LOOKING and LISTENING TV in the schoolroom

LAST week I went to Associated Rediffusion's offices to a press conference at which the Minister of Education was to answer questions about education and the uses of TV lessons in the class-room. He was very enthusiastic about these lessons and would like more schools to watch both B.B.C. and Associated Rediffusion's efforts at bringing live programmes into the school-room.
There just isn't room here to go into the pros and cons of this subject, though I would be very glad, myself, to hear from any readers who have had experience, through their children, of the effects of TV lessons at school.
One Catholic school which has made very good use of this service is St. Gregory's, Ealing, W.5, and the farm they have built up as a result of watching television was shown in a very colourful colour film made by AssociatedRediffusion to boost their schools' lessons. This school, needless to say, does not confine itself exclusively to A.R. lessons, and from a B.B.C. schools source I have also heard enthusiastic comments on the wise use the headmaster has made of the lessons.
'Culture'
BUT we did not talk only about schools at this visit to A.R. and something somebody said there has raised a problem in my mind which has, perhaps, been in some readers' minds too.
I heard it said there that B.B.C. TV gives its audience what it thinks the audience should get, whereas I.T.V. gives the people what they want. At A.R. they felt that their audience wanted entertainment and that they—Associated-Rediffusion couldn't let the people down by forcing them to watch more serious programmes.
Someone said, in fact, that when Sir Laurence Olivier appeared in an Ibsen play for Independent Television not so long ago. thousands of viewers switched off their sets simply because they associated Sir Laurence with culture and they don't want culture in large doses on their TV.
The schools programmes, in a measure, are intended to counterbalance this and to train the next generation to enjoy what we all mean by culture. Now what I would like to know is: who is right in this attitude to their audience—B.B.C. or I.T.V.?
Duplication
A PROGRAMME on B.B.C. TV " on Sunday rather illustrated this point. We had an hour-long documentary called "The Quiet One" on Whit Sunday evening when we might excusably have felt relaxation was the thing.
This film was all about the problems of a very appealing. but badly treated negro boy. who had had a miserable early childhood but in time—and it was a long time on the TV—found how to face up to life. Earlier in the week we had had a magnificent B.B.C. documentary by John Elliot called "Roundabout" about which you have probably read to your heart's content in the secular press.
There have been divisions of opinion about it, but it seemed to me that the restlessness and boredom of the young was perfectly conveyed on to the screen. As this feature had dealt very realistically with the problems of uprooting and of youth, surely another long feature on roughly the same subject wasn't needed a few days later?
The Epilogue
TO end on a cheerful note I would like to tell you of one other thing I beard at Associated Rediffusion. Apparently t h e nightly religious epilogue has an enormous audience—many viewers regarding this as their churchgoing. 1 mean, of course, that people who would normally not think of religion at all turn to the epilogue every night as part of their daily living. There are wonderful possibilities for further enquiries here—as there must have been, too, in the beautifully rendered Pontifical Low Mass and Confirmation which A.T.V. relayed from St. Thomas's School, Stanmore, last Sunday morning.
JOAN NEWTON