H - Technology

Sometime during late 1967 or early 1968, a colleague, who had
formerly worked as an audio systems designer of stereophonic sound
equipment, gave me a photocopy of an article about the announcement
of the EVR (Electronic Video Recorder), akin to what is referred to
during the 1980's as a VCR (Video Cassette Recorder). A
prognostication was included by the author of the article that had
exciting implications for educators:

       . . And Mom may have to add adjusting the little EVR
       schoolhouse in her living room to the skills of making great
       coffee and picking among boxes and pelletized bleaches.
       Sounds kind of creepy, doesn't it? The kiddies will need only
       to go to the mailbox for the week's audio cassettes and EVR
       cartridges with only telephone contacts with teachers or
       computers that answer questions about the canned school
       lessons.

Although tongue-in-cheek and possibly a little cynical, this
suggestion of such an educational aide is altogether too slowly
developing into reality, a reality that can save millions of angry
tax-payers' dollars.

Another possibility was posed when cable television was emerging in
the early 1970's. A writer proposed that "all the schools in America
could very well be replaced by television sets in the next 5 to 10
years"; the article was accompanied by a photograph of a disabled
high school student who "communicates" to school for history lessons
by way of a two-way cable television system. School administrators,
conscious primarily of developing methods of job preservation, self
maintenance and extension rather than effective delivery of
educational products and services, are not aware that the students,
in their own minds, have indeed replaced school with television as a
primary source of information. A former U.S. Commissioner of
Education lamented that high school graduates had spent 18000 hours
watching T.V. compared to 12000 hours in the classroom. The 1985
Roper Organization Report demonstrates that the public has more
confidence in television stations than in schools. (74% of
respondents in a December 1984 survey consider television stations
to be doing an excellent or good job as opposed to only 54% for
schools.) And perhaps this irreversible inevitability is right!
Experiments such as that cited elsewhere herein demonstrate that
students remember better, by virtue of the medium, information is
delivered through television than from either a lecturer or text.
Content, too, is rendered much more interesting through television
programming than from reading or hearing a lecture. For example,
innovative history educators, who don't suffer from the "frustrated
actor" syndrome, realize that presenting video dramatizations of
historical events, followed by discussion, is much more effective
than having the students hear about them from a lecturer. The TV
series "Time Tunnel," produced during the 1960's, was an excellent
education-through-entertainment history review or preview. At this
moment, my wife is learning much more about the Cuban revolution
from watching a television program, "Che," than she ever learned
from history professors. This concept was convincingly demonstrated
at a convention of the CCSSA (Community College Social Science
Association) held during the 1970's in the Sheraton Universal Hotel
in the heart of medialand Hollywood. A flyer was distributed at that
convention which contained these poignant remarks:

     Education is being chastised for not being able to teach the
     "basic three R's" like "the good old days." What society does
     not realize, is that our young people are living in a media
     oriented society and are using a substitute diversion to
     replace reading and writing - Television. THEREFORE IT BEHOOVES
     EDUCATION TO USE THE MEDIA IN A POSITIVE HUMANISTIC APPROACH .
     . . THEN THE LEARNING PROCESS FOLLOWS. . . School
     administrators are baffled by the inability of many of our
     young people to learn as they did. . .

This is not to advocate the present trivial programming content of
television; there is an obvious need for an increase in the quality
of programming. Nor does it advocate neglect of learning to read and
write, communications skills that are very important. Analysts
estimate that the English spoken on the majority of TV programs is
at the fourth grade level. Dennis Adams and Mary Fuchs, in their
"Toward Global Communication Networks: How Television is Forging New
Thinking Patterns" in the January 1986 T.H.E. Journal, fault the
lowest common denominator target audience objective that prevents
television viewers from developing critical thinking abilities and
expanding vocabularies. "Lack of intellectual complexity and
sentence length is another problem. Television script writers tend
to stick to obvious concepts and use sentences of about five words
in length. Sentences in non-fiction books average more than 20. . .
. [Television has] a negative effect on both writing, language and
thinking skills." The television medium is not criticized; the
content of TV is. Like every other tool, it has to be used correctly
to have a positive effect.

One can argue that the television medium is more visual than verbal,
that it presents information more realistically than print, and 20
word sentences would be inappropriate on TV. People do not generally
engage in conversations using sentences as long as 20 words.

School administrators do not seem to understand that, since the late
1940's, the first language a child learns is television and
consequently better understands the information that is presented
through television. School personnel likewise refuse to acknowledge
that television has eliminated the need for lectures. There is no
need to lecture a class on a chemistry experiment, for example, when
the students could turn on the television set to hear and watch a
Nobel Prize winning chemist discuss and demonstrate it, providing,
of course, that the presentation is appropriately packaged.
Appropriately packaged video lessons do not have to resemble the
"Miss Frump" classroom in order to be effective educational tools.
On the contrary: the more a presentation is like a classroom, the
less likely it can be an effective educational tool, because the
psychological barriers that arise in the classroom are transferred
into the television presentation.

Ironically, although schools rarely incorporate television as a
means of information delivery, some teachers use television programs
that children watch at home as bases for classroom activities.
Meyrowitz suggests that this is "a new means of 'leading' children
by running after them as quickly as possible."

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     Wait for me; I'm your leader!

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As schools were re-opening in the fall of 1984, ABC News provided an
excellent documentary program on the "Nation at Risk" consequence of
inattention to upgrading education in America. The basis for this
program was the report of a similar name prepared the previous year
by the National Commission on Excellence in Education. According to
many people interviewed, we need to save the schools in order to
save the children. Although many of the points raised were relevant
and poignant, sufficient emphasis was not devoted to the inevitable
change in procedures and values due to emerging technology. The
general concept of education in this brainwashed society is that it
takes place only in government supported institutions. Television
and computers should be central to the educational process in the
21st Century, and these can be available at home. Very few people
are willing to admit publicly that baby sitting is the primary
practical function of the typical school. Many parents who are
honest, however, privately admit that they don't want their children
at home during the day. For example, after a classroom viewing of a
video presentation about computers' capabilities and an incidental
mention of their potential in education, one adult student
volunteered that she has two teen- age sons and does not want them
at home when she is there. I asked what she does in the summer time.
She responded, "I go crazy."

The so called "decline of American education" does not exist.
Indeed, present-day youth have much more information than their
counterparts in previous generations. It is a different kind of
information, relevant to them, and derived from different sources.
We must remember that institutionalized education is only a small,
and increasingly ineffective, part of a person's total learning
experience. The evaluation of current relevant education cannot use
traditional means of measurement.

Joshua Meyrowitz, in his book No Sense of Place (Oxford University
Press, 1985, p. 138), cites a 1968 report "Crisis at Columbia,"
about what may be considered the first television generation:

     The present generation of young people in our universities is
     the best informed, the most intelligent, and the most
     idealistic this country has ever known. This is the experience
     of teachers everywhere. It is the most sensitive to public
     issues and the most sophisticated in political tactics . .

     The ability, social consciousness and conscience, political
     sensitivity, and honest realism of today's students are a prime
     cause of student disturbances . .

Meyrowitz adds in another section of his book (p. 326):

     Electronic media have been blamed by many critics for the
     recent decline in scores on Scholastic Aptitude Tests. Less
     attention has been paid, however, to the possibility that
     electronic media may aid the development of other forms of
     "intelligence" that we do not yet even know how to name or
     measure. . . It is possible that video and computer games are
     introducing our children to a different way of thinking that
     involves the integration of multiple variables and overlapping
     lines of simultaneous actions. . . It is also conceivable that
     the video game wizards will grow up to find a complex cure for
     cancer.

Dr. Dean Edell, commented in his program of November 13th, 1987
about memory loss in the elderly. Researchers studied the effect of
video games and concluded that playing video games helps seniors
retain mental abilities.

In an article, "What is Television Doing to Real People," in the
September/October 1981 issue of the NEA's publication Today's
Education, Joel Swerdlow reports

     "Some scholars speculate that by relying on the information
     coded in images, TV watchers may be developing hitherto unused
     portions of their brains. . . Other research suggests that the
     average I. Q. may be rising because of children's increased
     capacity to handle spatial visual problems."

One may correctly assert that there is a "decline of traditional
American education," as there probably should be.  Traditional
education stressed the values of a former society.  The
educational establishment is controlled by dinosaur tending
reactionaries who are still attempting to meet the needs of a by-
gone, archaic, obsolete 19th century hierarchical industrial
society and who have failed to recognize the emergence of the
technological age with its rich flow of information through
electronic media.  Indeed, it's no wonder students rebel at the
lack of intellectual stimulation at school after being forced
away from their information rich environment of involvement --
involvement is the key -- with television, home computers and
video games.

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     If the school is to survive, it must maintain a "knowledge
     edge." the school must continue to give students the feeling
     that because of the school they are "in the know." The school
     must adapt to the new information environment.
                - - - - Joshua Meyrowitz

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Tony Schwartz succinctly expresses the dilemma in these excerpted
quotes from his book, The Responsive Chord:

     Educators stress analytic, deductive reasoning, . . [and] would
     like . . students to understand fully something they see or
     hear, and not miss any information. In an age of information
     overload this is a death warrant. The student must learn to
     scan to live. The educator's new job is to sharpen this skill .
     .

     Since the information stored within a child is patterned in a
     different way from previous generations, we are not going to
     reach him with new information patterned in the old print-based
     linear structure. . . The media child demands participation . .
     The education process has to leave space . . to allow the child
     to participate. If the educator does not allow participation
     and anticipate a student's desire to feed back his own
     experience with the education input, our system will push the
     child out of the school entirely. Unfortunately, the present
     education establishment is more concerned with filling time
     than involving students. . .

     The media child . . can fill in, or respond to, or resonate
     with a vast amount of information that he shares with others in
     the class. . . This information common to all children who grow
     up with electronic media is the greatest teaching resource
     available to an educator . . . Concentration, for example, is a
     valuable skill in reading but unimportant in electronic
     learning. Whereas a student must concentrate to block out
     unrelated sensory information while reading, his perceptual
     orchestration is geared by media experiences early in life to
     provide an open channel for electronically mediated
     communication. In reading, the ability to learn depends on the
     ability to concentrate. With electronic media, it is openness
     that counts. Openness permits auditory and visual stimuli more
     direct access to the brain. Moreover, someone who is taught to
     concentrate will fail to perceive many patterns of information
     conveyed by electronic stimuli. . .

     The net effect of media delinquency by educators and our
     failure to research young people's perceptual habits is to
     increase the number of dropouts, both those who leave school
     physically, because they find it intolerable, and those who
     endure the classroom experience but drop out mentally, and thus
     fail to profit by it. It is not simply the case that education
     would be more effective if it spoke through the new technology.
     Rather, because our children learn the language of electronic
     technology before they enter school, we have no choice but to
     speak to them in their native tongue.

Deborah Dashow Ruth amplifies:

     Schools take the young child, who uses a style of imagery
     derived from direct perceptions through all of his senses, and,
     by teaching him the alphabet and its related linear skills of
     reading and writing, effectively reduce the child's sensory
     world to a series of visual abstractions. Unless the
     educational system integrates multisensory experiences into the
     curriculum, youth will continue to categorize school activities
     as separate from -- and irrelevant to - - their own
     multisensorily stimulated lives.

Neither author advocates neglect of the development of literary
skills. Each merely recommends that electronic media use be
increased.

Why have educators not more widely adopted the use of television
technology in education when many advantages are obvious? The
possibility exists that, subconsciously at least, those in control
of educational requirements fear allowing others access to the same
information the "establishment" has. Sociologists understand the
desire for exclusivity to certain information and the consequent
privileges and prestige presumed by certain professions whose
members protect such status by making specious requirements for
entry by others into the professions. Entrants must "pay their
dues." Those in control of the information they think is important
attempt to deprive others of the information in order to remain in
control. Those in the "in" group want to make it difficult for
others to enter the "in" group.

The information educators consider important is available primarily
in the medium (print) which is more difficult to decode than
televised messages. The same information can be provided to a wider
range of perceptive abilities via television in a much more
comprehensible and palatable, therefore more efficient, manner than
via books. Six to eight year old children are as interested in
television programs as adults. The perception of the same content in
a book would require a reading skill not possessed by 6 to 8 year
old children. Indeed, many adults do not possess the necessary level
of reading skill. There is no good reason educators deny such people
access to information otherwise available (at least potentially
available) on televideo informational delivery systems. The apparent
primary reason to deliver information slowly is to keep students
confined for unnecessary and boresome lengths of time. Schools are
tools of confinement.

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     Schools are more houses of detention than attention.

                    - - - Marshall McLuhan.

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Accessing information through print is relatively difficult compared
to the representation of information in a mode more akin to the
reality represented through television. The claim that a "picture is
worth more than a thousand words" has a significant meaning in this
context. Pictures and spoken words on television present actuality
more immediately and accurately than combinations of peculiarly
shaped abstract symbols representing sounds on a page; these require
experience and training to interpret -- television images do not.

Granted, television provides merely a semblance of reality, but it
is a much closer semblance than the abstraction of a printed
message.


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     The instrument can teach, it can illuminate. Yes, it can even
     inspire. but it can do so only to the extent that humans are
     determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it is merely
     lights and wires in a box. -

          ---- Edward R. Murrow

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The emergence of the video disc player and its ability to be
interfaced with a home computer has been touted as the ultimate
learning station. Although experimentation was begun in the late
1970's, this dual technology is not yet economically available in
the educational market [1987]. Preliminary steps with the computer
alone are quite amazing. Some progressive colleges and universities
are so concerned about advantages of computers as educational tools
and the necessity of their students' becoming familiar with them
that they require their incoming students to own their own. And
computers are definitely effective educational tools, providing
instant feedback to student responses. In a speech, "The Shame of
American Education," delivered to an annual American Psychological
Association convention, B. F. Skinner, well-known and respected
father of operant behaviorism, advocates the use of computers as an
effective remedy for the problems facing education:

     Students do not have to be made to study; abundant
     reinforcement is enough. In a well designed instructional
     program, students gobble up their assignments. . .

     It is characteristic of the human species that successful
     action is automatically reinforced. The fascination with video
     games is adequate proof . . . it is all a matter of scheduling
     reinforcements. . .

     We could double the efficiency of education . . by letting each
     student move at his or her own pace [using computers]. . .

     When students move through well-constructed programs at their
     own pace, the so-called problem of motivation is automatically
     solved.

Here is Dr. Owen C. Geer's testimonial that computer aided
instruction  works:

     I was employed . . . as superintendent of the ARAMCO schools in
     Saudi Arabia. Two years later the schools were described by the
     Wall Street Journal as "perhaps the best in the World!" Many
     things took place in the interim but the main event was the
     installation of a system-wide, computer-managed
     software-curriculum. . . it . . individualized the instruction
     and essentially eliminated behavioral problems. . .

The Duval (Florida) County schools were llth from the bottom of the
67 districts in the state as measured by the results of a
standardized state student assessment test. With the use of computer
aided instruction and after-hours telephone assistance from
teachers, students were able to increase their average scores from
56th of the 67 districts to first in both communications and
mathematics. Several other improvements were manifest as a
consequence of the use of this technology, resulting in the U. S.
Department of Education's selection of Duval County Schools as a
national model urban school district.

Positive reinforcement of the acquisition of skills and facts are
not the only advantages of computers. With the addition of
communications equipment (modem -- a device which modulates and
demodulates computer signals which are transmitted and received via
telephone lines), vast quantities of information from many sources,
ultimately the contents of all the volumes in the Library of
Congress, are available to the personal computer through telephone
lines and other means (even through amateur radio). Informational
text and drills for increasing skills can be available on one's
computer; consultation for clarification with specialists (the
emerging teacher) can be available by telephone; and demonstrations
of information conveyed most effectively visually can be provided by
television. We won't have to go to school, school will come to us
through these tools. Communicating rather than commuting to school
can eliminate the need to build more expensive classroom buildings
and congest campus parking lots. Gas consumption and the threat of
air pollution can be reduced. The technology for this possibility is
available right now; the vision to use it is lacking.

The need to use it is pressing. A new concept of education is
emerging. Educational tools are becoming increasingly necessary to
accommodate the information explosion. For example, in one
technological area alone, it takes an aspiring scholar twelve years
of constant reading to read all the information published on the
subject. When he finishes, he is twelve years behind! Scientists are
changing the information that goes into text books faster than
authors can get them published. The only way to keep up with the
information explosion is to learn how to use the new tools of
information, extensions of the mind: computers. Symbiotic memory
extensions and how to use them must be acknowledged as valid, viable
and necessary substitutes for the mental acquisition, assimilation
and retention of information. We educators acutely feel the
frustration of "information shock" when we receive more literature
than we can possibly peruse in the time allotted. In a futile effort
to keep abreast of new developments I have five magazines in my
briefcase to read in snatches as time permits: Mini-Micro Systems,
Real Estate Today, California Real Estate, Electronic Education and
The Computer Instructor.

A primary obstacle, indeed, the most apparent barrier to educational
enhancement is the educator's fear of being replaced by the
proverbial button. At a time when there are fewer positions for
increasing numbers of qualified educators, few, not even producers
of self tutorial products, wish to cause wide spread unemployment.
Articles such as "Computer Replaces Human Instruction," in a
recently published alumni magazine of a large private university,
make the traditional teacher squirm. But the innovative educator,
realizing that his role is becoming as much producer as deliverer of
information packages, is aware that it takes over 100 hours of time
to design one hour of a tutorial package using an authoring system
on a computer. A one semester long computer based education course
could cost as much as a million dollars in cost of man hours.
Administrators and legislators need to recognize this emerging trend
and compensate educators for the time spent in the design of these
products. Educators must be recognized also as mentors, advisors and
designers of the educational process.

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     Learning technologies should be designed to increase, not
     reduce, the amount of personal contact between students and
     faculty on intellectual issues.

          ----Study Group on the Conditions of Excellence in
          American Higher Education, 1984

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Even I felt a twinge of professional insecurity when one of my
former computer science students, who now sponsors an electronic
bulletin board, left a message on it to me regarding how some of his
associates are now learning to write computer programming languages
by purchasing self tutorial mail order packages. We had been
"teleconferencing" via computer and modem about ways to increase the
number of students in the computer classes. My response:

     Thanks for the information on the programming courses by mail.
     It does give me some ideas. The ideas, however, are
     unfortunately antithetical to the manner in which California
     Community Colleges and most other public educational
     institutions are funded. I have held for many years that the
     most effective way in which to learn programming a computer is
     on one's own computer and at his own pace, the way you and I
     did for the most part. . . I envision the demise, thanks to
     computer technology, of the public educational institution as
     we know it. Courses by mail - - indeed, by direct telephone
     modem access to vast sources of information by computer - - are
     part of a growing trend away from the educational institution.
     . . Who needs a teacher when a manual and a computer at one's
     immediate disposal can do the job more effectively?

Sylvia Charp, editor-in-chief of Technological Horizons in Education
JOURNAL, provides a prognostication of multiple technological
advances for the near future in her editorial column in the August
1985 issue.

     The use of interactive videodiscs is growing. Synergistic
     effects result by combining the capabilities of the computers
     with laser-read videodiscs to enhance individualized
     instruction. Voice recognition systems which handle
     vocabularies of better than 10,000 words are being developed in
     commercial laboratories. Predictions have been made that such
     systems will be economically feasible and sufficiently reliable
     to permit individuals and computers to converse. Capabilities
     of microcomputers are expanding. It is anticipated that in the
     near future, the advanced personal computer will increase its
     present computing power by a factor of ten or more and that by
     1990, many college-level students will possess a portable
     computer which is connected to a campus-wide local area network
     linking classrooms, labs, libraries and dormitory rooms.

The merging of the branching capabilities of the micro-computer and
near instantaneous random access to specific information on a laser
read disc is considered by some educators as the ultimate teaching
tool making possible the ultimate in learning efficiency. It can
contain all possible teaching procedures: text, lecture,
audio-visual, participatory and combinations of all of these; it can
adapt to the student's rate of comprehension and present information
to students of all preferred learning modes. Information is so
compact that the entire contents of the encyclopedia britannica can
fit on three typically sized 12" discs. Although education will
benefit, the educational establishment and its sources of funding
have not had the vision nor financial resources to develop its
potential. Manufacturers and developers of educational packages have
not invested the time and money necessary because there is not yet
sufficient return on investment in educational products. In an
article in the September 1985 T.H.E.jOURNAL, "Technology Update -
Interactive Video: Developments Could Boost Installations," author
Pam Jones quotes two authorities' reasons for the slow development.
Dean LaCoe:

     "Interactive video is experiencing a chicken-and- egg type
     problem. People aren't developing software because there aren't
     enough systems out there, and people won't buy systems because
     there aren't enough programs available."

Dr. Albert Bork:

     "There is very little good material, and I have trouble seeing
     where good material is going to come from because nobody is
     putting money into development."

However, Pam Jones also optimistically reports plans by Sony and
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich to accelerate development of laser
interactivity and lists several other firms that have relevant
products available. Another optimistic announcement was published
more recently in the fall 1985 issue of edu Magazine: Digital
Equipment Corporation has developed a 120mm (4.72") compact plastic
coated metal disc called the CDROM (Compact Disc/Read Only Memory).
Information can be transferred between its drive to a host computer
at the rate of 150,000 bits-per- second. The storage capacity of
only one of these laser read discs is compared to three or four
encyclopedias, 200,000 single- spaced typed pages or 1600 floppy
diskettes.

A poignant demonstration that, when it comes to technology and the
rapid changes that occur, written prognostications soon become
historical reports is contained in a report published within a few
short months of the above announcement: Digital Equipment
Corporation began marketing a system that makes use of this
technology in its Interactive Video Information System (IVIS),
essentially a computer controlled videodisc player that responds to
keyboard commands and points on a touch sensitive screen. It
emphasizes and requires student participation in the learning
process, which, with sight and sound stimuli, allows 70% retention
as opposed to the 25% and 45% retention possible through hearing and
seeing, respectively.

Meridian Data of Capitola, CA announced a breakthrough in May of
1987 which will allow CD ROM units' acquisition at an affordable
price. Their product fully integrates audio, visual and text
information and "lets you put the equivalent of a couple of tons of
paper in your coat pocket."

Perhaps the best example of that which corresponds to my vision of
the ideal learning station is provided by the Fort Collins, Colorado
based National Technological University. The Chronicle of Higher
Education reported in its 15 July 1987 issue that the N.T.U.'s
consortium of 24 engineering schools uses satellite television and
videocassettes to present information to students nationwide.
Electronic mail messages through computers, similar to the
Electronic University procedures, to and from students and
instructors, as well as telephone, provide the individual one-
on-one consultation necessary for clarification and enrichment. For
cost effectiveness, more such instructional delivery systems should
be established. The N.T.U. president claims, "We have the data
showing that our students are doing as well or better than the
on-campus students in the same courses. The professors grade the
regular and off-campus students together, so we know our students
meet the same standards."

Will the general educational establishment be ready for it? Probably
not, if its past record is any indicator of future adaptability.
Indeed, the educational institution may have become officially
recognized as what it has been for many years, a museum.

A fitting summary of this chapter on technology are excerpts from an
article by D. Stuart Conger in the World Future Society publication,
1999: The World of Tomorrow.

     . . . an organization seldom concerns itself with inventing new
     procedural methods for the delivering of its services and
     objectives. Instead, it becomes consumed with developing
     methods of self maintenance . . .

     Therefore, most instrumental social inventions will expectedly
     be made outside the institutions in which they should be
     utilized. This is why we need social invention centers that are
     separate from service delivery institutions. . . A very
     interesting example is the College of Education that conducts
     research on teaching -- even on new methods -- but does not
     implement the new methods in its own institutions! . . . . .
     example: advantages of visual methods . . in recent decades a
     number of . films, etc. have been prepared as instructional
     aids . . some are literally never used . . University of the
     Air . . television camera takes you to the professor in front
     of the chalkboard and leaves you there without any of the
     instructional methods that can be used on television. . .
     Documentary television programs reviewing the history of
     nations provide a far superior method of teaching social
     studies than the common practice of memorizing dates of kings
     and queens. Yet the old practice continues. . .

     The invention of audiovisual means of instruction required its
     own institution (television) to be properly used in fulfilling
     its purpose. Many other instrumental social inventions are
     under- used or misused because they are prisoners of old social
     institutions. Examples: . . .

          1. Programmed instruction which is capable of teaching
          virtually all knowledge without the aid of teachers,
          classrooms or schools. . .

          6. Audiovisual-directed educational programs . .

          7. Computer assisted instruction . .

     Each of these instrumental inventions has been only partially
     implemented . . . and demonstrates the difficulty of putting
     new wine in old bottles. . . .

     . . It has been said that it is easier to move a graveyard than
     to change a curriculum, . . There are too many vested interests
     to contend with. . .

     . . . programmed instruction might lead to the recognition that
     education can take place outside formal institutional
     structures . . . and does not require a stand-up teacher, . .
     programmed instruction does not require a class of students at
     all . . . All of these conditions are completely foreign to our
     present educational system, . . .

     . . . could be the alternative school for the student who can
     learn better by himself through programmed materials, books and
     other self teaching devices than he can in the traditional
     classroom . . .

Studies have shown that it takes about 50 years for a new
educational invention to come into use in half the schools.