Sister Rosalie's Support for TV in the Classroom

Sister Rosalie recognized that advances in domestic technology, especially television, would prove to be the most important factor in modern education due to the unique prospects it has to offer, such as:

• A close-up experience of things which would exceed the school budgets otherwise
• Incredibly reliable demonstrations of procedures
• A unique type of connection that TVs have with their viewers

Sister Rosalie's Speech to the Senate, 1965

In 1965, during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, the United States Senate debated on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), a bill that would provide federal funding to public schools in disenfranchised areas across the nation that lacked the funding they desperately needed. In an effort to pass the bill, Senators in favor reached out to educators from every part of the country to testify on behalf of the importance of education in the development of future generations. On January 29th, 1965, Sister Rosalie gave the following testimony as to why the Senate should pass the bill.

"As Mr. Taverner (the speaker before) has told you, I am Sister Rosalie, and I am a director and supervisor of television for Catholic Schools. However, this afternoon I am here not to speak for Catholic Schools only. I am here to speak for every teacher -- in the summary and the full report you tell me will be included in the record.

Mr. Taverner gave an effective overview of television in the service of education. In his testimony he used a television device which we are quite familiar with -- a cover-shot, to demonstrate the story of educational television and its potential to be realised through the Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965.

Now I will supplement Mr. Taverner's testimony by using another camera shot -- the close-up. As an educator, I will focus on the child, the teacher, and television as it served education through them. As an educator my first concern is the child. I find in this interest a parallel in the education bill.

No matter what the child's racial, social, emotional, or moral background is, he is to be 'shaped for fulfillment' mainly and normally through home and school. What is also vital to me as an educator is that the child be considered as a human being who needs development, guidance; that he is equipped with five senses (really ready-made for television with its sight, sound, movement); a mind that can perceive; emotions; desires; and intrinsic weaknesses.

Keenness of the senses and these other capacities and limitations vary; and accordingly, responsibility varies for the child and for the parent and for the teacher. 

As an educator I also know a few things that I feel are imperative to this question, and I know a few things about learning. It is emanant. Every one of us has learned through a do-it-yourself process. This learning may be a delight as well as a discipline. It takes place everywhere, not only within the confines of a playpen or four-walled classroom. It takes place individually, in small groups, in middle-sized groups, and in large groups.

Since schools are commissioned for the formal education of the child, it is important to remember that schools exist for learning; and I include administrators and teachers, and textbooks, and curriculum, and chalkboards, and school boards, and all these ways and means... schedules, maps, television. And all these ways and means are the variables; learning is the constant. Variables are quite important.

In the last 11 years I have worked very closely with one of these means -- educational television; and for a few minutes I should like to colly-in on the teacher, who, in the words of Socrates is the "midwife at the birth of learning." 

Full of vexation are the teachers about the too many's in education. I am sure you are familiar with the 'too many' subjects, demands: and the too fews: classrooms, assistants, leisure hours in which to read and just to think; too little space, time, and money.

Frequently these teachers are so bogged down and hemmed in by schedules and classroom walls and record keeping, milk distribution, -- things of that sort, that they become the school drop-outs. They struggle to break ties that they may get some fresh cool air out in the country. 

But those of us who look into the matter of education find that it is not the teacher that needs to be transported. It is some of the sacred cows that are hemming the teacher down. These need to be sent to pasture: antiquated curriculum, antiquated textbooks and overlapping textbooks and all these 'cubilal' subjects make a teacher's schedule look more like a railroad timetable.

The teachers, the ones that should be taken out of bondage from what Marshall McLewin up in Toronto calls 'obsolete detention homes, dungeons.' In television, I see a liberator; the liberator doesn't come to us in shining armor, but in the little box in front of one-fifth of the classrooms of America. The liberator isn't working up to capacity, but that isn't his fault. Maybe this Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965 will help the liberator.

You have read or you have heard that educational television provides courses of material where they are not available; that it adapts to the track system that so many of the schools are putting in under various names. It illuminates text material and reduces individual tension for student and teacher. The student isn't kept in confinement all day long with one rasping voice, and so on. It meets the needs of a changing curriculum, helps the teacher to be a better teacher, has made students curious, helps to place responsibility where it really belongs -- on the child.

The greatest resource we have is the child and sometimes we forget that. Television gives teachers more time to take care of individual differences.

Now television can do these things, and in some cases it does do these things. But in all cases it is not doing them because there is too much haphazard programming in educational television, too much amateur production, and too much limp utilization. These are restraining television's potential. 

It is true this television can break down classroom walls far faster than any demolition crew, if, and this is the criteria that I would have as a pioneer in educational television for all educational television; and unless it meets this criteria it should not be classed as real educational television.

1. Programs planned to meet the needs of the child and the classroom teacher.

2. Programs in which production is professional (not the face on the classroom wall, for instance).

3. That there is an on-camera teacher who is not only a good teacher but also a good communicator (and they are not the same thing). It is a new combination. And a teacher who recognizes the medium as a sound, sight, and motion medium.

4. The classroom television teacher must motivate, integrate, and follow-up according to the needs of the child.

5. Communication for evaluation is established between the two television teachers (on-camera and classroom).

That done, it follows that other things begin to happen. Program planning, for instance, has disclosed to us that the needs of a child have a surprising similarity, whether he lives in a depressed, impressed, or expressed area. The textbook and curriculum aren't so different in the various systems or in various parts ofthe country. The togetherness or cooperation or whatever we want to call it in production, utilization, and evaluation extends. Consequently other walls are broken down.

Furthermore, television, educational television, joins the teaching team within a school in the team teaching trend that we talked about. It is used in the non-graded set-up; in orchestrated learning, where the teacher holds a baton and sometimes for the good of her particular class and the particular situation, points that baton to the chalk board; sometimes to a book; sometimes to the child himself, sometimes to the television. This is the cross-media approach, using the various devices that you will hear about this after noon in the testimony -- overhead projectors, tape recorders, and so on. As Mr. Taverner told you, state networks are with us, regional networks also. Programs like WQED's kindergarten series is now KQED's kindergarden series. And Miss Jordan is "My Teacher" to thousands of pre-schoolers throughout the country between Pennsylvania and California. 

Within the next two years more and more teachers will be shared to more and more students. When the educational television network is on the air extensively, we'll have multiplicity, and in this multiplicity, we want quality. 

At this point I should like to enter into the testimony another result which I should like to set forth for other systems. It is the breaking down of walls between school systems.

In Pittsburgh where we have two educational stations, public and private schools have worked together with them for 11 years, and I mean worked together. There has been active representation on the curriculum advisory committee, on the course planning committee, on the course evaluation committee, for every course that has come over the air. The telecourses, as a result, are an integral part of the classroom teaching in both public and private schools. The teachers share workshops. The children of both public and private schools appear together in demonstrations. One fiftieth of the students that are now enrolled in the private school that I direct, the School of Communication Arts, are from public schools. They share in the scholarships that we have the same as the boys and girls from Catholic schools. Supervisors of television in the public schools visit our classrooms. I visit theirs. It is not unusual to have public school teachers sharing the resources of our professional educational library at Quigley Center for research and program planning.

Our system holds membership on the State advisory board for educational broadcasting, the state curriculum committees. These are some of the things that we are doing together, and we are doing with happy results.

We are planning things together now, too. The opportunity program is being set up in Pittsburgh, and some of the things that we are thinking about very definitely are a pre-school program that will mean gathering these little pre-schoolers in a central place outside their homes where they would have an opportunity to follow the lessons by bringing them to a center and working under supervision. A cooking course for mothers who use food stamps is also on the board. This course will provide basic, nourishing menus. As we look ahead, we are cognizant that the child that we are concerned with will live in the 21st century. 

According to present trends, he will go to school all year round, not nine or ten months, until he is 24. When he is finished with formal education, he will be working a 30 to 35 hour week. After retirement, at about 60, he has a possible 40 years ahead of him.

Now there is much for us to do, and it has to be done quickly and well, to shape this child for fulfillment in this world that he must live in.

Dr. Siepman of New York University says that it is every child's right to sit once, for at least one course, at the feet of a great teacher. According to the curve of normal distribution, the maximum number of teachers who would thus qualify is 10 percent. Educational television can take care of bringing one of these teachers to each child. Educational television, having been tried and found guilty of having the potential to take care of many of education's problems, is certainly for our consideration. 

We have a commitment. This time the close-up is on the parents, teachers, legislators, and citizens. To the question, 'Why should we set more money aside for education'; well, educational television cooperatively planned, professionally produced, and wisely utilized is one of those reasons."

The Senate's Response to Sister Rosalie

"Sister Rosalie, may I say this is the most tremendous contribution to our hearings as of yet." - Senator Wayne Morse, Oregon

"We keep emphasizing in these hearings the deprived child. He comes from the poor neighborhood and he doesn't hear a decent conversation and all the rest of it. I think that is all correct. But I think also correct is the fact that we haven't done the job in some of our school districts that needs to be done, and we don't have the answers. I am not suggesting to you that television is the sole answer. But I wonder whether television might be part of the answer..." -Senator Robert Kennedy, New York

In part due to Sister Rosalie's incredible testimony, the ESEA would pass with measures that included resources to support educational TV programming in the classroom. This piece of legislation has assisted impoverished youth throughout the nation since its passing in 1965 and continues to receive amendments in the modern day.

While the Senate was arguably the most significant speech she gave, she delivered several dozen speeches to various other communities and conferences.

Other Organizations She Spoke To Include:

• Catholic Theatre Conference
• National Catholic Education Association
• National Assembly of Secondary School Principals
• National Honor Society
• Fordham University