Oral essays on education William Benton
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Rolling tape recorded program is distributed through the facilities of the National Association of
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educational broadcasters.
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Oral essays on education a dynamic radio series designed to present leading
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personalities of our society as they attempt to discover the scope of problems which confront
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modern education. This week Dr. James and Tara Michigan State University College
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of Education will interview Mr. William Benton publisher and chairman of the
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Encyclopedia Britannica who discusses the need for new techniques to meet the new
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challenge of education.
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And now here is Dr. Tim Benton in light
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of your many experiences and your travels and your understanding's of
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the problems of education. Perhaps we could discuss for a few minutes
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here what the problems of facing education really are and how significant they
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are. Let's start off with is there a teacher shortage. Is there a
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classroom shortage. Is there a dollar shortage to provide these as well
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as other things and then perhaps we could discuss curriculum and its effect as a
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problem in education. And I think it's rather obvious don't you that we have enough
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statistics data presented to us that the exploding growing population
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will provide certain kinds of shortages based upon facts or
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lack of facts that if we continue education of the kind we now have
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we will need to do much more in the future in supporting it. How
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significant do you see this really and do you think these problems
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actually are facing us today or are they problems which we're going to have to attempt
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solutions for today to do something really about them next year or the year after or something.
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While everybody likes to start at home and I can tell you that in Fairfield Connecticut one of the
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richest communities per capita in the world.
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Indeed Connecticut has the highest income per family in the world and the
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richest city and the richest town in the world all in my state.
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Great industrial state that said 300 years to get rich even it's even
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richer at the state of Michigan.
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My son was only in high school half a day.
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It's one reason Mrs. Bennett and I sent him away to a private school. We didn't like him coming home
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at 12 o'clock because there wasn't room to
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keep him. So we have a shortage of schools in my community.
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The Office of Education reports this all across the United States. There's a lot of
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argument at the political level as to how big the shortage is. But I see it estimated
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at one hundred fifty two hundred thousand classrooms. Do you happen to know the exact
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figure I think the last one from the Office of Education was something like
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a hundred fifty or seventy five thousand classroom one hundred eighty thousand two
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hundred eighty thousand. All right. So we also have a
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shortage of teachers for these classrooms and a good deal of criticism
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about the quality of the teachers. The brightest boys
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and girls today don't attend
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especially the boys when they leave college to go into teaching.
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The teachers colleges are tending to draw
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their recruits from the lower spectrum in the graduating classes
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from the colleges rather than the higher spectrum.
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So there's a shortage and grave fear about the quality
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now. I don't think we're
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ever going to get enough
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teachers on the old standards.
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One teacher for every 25 or 30 students.
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The students are increasing too rapidly for one reason.
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At the college level which I'm more familiar with because I'm a trustee of four colleges and
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universities we expect by 1970. To
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have doubled the number of applicants. Another way
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of putting this is that we must in the next 10 years if we're going to take care of them build
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as big a plant as we've built since William and Mary was
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founded in 16 25 or 30. We've got
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to do in 10 years at the plant level what we've taken over 300 years to
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do. So this booming birth rate that's
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what the journalists and magazines called the exploding
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population a world phenomenon is also a United States
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phenomenon. Now this leads us to the
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need and I'm glad you're studying these kind of needs
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a doctor to Michigan State University. I congratulate you on the
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grants you have from the on of the Defense Education Act and most
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important step forward by the way in the federal activities in
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the field of education. But we've got to learn how to use the new
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techniques in the teaching process.
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In my judgment for 20 years I've been
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interested in the development of classroom motion pictures
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the growth of their use comes painfully slowly because as you know
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educators don't change very rapidly.
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I noticed last January the president of the Ford Foundation in his annual report
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reported 16 million dollars from that great foundation in the year
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1959 went to educational television.
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So in the new techniques in television in the
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motion picture.
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We have opportunities to help relieve the
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pressure as indeed last year when I was in Miami and
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that was in February and I was in Miami merely to go to school.
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Not at my age but I took advantage of being in Miami to go over and meet the superintendent of
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schools. And I spent a couple of days because Miami is like
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Michigan State owns a television station.
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It's bad during the daytime by teachers in the Miami public schools. I sat
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there in those classrooms in Miami. There would be three and 400 young people of 15
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or 16 and the ones I attended at the high school level looking at 10 or
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15.
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Screens television screens taking their notes.
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There are a couple of teachers in the room but it was 10 times the normal sized class
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with their eyes glued to these these screens.
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And I could tell from my own personal observation that the superintendent of schools
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was giving me a truthful report when he said that this was saving the Miami
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school system that year perhaps 500 teachers. And two or three
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million dollars worth of school buildings.
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Now these weren't quite highly professional teachers on the
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TV either. These weren't Dr. White teaching physics the
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selected by the Physics Society of the country is the country's greatest physics teacher or Dr.
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Baxter teaching chemistry
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to two stories told last January. Fascinating article in
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the Reader's Digest. These were just ordinary school teachers from the
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Miami school system. Of course the best they had and they let them spend
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all day getting ready perhaps to teach 30 minutes or
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60 minutes.
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But.
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They weren't highly paid four star personalities and
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yet they held command of those three hundred children and it was a great lesson to me.
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I wish all our school systems had television stations and I
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congratulate the Ford Foundation on their leadership its giving because this is
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one technique and procedure with which to relieve this
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teacher shortage in direct connection with this
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since we end up on this note here of the use of communication media directly in
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education.
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We have talked about the curriculum the idea here if you can be too much in one question.
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Sure.
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But you see many critics have said in reality this doesn't
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save money and that the money saving aspect of the use of new media mass media
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and what we know about them in education the most significant thing is not whether money is being
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saved or not in the sum total perhaps it may be and perhaps it may not at the
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individual teacher level. Perhaps more is being spent at that point but the use of
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then numbers of teachers and classrooms may be less. This is being
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held up in these arguments. The fact that this is being compared to the educational system as
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we now know it and it had the greatest experience with 30 students in one classroom
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approximately and all day in such a situation
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isn't really that significant. Aspect or behind the
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scenes principle of all of this experimentation that's being done
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isn't the most important thing whether or not education is being improved as far as
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an individual student is concerned. Do you feel that under such a
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system where whatever as I think you identified the best teacher in that system not the
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best teacher in the country and not the best as an educator feel but in the school system and
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utilizing the best teacher there is the child the learner being
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benefited by this or do you think there's any importance to these
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criticisms which say it's being mechanized that's all.
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Oh I know of course.
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Except the reports of Dr Stott or the former superintendent of schools in
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Los Angeles who is working for the Ford Foundation and the reports of
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these distinguished educators assembled by the Ford Foundation
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that these techniques are improving the opportunity for the individual
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student. Certainly they should not be judged merely by money saving
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yardsticks But you know what.
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If they happen to save some money too it's going to minimize the
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opposition perhaps of the Chamber of Commerce who's afraid the taxes may go up
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in the efforts of the school board to improve education and certainly we don't
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object. We should we shouldn't object to take Deeks
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that simultaneously may offer a better
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education as this airplane that's flying over several Middle
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Western States financed by the Ford Foundation. Spraying
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television programs to thousands of rural
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schools in subjects where the teachers in the ER schools aren't even competent to
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teach.
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Thus improving the product and at the same time
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as these programs are perfected and perhaps accepted also by the
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city schools. At the same time perhaps saving money
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in the school budget. I don't think however that our objective here
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is to bring down the cost of public education. We need to put
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more money into public education rather than less money.
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We need to pay our teachers a great deal better that will improve the
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quality of the teachers. It's going to cost money to build
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television stations to operate them and to make the motion pictures that they
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require for transmission. These things
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are all going to be costly. The proportion of money we're putting into education is far
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less than the proportion the Soviet Union puts into education for
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example and their proportion in some of our states is far
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higher than the ratio in many other of
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our states. I don't approach the problem primarily
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as a money saver. I approach it from the standpoint of how do we
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improve the public educational system this is in line with the greatest dreams of
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our political leadership over the last hundred fifty years.
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This goes right back to Thomas Jefferson's dream of equal opportunity for all
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young people. I think we ought to be giving it the top priority of
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the Pacific Ocean opened up tomorrow morning and swallowed up the Soviet Union. Though I
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don't object to in fact I myself when I came back in the Soviet Union
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five years ago I helped precipitate a lot of the discussion in this
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country on contrasting our educational system with some of the
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Soviet techniques.
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But they should not.
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This should not be the prime argument. The prime argument is that it's in line
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with the highest dreams of our ancestors and the greatest
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hopes of our leadership for our descendants.
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Senator Ben we got almost to the curriculum and in this and I think our
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curriculum is too soft. All right.
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