for private gain.

California has barred the program--on the grounds that school districts lack the authority to require the viewing of commercials--and has threatened to dock a portion of a school’s state funding for every minute spent showing the ads.

“Channel One” “cedes control of the curriculum to an outside party who is not primarily interested in educating students but in selling advertisements,” state schools chief Honig said. “We should take seriously the sanctity of what we teach and not condone surrendering the curriculum for 12 minutes a day to a commercial or political interest.”

Larry Lucas, who is superintendent of the ABC Unified School District, which includes Gahr High, said his district will heed the state’s warning--reluctantly. “Staff, students and parents at Gahr found (the program) to be a very positive experience,” he said. “It led to teachers utilizing it for purposes of discussion and assisting students to look at the world at large. I hate to lose that. . . . We certainly can’t afford to produce (a program such as ‘Channel One’) ourselves.”

As for the commercials, Lucas said: “There did not seem to be a rush toward 501 jeans or Coca Cola. Kids were not there glued to the commercials.”

Whittle said his company has received calls from California school districts that want to sign up for “Channel One” despite the state’s position, but he declined to name them.

Although teachers are divided on the issue of commercials, many say they could make good use of a news program geared to students.

One obstacle, though, in any type of programming, is time. Teachers must tape and preview a program before showing it to their class and then plan a lesson around it.

And then there are logistical problems of getting a television set into the classroom, a major hassle for a teacher who is located on a second floor or in a bungalow. In the upper grades, students can help move the machinery, but at the elementary level, that can be dangerous. The Los Angeles school district puts “Hazard Alert” stickers on the tall video equipment carts because of reports from Ohio, Illinois and West Virginia of schoolchildren who were killed when the television set they were moving fell off the cart and crushed them.

But such grim happenings are rare.

Teachers who regularly teach with television say that it is a valuable aid, when used properly. Many say they use television programs to help students learn to think analytically. Some show programs as a teaser for a new lesson. Others say there is nothing better than TV to bring a potentially dry or complicated subject to life.

“We studied cells last year,” said Andria Gordon, who teaches fifth and sixth grades at Vine Street Elementary School. “I wanted the children to see how cells divide, so I showed them a part of a show on ‘Nova’ (a PBS science series) about cells. Later, kids told me that they dreamed about cells and they talked to other kids about cells. TV can really make a concept real.”