Page:Minority of One September 1961.pdf/4
Education in Disguise
By Guy Albert d'Amato
Incomplete concept of education. Entertainment and education divorced. Need for reunion. Entertainment versus the school. British radio. The English and American concepts of entertainment. Educating the public want. Importance of effort in learning. The promotion of success.
Formal education is only a small part of total education meant to give an organized basis for a more rapid progress in intellectual development. But whether or not formal education takes place, education will go on for better or for worse in one way or another. In short, we cannot escape it. If it does not come to us in a toga, it will reach us in a guise of entertainment to determine the development of our moral and intellectual character. Hence, entertainment is really not only a form of education, but also the most important factor in mass education - i.e. of the average man as well as of the superior mind. A people's entertainment determines its moral and intellectual characters and either nourishes or destroys its potentialities for improvement.
Entertainment, then, is a matter of tremendous social significance. There is really no such relation as entertainment versus education. Entertainment is education, and is not less so merely because it is informal. As much can be said of one as of the other, for example, that neither entertainment nor formal education can be wrong unless it sets up the wrong goal of mental progress. There is, therefore, nothing wrong with a preponderance of entertainment programs on radio and television if that should prove to be the best way to educate a people. What is wrong lies in our concept which, in spite of history and antropology proving the contrary need, practically divorces entertainment from education; and on that score, defiles the choice, quality, and content of its themes. At no time and nowhere have the two been so far removed from each other as in our American way of life: and the results are well on the way of proving the fact that we cannot practice one apart from the other without serious consequences in our social and mental development. Even formal education must take the relation of the two into account, not only to the extent of encouraging the pursuits of the better kinds of entertainment by precept and example, but also to the greater extent of nurturing the whole mind on the basis of sound thinking in order to insure the autonomous power of discrimination.
Thus, it is not the fact of entertainment, but the kind of entertainment that matters. And since it is a form of education, training in appreciation is as much required for that as it is in any other form. To miss this point is a habit that comes from our conceptual separation of entertainment and education. Motivation and training of a sort are necessary for both types of education, formal and informal, but are to be attained in a quite different manner - in one case, directly by conscious and organized guidance; and in the other, indirectly by intuition, curiosity, and experience. In the last, therefore, motivation must ride solely upon the material it seeks, and derive its training therefrom which material, in radio and television, is the substance of the programs they offer. The highest forms of music, drama, literature, and art are no less media of entertainment than are radio and television. Nor can they be said to be more recreational, since entertainment of any kind is educational, and all forms of education are re-creational in one way or another for better or for worse. With regard to the mass media, our unrelated concepts of education and entertainment overlook two extremely important effects of entertainment upon the mind: first, the strictly educational impact of the content on knowledge and attitudes; and secondly, the moral and aestetic impact of the quality of the content upon character and taste. These together make up education. While we are coming now to admit the fact academically, in practice we still think of education mostly in terms of informational matter: and of entertainment, as something distinct and apart from, and even contrary to, education. Until we come to act upon the fact that both are the same thing in different terms, we shall get nowhere with our schools, and nothing from them but narrow experts. The forces of entertainment surrounding the school - i.e. of the kind of entertainment which owes neither alliance nor allegiance to anything but financial profit - are now too powerful to be ignored: and it takes no research to see the very conspicuous fact that already they are beginning to nullify the moral and intellectual purpose of the school. This is a new factor in the social pattern of which we yet take no account whatever. We must somehow cope with it in the school. And if, outside the school, we are to educate at all through radio and television, it must be largely through the improvement of the general level and quality of entertainment. We have but to look at the British Broadcasting Corporation to see this principle at work. Symphonic concerts, lectures on all sorts of subjects, full-length plays undistorted, commercially unsponsored news commentaries, and comedies of a high order should comprise a larger proporation of the total output. Five or ten per cent is not enough to counteract the overwhelming impact of coarse and distorted material.
Broadcasting full-length drama is the rarest of events on the American radio and television networks. England not only abounds in these, but records them purposely for repeat performances. Our radio is totally ignorant of the value of repetition in that respect outside its "commercials" wherein it is "scientifically" practiced to the point of psychological distraction. We do have symphonic concerts and a complete opera periodically during a season, but they stand in perpetual danger of being dis continued, and sometimes are. The history of American radio programs is littered with cases of good entertainment which came to an untimely end, or gradually deteriorated in order to compete with the air-infesting lowlier forms that are longer-lived and often survive a generation or two.
Thus, the difference between the American and English concepts of entertainment has caused tremendously different effects in practice: on the American side, it has placed the good in the weak and precarious position of having to compete with the bad while, on the British side it has forced the bad into the more desirable position of having to compete with the good. That the difference is tremendous we see demonstrated by the fact that two entirely different worlds of entertainment have been built on a matter of emphasis alone - and there should be no doubt about which is the better one to live in. Hence, what seems to be merely a matter of emphasis in theory becomes in the long run a difference in the character of a people.[1]
Some contenders, assuming a democratic pose, are sure to object on the assumption that the British way does not give the majority what it wants. There is more than one salient answer to that objection. But we have sufficient evidence of the easily ascertainable fact that the English public prefers what it is getting This author, for one, does not believe our own majority is basically worse than that of England. That we are worse in matters of taste, judgment, and intelligence is the hidden conclusion of that seemingly solicitous, but commercially inspired objection. Our patriotic and democratic arguments often end with insulting ourselves. If the American public is given a longer chance than commercial interests will allow for better programs, it will do then what it does now - that is, it will want what it can get. One cannot want better until one learns to want better; and thus, through the education of taste by example and experience will come to want a larger proportion of good entertainment - i.e. the kind of entertainment which produces deeper satisfaction because it provides the opportunity for increasing the significance of one's life. On the other hand, those who will not listen to better programs either must come in time to listen for want of something to occupy their leisure (and thus
Professor d'Amato is a faculty member of Tufts University at Medford, Mass., the author of several volumes, and a permanent contributor to TMO.
- ↑ The whole tenor of our radio practice, even in the broadcast of informational material, is arrested by the following report on The Voice of America, a radio channel for propagandising our way of life. The report appeared some time ago in The Christian Science Monitor: "While the Voice of America in many places appears to be gaining in popularity, is still legs bebind the British Broadcasting Corporation in its appeal in most area. The reason frequently given is that the BBC broadcasts are more objective and newsworthy, an indication that the Voice may still be underestimating the level of intelligence and sophistication in the people it is trying to reach." That is not so much the result of conceit as of the fact that it is the way the American mass-media treat American audiences.