St Edwards University - Tower Yearbook (Austin, TX)

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iailenzing educators to put away the schnology of the past 500 years Mrs. Joan sanz Cooney accepted St. Edward’s Univer- ity’s third Quest Medal, the university’s ighest honor, created to recognize individ- als whose life work has been characterized y creative enterprise and original thought. Mrs. Cooney is the founder and presi- ent of the Children’s Television Workshop, | project which adapts television to early hildhood education. The workshop’s chief roduct, Sesame Street, aimed primarily at isadvantaged children, is seen by greater nan half of the 12 million three-to-five- ear-olds in the United States. The Electric | 1 ‘ompany for older children, is a more recent roduct of the workshop. “Our view,” recalled Mrs. Cooney, when we began in 1968, was that television yas not about to go away, that we who were terested in the education of children had etter capture some of television’s methods nd turn them to our own purposes.” | On the strength of Mrs. Cooney’s study . or the Carnegie Corporation, which detailed he unprecedented pervasiveness of the tele- ision medium in youngster’s lives, and with elp from Head Start, Carnegie, Ford and Jarkle Foundations, and the Corporation or Public Broadcasting, the Children’s Tele- ision Workshop was born to address these urposes through some very specific curricu- um goals; recognition of letters in the alpha- et, counting ability, beginning reasoning sills, vocabulary, and an increased aware- ess of self and the world. “We co-opted,” Mrs. Cooney explained, commercials for our own purposes.” “We knew that children loved television, specially the animation and music and 10vements. And, above all, young children »ved commercials.” “We knew that children learned from aem. Children, all over America, were heard nging catchy little songs about Ballantine eer and Sominex.” “So, why not use these devices—really 1arvelous audio-visual techniques, and ef- 2cts—to teach something more constructive, ke numbers and letters and concepts, in- ead of advertising jingles?” “In the process of putting Sesame he Second Generation of Educational Television Street together, using all the standard techniques of commercial television, we evolved a new form. In other words, changing the content transformed the style as well.” “. . . Virtually everything about the series is ¢xploratory, and subject to modi- fication. That it remains so after the production of more than 500 hours of broadcast time, is the result of one of the more unlikely marriages in the history of television.” “That is, the union between produc- tion and research—involving educators in the determination of curriculum, and keeping them involved as the Series progressed.” “Putting research and production to- gether was a trial marriage. A number of television professions suspected it would be more trial than marriage. But they were wrong. A marvelous spirit of cooper- ation developed between broadcaster and researcher. It has kept us questioning, probing, innovating, adapting.” “.. . The galleon on the Quest Medal reminds me that before Columbus dared to:sail the Atlantic, it was well known that the world ended out there some- where beyond Gibralter.” “To the Spanish, one of the real sources of pride was that they were the last outpost of the world, with their nation fronting on the Great Beyond. Therefore, the royal coat of arms showed the Pillars of Hercules, the great columns guarding the Straits of Gibralter. The royal motto said plainly: Ne plus ultra. “There is no more beyond here’.’ “But, then, Columbus came back. And the ancient coat of arms didn’t seem ° so appropriate any more. In this crisis someone made a noble and thrifty sug- gestion that they simply kill the first word, ‘ne’.” “So the coat of arms read, and has read ever since, just two words.” “Plus ultra. ‘There is more beyond’.” “T believe that about the use of tele- vision for education: There is plenty more beyond. It remains for us to find it.” g « a] % ‘7 ak €€ Teaching and television are a logical and necessary match, and they must become the best of allies and most trusting of partners. 99

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