Education: Televersity
For years, educators have been talking about television as an ideal teaching medium—a chance for professors to bring their charts and blackboards directly into the nation's living rooms. Last week the University of Michigan announced that it had decided to try it. Michigan will start weekly Sunday afternoon telecasts on Detroit's WWJ-TV next fall, hopes to interest 1,000,000 stay-at-home students in the Detroit area.
Michigan plans a series of hour-long programs, each divided into three 20-minute parts. Each program will begin with an illustrated lecture on history, fine arts, music, or the fundamentals of natural science, followed by one on "Modern Living" which will tackle such subjects as "How to Buy a Home" and "How to Be Happy in Later Years." The last third of each program will take the TV class into university research labs, workshops and rare-book vaults now open only to a few accredited students, and through science exhibitions.
Said Michigan's Dean Hayward Keniston last week: "We are entering a new era in adult education and the university is in it to stay."
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