Video: A Highly Creditable Curriculum

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Engrossing new public TV shows double as college courses

Going to school via television used to be typically a matter of waking up with the chickens for a session of Sunrise Semester. But the TV classroom has left the chickens—and the sunrise—far behind. This fall, housebound students can examine issues in constitutional law under the guidance of such authorities as retired Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart and former President Gerald Ford. They can also study the workings of the human brain, thanks to a lavish $6 million series that for dramatic impact rivals anything on St. Elsewhere. Best of all, they can do it in prime time.

The credit for this TV-for-credit boomlet goes largely to the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1981 the Annenberg School established a fund of $150 million, to be parceled out by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting over a period of 15 years, for innovative programming that would bring college-level courses to the home viewer. The initial five series in the Annenberg/CPB Project are making their debuts this fall. The two most ambitious are The Constitution: That Delicate Balance, which returned last month for 13 episodes, following four pilot segments aired last year; and The Brain, which premiered last Wednesday (each can be seen on more than 260 PBS stations). The others: Congress: We the People, a 26-part examination of the nation's legislative process; The New Literacy: An Introduction to Computers; and The Write Bourse, which teaches basic writing skills. Another new PBS series, Heritage: Civilization and the Jews, an impressively mounted survey of Jewish history with Abba Eban as host, is not related to the Annenberg/CPB Project, but is also designed as a college telecourse. Toother these shows form a video curriculum that is more varied, stimulating and accessible than anything yet seen on American TV.

More than 400 institutions in 40 states, ranging from small community colleges to large state universities, are offering at least one of the Annenberg-funded courses this fall. In order to get credit, students must read a textbook and study guide, prepared under Annenberg auspices, and pass a final examination. But in most cases they need never set foot on campus.

Obviously, video learnning lacks the advantages of live classroom give-and-take. But the professors are topflight, the courses of study use the latest research, and the schedules are rigorous. "You have to be a highly self-disciplined person to take a telecourse," asserts John Flanagan, associate dean for nontraditional studies at Eastern Kentucky University, which is offering two of the Annenberg courses for credit this fall. "They go on whether you can study or not, whether you're sick or out of town. They're relentless."