STILL OFF TO SEE THE ‘WIZARD’

Television’s first science teacher, “Mr. Wizard,” doesn’t think too much of the new breed of television scientists.

“I have sort of a strange position to be critical of (the new science shows) because it is science,” says Don Herbert, who has taught science to kids on the tube since 1951. “But with them it has to be dressed up or sugarcoated. Somehow it has to be a mad scientist who does crazy things for humor or have some puppet. They’re always dreaming up something, some element to top off the science to make it palatable. Science itself is magic and they don’t let the science just shine for itself,” says Herbert, 76.

Herbert’s wife Norma, who handles his business affairs, adds, “They’re not really science teachers, like Don is, they just want to make it fun and tra-la-la-la-la. The reason he was on so long is because people really got something out of it. We still get letters from people who say that ‘because of you I am a . . . ‘ doctor or scientist or teacher.”

The original show, “Watch Mr. Wizard,” ran on NBC from 1951 to 1965 and then from 1971 to 1972. Herbert did science updates for “How About” from 1979 to 1989. Although the series has now stopped production, “Mr. Wizard’s World,” which has run on Nickelodeon since 1983, continues to air weekdays at 6 a.m.

“Mr. Wizard’s” trademark was that he always worked with a youthful assistant (usually age 10 to 12) and demonstrated experiments that viewers could repeat at home. He showed children such things as how to get an egg into a milk bottle, how to push a needle through a balloon without popping it and how to lower the boiling point of water with an ice cube.

“I started the hands-on inquiry to hold the interest of the kids for that half-hour of television,” he recalls.

“We didn’t have much of a budget and would use things like a glass instead of a beaker and that reflected what the kids had at home,” he says.

Herbert, who also has produced the “Mr. Wizard’s Science Video Library” and books for kids, including “Mr. Wizard’s Supermarket Science,” is currently at work on a Nickelodeon series--to debut in March of 1994--directed toward science teachers.