II. TELEVISION AND EDUCATION

II. TELEVISION AND EDUCATIONAuthor(s): Mary AdamsSource: Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 97, No. 4788 (11 FEBRUARY, 1949), pp. 195-203Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and CommerceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41363780 .

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II Feb. 1949 TELEVISION AND EDUCATIÒN 195 II. TELEVISION AND EDUCATION

By Mary Adams, m.sc., Head of Television Talks , B.B.C. Television Service

Delivered on Monday , 29 th November , 1948

There is no doubt that television has an important and interesting future. It has been predicted that television will kill the cinema, turn politicians into film stars, revolutionise domestic interiors and family habits, and make school teachers unnecessary.

The fact remains that many people in England have not yet seen television, and know nothing of the programmes which come from Alexandra Palace. With this state of affairs in mind the Royal Society of Arts has arranged a demonstration so that the programmes which are actually being radiated to-night can be seen in this hall. You will see two items of this evening's programme: the Television Newsreel and an edition of Mr. J. F. Horrabin's regular News Map series (a studio production with animated maps which began its career in 1937).

Although these two programmes have informative, and even some educational content, it is important to remember that most television programmes at present are designed for the entertainment and relaxation of viewers. What I have to say about television and education is, therefore mostly speculative. Nevertheless, there are certain tendencies, now able to be observed, both in television as a medium, and in education, which provide a not unreliable indication of what may happen in the future.

A few facts about the Television Service and present programmes are necessary as a prelude to such speculation.

Television as a B.B.C, service is verv young. Regular transmissions have been carried on for a total of barely six years, all of them years of anxiety and economic stress. There is one station at Alexandra Palace in North London, where the accommodation is very limited. There are, in fact, two small studios which give the opportunity for one camera rehearsal only for each programme. This station serves an area approximately 50 miles in radius, and in that area there are about eighty or ninety thousand sets with a viewing public of perhaps a quarter of a million. Every owner of a television set pays £ 2 a year in licence money - a tiny income for a costly service. Programmes are radiated every afternoon for an hour, and every evening for an hour and a half, on seven days in the week. There is also a morning demonstration film, primarily for the benefit of the radio industry.

The majority of viewers have owned their television set for less than one year, and there has been a sizeable decrease in the cost of sets since the Government reduced the purchase tax a few months ago. Contrary to common belief, most viewers do not belong to the sur-tax class. The set, once bought, is installed in the most comfortable room and widely used by the family as a whole.

What evidence there is shows that the great majority of viewers like plays best, respond to first-class variety shows, enjoy magazine programmes and sport, accept without enthusiasm the more serious studio demonstrations and discussions, and dislike being educated or lectured at from the screen on any subject whatever. Most viewers accept what is offered to them with enthusiastic friendliness. Children beg to be allowed to stay up in order to see the beginning of the evening's



196 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS II Feb. 1949

performance, and often succeed in seeing the end. The younger ones are glued to the television set on Sunday afternoons - the only occasion during the week when the programme is specially designed for children. This children's programme takes place from 4.0 to 5.0 p.m., a time which permits them to attend Sunday School first.

It is obvious that, neither for adults nor for children, is the novelty of television yet exhausted.

In measurable time, however, the service will face sterner realities. Let me resort to some personal conjecture: there will be many times the present number of sets; they will be spread over most of Britain ; there will be television outside the home as well as inside; the screen may be a convenient panel on the wall, and it will be unnecessary to darken the room. There will be pictures on larger screens, eventually in colour, and on closed circuit in places like universities and hospitals. Programmes will be radiated during the morning as well as the afternoon and evening, and many of these programmes will have become selective and specialised in appeal. In the still more distant future alternative programmes will be provided.

It is not possible to forecast how long it will be before there is television in schools and other educational institutions, but there is no doubt that television will find its place in the educational system and that the financial and technical aspects of such a service will have been solved. At the same time, children will continue to look at television programmes not specially designed for them, since television, like sound broadcasting, can be made available in every home simply by turning a switch.

Before considering the educational possibilities of television it will be useful briefly to describe the present content of programmes. Experiments in subject and presentation are now being made which have a bearing on the future.

In terms of programme planning, the main categories of production are : Outside Broadcasts, Drama, Light Entertainment, Films, Talks, Features and Documen- taries. Although the present emphasis of programme output is on entertainment there are certain educational values of an informal kind upon which I should like to remark.

In drama, for example, many classical plays have been televised in full : Hamlet , King Lear , Romeo and Juliet , The Merchant of Venice , The Rivals and School for Scandal , Pygmalion , Candida , St. Joan, Volpone and Everyman. In addition, modern authors have been well represented: Yeats, Dunsany, Pirandello, T. S. Eliot, Capek, Cocteau, Vercours and O'Neill. Full-length opera and ballet have also been transmitted.

Outside broadcasts provide many spectacles of social, civic and political interest, such as the Royal Wedding, the Cenotaph Services of Remembrance, the Unveiling of the Roosevelt Memorial, the Exhibition of Sculpture in Battersea Park. In recent weeks, television history was made when cameras were placed in the garden of 10 Downing Street for the meeting of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers. The 1948 Olympic Games in London was another occasion in which television emphasised the universal appeal of international sport. Other outside broadcast programmes of more limited scope show special ways in which mobile cameras can be used. Before the war, cameras were taken regularly to a farm near London, and viewers were able to see the seasonal changes in crops and stock. Rural programmes like these might have an important effect on the attitudé of the



II Feb. 1949 TELEVISION AND EDUCATION 197 townsman to the problems of the countryman. In the same way, viewers were made vividly aware of the arguments in favour of restoring Nash's Terraces in Regent's Park : with John Summerson as expert commentator, they were able to estimate the war-damaged condition of these historic buildings, and to consider the problems which faced the Crown in deciding on their future.

Films present the Television Service with special difficulties. Up to the present time, various restrictions have prevented the televising of most feature films, and even available film material has not always been well suited to the medium. The resuìt of these difficulties has been the development of a special Television Newsreel, and the showing of many documentary films, both British and foreign.

Those who have seen the Television Newsreel generally comment on its high standard, topicality, the breadth of its international reporting and the absence of political comment. A news film, shot by television camermen, can be shown on the screen within a couple of hours of the event, since only one print is necessary for television transmission. Stories are also longer in Television Newsreels: individual stories with a duration of 700 feet are sometimes shown, compared with the more usual ioo-foot story length of commercial newsreels. As a result, significant items can receive more detailed attention.

Television viewers have also had unique chances of seeing documentary films. Paul Rotha's picture of Manchester, A City Speaks , was recently televised, and many films made under the auspices of the Central Office of Information, not generally available to the cinema public, have been shown on the television screen. Films from abroad have also found a place in programmes, and I should like to note particularly the outstanding films on French artists - Rodin, Maillol, Matisse, Van Gogh - which show French documentary production of a very high level. Kurt Oertel's film on Michelangelo has given to British viewers the chance to see a German documentary remarkable for its technical excellence and artistic sublety.

Later on the Television Service will make its own film documentaries on subjects of special interest and importance, and a beginning in this field has already been made.

Talks features and studio documentaries cover a great variety of subjects, with emphasis on those which lend themselves to action or demonstration. Inventors' Club has been a regular feature for over a year. In these programmes, inventors are invited to bring their models for scrutiny by experts in the studio. In this way a new outlet has incidentally been provided for unrecognised and generally unrewarded talent. Moreover, the fact that the invention has actually been demonstrated in action has promoted interest on the part of manufacturers and others, with the result that many amateur inventors have found their ideas marketable.

The visual arts offer a great opportunity to television. In a series called The Eye of the Artist , paintings and sculpture as well as humbler forms of art are regularly shown, and works taken from current exhibitions, when seen on the screen, have

encouraged viewers to go and look at the originals more closely and with some

equipment of expert comment. It has been found that art may be made more welcome in television by some

original form of presentation. For example, in order to give viewers an idea of the various ways in which artists approach their subjects, a set-piece was provided and



198 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS II Feb. 1949 several artists were invited to interpret it. On one occasion the subject was a conventional still-life group, a bowl of fish and a cactus. Three artists in the studio went to work, each in his own way. The first made a realistic drawing which depended for its effect on varied lighting. The second, an industrial designer, made from the composition a design for a carpet. The third, a surrealist, drew from the bowl a landscape of his own subjective imagination.

Science is also a subject which lends itself to presentation in television. Apparatus can be brought to the studio and demonstrated there, or the television cameras can visit laboratories in order to provide the scientist with a more sympathetic environ- ment. During the last few weeks experiments have been made with a new technique: "micro-television" describes an operation in which pictures of micro-organisms are projected directly on to the screen without the intervention of a film (a process which has been previously always been necessary).

There are naturally service talks and demonstrations of the kind to which listeners to B.B.C, sound services have become accustomed. Instruction in gardening comes from a plot in the grounds of Alexandra Palace. Cookery demonstrations are frequent afternoon fare, and it has been remarked that television might possibly succeed in urging British housewives along new paths of culinary adventure. There are also programmes on home management, house decoration and other domestic arts. Most of these programmes are specifically directed to women viewers during afternoon transmissions.

The News Map programme which you will see this evening is a regular series designed to provide an informative background to current affairs. It is illustrated by film sequences, photographs, maps and diagrams, and the speakers who appear with Mr. Horrabin are distinguished in the world of affairs.

These few notes indicate the general informative and educational content of television programmes at the present time.

It is, however, arguable that the general background of the television screen may offer viewers as many chances of cultural stimulus as specific programmes with a planned educational intent. The varied images which appear on the screen not only in plays and studio backgrounds but in the settings of real life, certainly provide the viewer with an opportunity of assessing beauty and ugliness, of comparing, appraising and selecting - a habit, at first unconscious, which may develop into a practical capacity for visual criticism. The emphasis television places on shapes and patterns may succeed in opening the eyes of the public to the need for good design in commonplace things. Architecture, which forms the setting of so many outside broadcasts, is likely to come in for much more discerning comment from the man- in-the-street.

May I next consider briefly the nature of the television medium ? Generally, television is immediately compared with film, but in reality it is to broadcasting that/ it is most nearly allied. The fact that the televised image goes directly into the home and is seen by a small circle of intimates and friends, determines both the matter and the manner of television programmes. Mass reaction is not sought for, and, as in broadcasting, the actor or speaker is most successful when he remembers his private audience. In addition, the B.B.C. Charter, under which television is operáted, imposes certain traditional and cultural standards with which the British public is



II Feb. 1949 TELEVISION AND EDUCATION 199

already familiar. Advertising is not permitted, so that sponsorship, which in America determines the nature and purpose of programmes, is absent from our screen. But the rules which are followed successfully in sound broadcasting are less easy to interpret in vision. The viewer cannot shut his eyes to posters, or products, if they stare back at him from the screen. The shape and design of certain objects in everyday use are sufficient to proclaim their commercial origin without a word being said, and the concentrated view afforded by the camera may defeat the most careful precautions taken by producer and commentator.

Television and film techniques differ in certain obvious ways. The film is a record of past actions ; in television the scene is transmitted and received at approximately the same time/The fact that both media use two-dimensional moving pictures is a misleading similarity, and after seeing this evening's demonstration I think you will agree that the film tradition of quick cutting from shot to shot during continuous action is strongly contrasted with the normal practices of television. The tempo is entirely different. In the News Map programme you will see Mr. Horrabin in the studio, sometimes in close-up, sometimes using a globe for demonstration. His wife is near him, controlling the movements of animated mapsonaneasel.Mr.Horrabin's explanations proceed at a human tempo; cutting and editing cannot make him speak or move more quickly, nor alter the natural tempo of his exposition. The sequence of events is much the same as it is in this lecture hall. Mr. Horrabin may show photographs or a film sequence to remind you of some distant scene or personality, and the skilful use of cameras, by cutting or mixing from speaker to illustration, focuses interest on the limited field requiring the viewer's attention. But it is Mr. Horrabin 's personality which binds the programme and gives it a unified presentation. Mr. Horrabin is very much alive: he may sneeze, or make some unexpected aside. The sneeze and the aside would be conscientiously removed in the carefully cut and edited film, but in television the viewer sees all, including some unexpected stimulus. Studio performances rarely include spectacular novelties of this kind, but they cannot be ruled out.

In outside broadcasts this characteristic of television has to be reckoned with. In fact, it is always present in the mind of the producer, who is responsible for what the viewer sees. An accident, or a political demonstration, may happen during the best-rehearsed and least-controversial of processions. It is for the producer to decide at the moment of its occurrence if the affair shall be registered on the screen, in long-shot or in close-up, or whether it had best be eliminated by fading to another camera taking a different scene. Here is a censorship of taste and discretion which can be planned partly, but not wholly, in advance.

In addition, there is a further characteristic of the medium - less evident than others - which in time will impress itself on the discernment of viewers. I refer to

picture composition, the aesthetic value of which, with growingskills on the part of the television producer and the cameraman, cannot fail to add to the pleasures of life.*

Let me now turn to the future and describe the part television may play in the

general field of education. We have the experience of Bj*.C. School Broadcasts to guide us in forecasting the

*Note - The points made in the first part of the lecture were illustrated by the two television programmes received in the lecture hall at this time.



ZOO JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS II Feb. 1949

part which television could play in school life. It is to be expected that the growth of television broadcasts for schools will follow the same general pattern as in sound radio. The work of the School Broadcasting Council has shown the methods of co-operation with educationalists and teachers which have proved valuable, and I should like to refer you to Mr. Richard Palmer's book School Broadcasting in Britain for a description of the way in which school broadcasting grew up, the nature of school broadcasts, and the special problems which are presented to the broadcaster and to the class teacher by this work. An appendix gives the composition and constitution of the School Broadcasting Council, which will have responsibilities for television broadcasting similar to those they now exercise in the sphere of school broadcasting. Naturally, the use of television in schools will depend on technical development in screen size, as well as on the capacity of the educational system to absorb this new aid.

It might be appropriate to review briefly various mechanical and visual aids in teaching practice in order to assess the place television may take in this field. A convenient record of mechanical aids in common use to-day, and the organisations sponsoring them, can be found in a publication of the Daily Mail School- Aid Department, Material for Visual Education. Other references can be obtained from the National Committee for Visual Aids in Education. The blackboard is one of the oldest and still the most common mechanical aid in general use, but text books remain the most considerable factor in class teaching. The fact that text books have become increasingly well illustrated is due in part to progress in mechanical methods of reproduction, as well as to the stress now being laid on the importance of visualisation in teaching. Other forms of illustration, of which film-strips are the latest development, came at the same time as the war-time shortage of text books, and the maps and charts which have been commonly used in classrooms for many years, as well as the lantern slides brought out for special occasions, are now being supplemented by mounted photographs, posters and pictographs, postcards and picture pamphlets, lithographs and other reproductions, as well as static and working models. There is hardly a subject which has not profited by these modern developments.

The place of visual aids in education has only recently been formally recognised, however, by the creation of an organisation, the Educational Foundation for Visual Aids, charged with securing their production and purchase and organising their storage, servicing and distribution to schools. The Foundation assists in the formation of local and regional libraries on visual aids, and facilitates their inter- change with the Commonwealth and foreign countries. In large measure it was the coming of classroom films, sound and silent, and the experience gained during the war, which stimulated the setting up of this body, whose principal aim will be to secure a closer relation between the needs of the user and the work of the producer. The production and distribution of classroom films is in the hands of organisations and commercial companies working independently of the Ministry of Education, and there has been considerable improvement in the quality and suitability of classroom films since the war. But the number of film projectors in use in schools and other places of education is still relatively small, and much remains to be done in this field.



II Feb. 1949 TELEVISION AND EDUCATION 20I

Film-strips are also being made by a great variety of organisations, and workers in this new field have been able to take advantage of the general research into visual aids which has been carried out during the last thirty years. Many film-strips are now being made by teachers whose knowledge of educational requirements has produced work of high quality, and in some ways film-strips offer the teacher a visual aid which is more acceptable than the kind offered by films.

The list of apparatus required to make use of this varied new material is con- tinually increasing: the film and film-strip projector, the gramophone, the radio set, the diascope and epidiascope, the microscope and micro-projector, easels, exhibition stands and benches. The addition of the television receiver to the list raises the more general question of how these new mechanisms can be used in the best interests of the learner and makes one ask what special contribution television is likely to make.

Let me consider the special contribution of television. I believe the more general use of television would have the effect of bringing school life closer to the outside world. Television's concern with actuality may serve to reduce the artificial separation of school and community. On the screen, for young persons to see, will come actual scenes of life and work in factory and field. Visits to coal mines, libraries or hospitals will give a living picture of the jobs which a miner, a librarian, • an analyst or a nurse undertake. When the television cameras go to government offices, the child will see what it is like to be a filing clerk, an accountant, or a public- relations officer. In the same way, studio actuality might also be used to underline the problems and pleasures of specific jobs and to give young persons, with a few means of knowing what the world holds in store for them, a practical and reliable

picture of contemporary life. The horizon is also likely to be widened when there is international link-up of

television: a time far distant but not out of mind. Foreign scenes will become

increasingly familiar, and foreigners no longer strangers. Classroom travel films have been particularly successful in showing the child life abroad : television will use the same subject matter with more forceful techniques.

The cameras will also be used to familiarise all with the practices of international

organisation. International conferences and assemblies will be really in the public eye, and the effect of television publicity, both on the viewer and on the participant, is likely to have important results. The beginning which America has made in the

televising of political conferences and demonstrations has shown how strange the

workings of democracy may appear and how necessary interpretation becomes. It is worth emphasising again the difference between television and film techniques

in putting real-life scenes before the viewer. Television techniques tend to heighten the interest of real life; film techniques tend to have the reverse effect. The

psychological effect of television is to enhance reality, and at the same time to

bring about identification between the viewer and what he sees on the screen. Thus, ordinary events become specially significant, and society is symbolised by the individual. In addition, the drama of the unexpected keeps the viewer constantly reminded of personal responsibility. If the television cameras are set up in a factory, the worker shown at his bench may suddenly demonstrate personal initiative in the face of unexpected mechanical breakdown; or the cameras televising the Lord



202 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS II Feb. 1949

Mayor's procession will show the demeanour of onlookers or of the police when confronted by an unforeseen incident. The drama of the scene lies in these unknown qualities, as well as in the chance sights which may be offered to the viewer in a concentrated form. In the background of the procession, for example, he may see isolated the L.C.C, cleaner, rhythmically using his brush, his energies bent on work in hand. The viewer gets a portrait in miniature of a public servant and a social service. Or his attention may be caught and concentrated by the familiar sight of a child among the spectators, licking an ice, and the social significance of this new habit will be brought home to him in a suddenly intensified form.

Film treatment, on the other hand, as much by cutting techniques and photo- graphic subtleties as by the choice of subject has tended to make real life seem, by contrast, drab and uninteresting. Other people's lives have been glamorised and one's own made more insignificant in comparison. The fact that parents and children have for long used the cinema as an escape, has brought to the classroom film an unfortunate legacy of unreality. Nevertheless, the emotional impact of film documentaries such as Man of Arran , Grapes of Wrath , Song of Ceylon , Western Approaches , The World is Rich , Louisiana Story , and so on, is worth remembering.

Television documentaries, whether scripted for studio production or composed of O.B. and studio material, may well have an even stronger impact on account of those special characteristics of the television medium which I have already emphasised. I should like to mention three recent television documentaries on the work of a magistrate's court, which strongly affected viewers. These programmes were made with the help of Mr. Claud Mullins, and they showed in a dramatic way the work which a magistrate undertakes and the effect of his judgments on the lives of those who come before him.

Apart from actuality, I believe television has another significant contribution to make. Drama, in play form, is likely always to be an important ingredient of television programmes, and a growing appreciation of plays may provoke, particularly in the minds of adolescents, a new awareness of the significance of human life. No one who has looked at the television productions of Mourning becomes Electra , or Hamlet , or Lear , can have failed to be impressed by the under- lying motives and themes of the play form. Again, I am not suggesting that the television medium is especially significant here; but, provided the choice of play is varied and the standard high, it is obvious that the appreciation of drama will be greatly encouraged by the frequent viewing of plays.

When we consider the more formal aspects of teaching by television, two con- siderations come to mind. The first concerns the personality of the teacher: the second has to do with the subjects which will best be served by the medium. In radio, speakers like Walford Davies, С. H. Middleton, John Hilton, Monsieur Stephan, Bertrand Russell, James Stephens and Max Beerbohm, have impressed their personalities upon listeners. Some of these men have been teachers as well as good broadcasters, and their teaching has had a forceful effect. Television has not yet developed personalities in the same way, but in my opinion its capacity for doing so is even greater; but whether the force of personality will be as important in the teaching aspect of television is still uncertain. A dominating personality sometimes takes interest away from the details of an experiment or demonstration. There is



II Feb. 1949 TELEVISION AND EDUCATION 203

little value in watching a man talking, and in more formal education the subjects most likely to profit from television are either the more practical ones, such as science or craftsmanship, or those in which the visual sequence is in itself sufficient for the lesson. Such subjects as the history of art, or the techniques of architecture, or the facts of biology, do not, for example, necessarily need a visible teacher. The speaker can often best act as an unseen impersonal catalyst, his commentary helping the viewer to follow the logic of a visual argument without the distraction of his physical presence.

Of all the subjects likely to be served best by television, the visual arts hold most promise. Television will offer to artists and the public new opportunities for making contact with each other: the artist who examines this new medium is already beginning to find fresh ways of displaying his methods and unfolding his ideals. The limitations of the medium and its present crudities are fully recognised; but there is reason to hope that television, in time, will accomplish for the visual arts what sound broadcasting has achieved for music. To television may come credit for raising the general level of artistic appreciation, and reviving in the public a warmer climate of* understanding. The detection of visual vulgarity by the viewer, and his rejection of ugliness in everyday things, might be the beginning of such understanding.

III. TELEVISION AND ENTERTAINMENT

By Jack Hulbert

Delivered on Monday , 6th December , 1948

Let me say at the outset that if you are gathered together here for the purpose of

listening to an informative discussion by an expert, the best advice I can suggest is for you to write this off as a wasted evening. But if you are prepared to sit tight and admire the temerity of a man who can offer no justification whatever for expatiating on a subject almost entirely beyond his powers of conception, you will render that man a signal service.

I have been in the entertainment business for a considerable number of years. The exact number I will tell you if you press me. If you don't - and I hope you won't - I will continue* I have made a considerable number of mistakes, but I endeavour not to make the same mistake twice; consequently I have discovered a considerable number of things to avoid. This, I suppose, is what one would call

experience. In the first stage of your theatrical career you know it all ; in the second

stage you get some nasty shocks; and in the third stage you begin slowly to learn.

Experience can be a very stern and redoubtable teacher, but it has much to give the learner if he is capable of learning; and without experience, consistent success is

practically impossible. Somerset Maugham has said: "Writing the first play is

comparatively easy; the difficulty is writing the second". I suppose there are times in the life of every artist, in the life of every man whose

job it is to create something, when he regards his creation with pride and satis- faction. Then deep down in his heart, perhaps quite secretly, he thinks himself an

expert. Conscious of a job well done and receiving the congratulations of friends and



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