Education: Teacher Or Trojan Horse?

When Christopher Whittle unveiled his plans to bring TV to the nation's classrooms earlier this year, he served up the deal with the classic pitch: everybody would win. Underfunded schools would get tens of thousands of dollars' worth of video equipment free, students would get a news program to teach them that Chernobyl is not Cher's full name, advertisers would get a captive teenage audience, and Whittle would make a healthy profit. Despite loud criticism that the daily newscasts amounted to cynical commercialization of the classroom, Whittle announced last week that he was not only going ahead with Channel One but...