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SIGHT AND SOUND By Leo Mishkin NEW YORK May 8 A few weeks back and then again last Sunday CBS Television aired a documentary report called Class of 58 a study of a typi ¬ cal American high school and whats hap pening to the students therein It was one of a growing series of such TV examinations brought up by the sud ¬ den interest in our educational process as a whole and more par ¬ ticularly of course by the Impact of the Rus ¬ sian Sputnik and the realization that maybe our schools arent turning out the brightest and smartest people in the world after all This past Monday evening ABC Television came up with its own survey of the same subject bearing the label Report Card 1958 It sounded a much more cheerful and op ¬ timistic note than has been heard on the air up to now nowWhether Whether this cheerfulness and optimism is justified is not within the jurisdiction of this particular department to determine but if the ABCTV educational report is to be taken at face value it appears that a good deal of progress toward revision of present educational methods had long been under way even before the Sputnik and the Muttnik soared into outer space Report Card 1958 had six top newsmen working under the guidance of John Daly visiting various schools across the country in which new methods and new approaches had been devised for the instruction of the coming generations At the close of the program Mr Daly noted that other com ¬ munities in the land might take notice with considerable benefit benefitA A A A AEdward Edward Morgan for instance journeyed to Hagerstown Md where a city wide ex ¬ periment is now under way using television to teach thousands of kids at once Mr Morgans film report was of a musical teacher who played kindergarten songs on a piano in front of a closed circuit TV camera with kindergarten children in vari ¬ ous schools in the city accompanying her in the singing clapping their hands in rhythm and hoppityhopping up and down their classrooms as they followed the teachers instructions In each classroom of course there was the regular kinder ¬ garten teacher herself ready to answer any questions keeping the class in order but still free to devote a good deal of her time to other chores as well Mr Morgan was careful to explain that this TV system of citywide teaching ap ¬ plied not only to kindergarten children but was in force for many upper grade students as well And he also told the tale of the small child who saw that music teacher out in the street one day and in ¬ nocently asked How did you get out of the box If I remember correctly this same story was also told about Dr Frances FrancesContinued Continued on Page FortyEight SIGHT AND SOUND SOUNDBy By LEO MISHKIN Continued from Page Two TwoHorwich Horwich who used to run that Ding Dong School on TV also v A AOther Other ABC correspondents visited other schools where new methods were being ap ¬ plied John Secondari dropped into a classroom at HicksvilleT L I where six and eightyearolds are being taught French Italian and German right from the ground up vDon Goddard visited two widely separated points Lewis County in upstate New York and the city of Portland Ore to find out how the more gifted chil dren as he put it the able children are handled in classes where others less able might slow them down Quincy Howe went out to Rock Island HI for a look at the special program in science courses offered by thejocal high schools of that city to d eve Top the technological skills that many educators say we are lacking And Bob Fleming reported on the curriculum in force in the city of Jpplin Mo where the small fry come more often to the town library than they do tb the movies and where oddly enough the sale of comic books and horror books it at one of the lowest points in tne whole nation The small fry who usually buy these publica ¬ tions at the corner newsstand are too busy reading things like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or The Three Musketeers out in Joplin Mo MoA A A A AReport Report Card 1958 was a much more encouraging study of our educational system than many of us might have been led to believe on the basis of the gloomy prospects made public elsewhere in recent months This is not to say of course that we are completely out of the woods as yet as Daly observed at the close of the pro ¬ gram But it did point a way toward na ¬ tional improvement it did shedTsome light on What individual communities might do and it did provide somehope for the fu ¬ ture On that score alone this ABCTV documentary rates an A for effort
