Invitation Only

Since he first started reading Shakespeare on TV, Professor Frank Baxter of the University of Southern California (TIME, April 11) has won the dubious title of "The Liberace of the Library."

But Liberace, according to Baxter, is no substitute for the old-fashioned liberal arts. In This Week magazine, Baxter bluntly warns the nation: turn off that TV set and "wake up and read."

"Your television set is not a vending machine for higher learning. It can, at best, be an invitation to knowledge. That in itself is very much . . . But the coaxial cable alone will not pump culture into anyone's veins--child or adult. Despite what any educational theorist may say, one can't possibly grow up to be educated without wide reading . . .

"The alarming thing today is not the use but the abuse of television. Parents rely on it as a sort of opiate to keep their children quiet and out of circulation.

Unfortunately, television encourages passivity rather than activity. It is easy. It is habit-forming. It fosters the dangerous idea that we can learn by letting knowledge drip on us like rain from heaven.

The deeper and more abiding rewards of literature, on the other hand, are harder to come by. Reading is work. Even in its lightest form it demands some discipline and investment of self. But it is this self-investment which, over the long haul, pays off in dividends."

Having said all that, the obliging Professor Baxter suggests what the kids might read while the big screen is dark. Among his suggestions for seven-to-twelve-year-olds: A Child's Garden of Verses, Hawthorne's Wonder-Book, Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Swiss Family Robinson, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Just So Stories, Ivanhoe, the Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare, Tom Sawyer, and Treasure Island. For the 13-year-olds and up: Lady of the Lake, The Call of the Wild, David Copperfield, Huckleberry Finn, Lays of Ancient Rome, A Tale of Two Cities, Idylls of the King, Westward Ho!, Lorna Doom, Kidnapped and Two Years Before the Mast.

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