The Teacher & TV

Watching professors struggle with bigger and bigger classes as enrollments inexorably swell, many a college president has eyed TV with a seemingly simple solution in mind: Why not put the professors on television and pipe it to several classrooms? Last week, in London's Sunday Times, Oxford Graduate Geoffrey Wagner, who took part in an experimental televised English-literature course as a lecturer at Columbia University, reported his personal experiences in terms that may give college presidents pause. His verdict: TV will not do.

First of all, said Wagner, it soon "became abundantly evident that no young American could reasonably be expected to sit through one hour staring at the same face on the same small screen. Classroom TV is supposed to 'quicken an interest.' In fact, nothing turned out to be more dampening than the flickering image of an elderly teacher, looking weary and unshaven under the television lights. Jokes fall flat, emphasis is missed, and the lack of any personal relationship proves stultifying."

In an attempt to make their lectures "visually interesting," the desperate professor-performers "began to spend hours and hours getting up gimmicks. A production number on Joyce proved nightmarish--there were drawings of Joyce, a cartoon of Joyce, pictures of Joyce's friends, there was Joyce reading from Finnegans Wake, but . . .

"Of course, this whole emphasis proved wrong. It sent the lecture off in the direction of anecdotal entertainment, and in turn forced entirely the wrong approach on the teacher."

The teacher loses all sense of contact with his pupils. "A point made in an open lecture can be repeated or developed by the lecturer. On the screen it is gone forever, if at that instant someone coughs, or 'the high dome re-echoes to his nose.' as Pope put it. Nor can the teacher judge how well or how ill he is being comprehended--he has perforce to aim at the lowest common denominator."

Finally wrote Wagner, "the idea that 'English Lit.' is given a sort of contemporary prestige when shown on TV backfired. Students mentally compared the teachers they saw with the professional television actors and actresses they watched at night, and by this iron yardstick, we failed miserably."

Wagner's conclusion ("though one dared not say this to the TV-happy 'educators' "): if U.S. students were required to read more books, they would be better equipped to understand literature "than by attending any number of television lectures."

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