'Wake Up and Read!"

By DR. FRANK C. BAXTER

Dr. Baxter, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Southern California, has a second distinguished career on tele­vision. He first attracted a wide audience for his Sunday afternoon "Shakespeare on TV." Since then he has won many awards for his contributions to educational TV and is the narrator of the Bell System Science Series.

Question: Mrs. Newton P. Leonard, of Providence, R. I., President of the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, was elected Rhode Island's "Mother of the Year" for 1955. Her question: "Is watching television an effective short cut to cul­ture and education?" This Week's Editors took her ques­tion to Dr. Frank C. Baxter, the professor of English literature who became one of television's leading stars.

Answer: My dear lady, let's understand each other. I think it's very jolly to watch snakes wriggle and tadpoles turn to frogs. Natural science runs amuck on TV and it can be lots of fun for all of us — make no mistake about that. Television's educational programs can certainly be instructive in a piecemeal, haphazard sort of way. They fill one's mind with fascinat­ing bric-a-brac. And at their best, they open up new horizons. But even network executives and producers, enthusiastic as they have a right to be about their wonderful new medium, do not expect it to work miracles. And it would be a full-fledged miracle if, by merely going to school and watching TV, our children could grow up to be well-rounded, cultured adults.

Your television set is not a vending machine for higher learning. It can, at best, be an invitation to knowledge. That in itself is very much. God bless TV if it opens our eyes to the hidden treasures that await, for example, the first reading of "Robinson Crusoe." But God help us too, if the dramatized smattering on TV is all we ever get.

My own experience may be a case in point. Some people think I'm trying to sow the seeds of "culture" on my CBS-TV Sunday afternoon program. True, I do read Shakespeare and other high-brow authors aloud. The ardor that I pour into my delivery has even inspired some critics to dub me "the Liberace of the Library." But heaven forbid that anyone should think I'm peddling easy-to-swallow, instant-relief, culture pills! All I'm trying to do is kindle the latent reading spark in all of us. And as an invitation to learning, television is superb.

But the coaxial cable alone will not pump culture into anyone's veins — child or adult. Despite what any educational theorist may say, one can't possibly grow up to be educated without wide reading. Things learned by word of mouth tend to be thin and transitory. How much of what your teachers from kindergarten through high school told you can you remember today?

No, the spoken word — and the animated figure on the screen — these are fleeting shadows. They will not stay put to be mastered. Sound has the habit of floating in one ear and out the other without so much as dropping anchor for a short stay.   Only the written word gives students the solid back­ground that underlies all real culture.

The alarming thing today is not the use but the abuse of television. Parents sometimes rely on it as a sort of opiate to keep their children quiet and out of circulation. Unfortunately, television encourages passivity rather than activity. It is easy. It is habit-forming. It fosters the dangerous idea that we can learn by letting knowledge drip on us like rain from heaven.

The deeper and more abiding rewards of literature, on the other hand, are harder to come by. Reading is work. Even in its lightest form it demands discipline and investment of self.

Before making a beeline to the bookstore, let's be sure what we mean by "reading."

There are certain classics basic to the growth of a cul­tured person. These are books which generations of people in the English-speaking world have read in childhood. They con­tain a storehouse of allusions we use in everyday speech. They provide us with the small change of common knowledge upon which later transactions are based.

You might call these books the Vitamin A of the intellect. They should be taken early to build a robust brain.

I've prepared a list of musts which have withstood the test of time. They are valuable for the reflections they make on human life, for their ability to stimulate the imagination, and for their mastery of language. Some of them may be beyond a child's powers. But he will grow up to them just as he grows into his older brother's trousers.

On the next page are lists of books that will be as important at the age of 70 as they were at seven. Any librarian could list a score of additional titles from the last 20 years — such books as "Wagons Westward," "The Yearling," etc.
 
Place these great classics on a five-foot bookshelf within reach of your children and they'll be better able to assess what they see on the 21-inch screen. Television is an exciting and wonderful tool of communication. But alone it can never do the job of educating a generation of precious children.

Dr. Baxter's "Vitamin A" Bookshelf

LIST I—STARTING AT 7

1. "Silver Pennies: a Collection of Poetry for Boys and Girls"
   
   
2. Stevenson: "AChild's Gar­ den of Verses"
   
   
3. Hawthorne:  "Wonder Book"
   
   
4. Langi "Fairy Tales"
   
   
5. Bunyan: "Pilgrim's Progress"
   
   
6. Defoe: "Robinson Crusoe"
   
   
7. SWIFT: "Gulliver's Travels"
   
   
8. WYSS:  "Swiss   Family Robinson"
   
   
9. Carroll: "Alice in  Wonderland"
   
   
10. Kipling: "Just So Stories"
    
    
11. Scott: "Ivanhoe"
    
    
12. Lamb: "Tales from Shakespeare"
    
    
13. Verne:   "The   Mysterious Island"
    
    
14. Twain: "Tom Sawyer"
    
    
15. Dickens:    "A    Christmas Carol"
    
    
16. Stevenson: "Treasure Island"
    
17. "Arabian Nights" (a children's edition)

LIST II—BEST AFTER 12

1. Scott, "Lady of the Lake"
   
   
2. Kipling : "Puck of  Pook's Hill";   "Rewards   and Fairies"
   
   
3. Verne: "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea"
   
   
4. London: "The Call of the Wild"
   
   
5. Dickens:  "David  Copperfield"
   
   
6. Twain:    "Huckleberry Finn"
   
   
7. AUSLANDER AND HILL: "The Winged Horse Anthology"
   
   
8. Macaulay:  "Lays of An­ cient Rome"
   
   
9. Dickens = "A Tale of TwoCities"
   
   
10. Tennyson:  "Idylls  of  the King"
    
    
11. Kingsley:  "Westward Ho!"
    
    
12. Blackmore:    "Lorna Doone"
    
    
13. English and Scottish Folk Ballads
    
    
14. Stevenson: "Kidnapped"
    
    
15. Dana: "Two Years Before the Mast"

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