TV REVIEWS : MTV Pace Doesn’t Add Up for Educational Math Series for Teens

How to make math relevant to the MTV generation? “Futures,” a new PBS instructional series for teen-agers, gives it a disappointing try. The 12-part series begins today and continues throughout the week at 2:30 p.m. on KCET Channel 28.

Garfield High School math teacher Jaime Escalante, of “Stand and Deliver” fame, hosts frenetic 15-minute segments in a classroom setting. (KCET is showing two installments a day, back to back.) Guests include architect Frank Gehry, Indy 500 champion Danny Sullivan, actor Kadeem Hardison of “A Different World,” film director James Cameron and others in fields that range from agriculture and fashion design to aeronautics.

It’s all aimed at making teen-agers realize that math plays an important part in a wide array of exciting careers. A worthy goal, but the format--and breakneck MTV pace--seem self-defeating.

In the architecture and fashion design segments selected for review, the action fidgets back and forth between brief interaction in the classroom and remarkably dry, taped interviews with the experts. Gehry’s inspirational enthusiasm for architecture--”try yourself, test yourself, let yourself be free to be childlike”--is cut off, for instance, as viewers are whisked away to one of many less-than-snappy film clips.

The shows may be of value to teachers as a means of initiating dialogue with students, but the early-afternoon broadcast time and the choppy format make them a dubious prospect for the casual viewer.