Automation and education: II. Automatizing the classroom-background of the effort

This paper has attempted to deal with two aspects of the problem of automatizing the classroom through audio-visual means. These aspects were: (a) the institutional background in which the earlier foundation support of the audio-visual movement by the Payne Fund and the Rockefeller Foundation was compared to the present, much more extensive support of the mass audio-visual approach to teaching supported by the Ford Foundation, its several Funds and the organizations which it underwrites; and (b) the theoretical position requiring audio-visual automation which was shown to be based on the teacher and plant shortage facing this country in the next two decades of swelling school and college enrollments and, therefore, necessitating technological solutions to problems of class size and building space. For a complete picture, some case histories and research results, as well as a technical analysis of the entire position, would prove useful. It is hoped to supply these three aspects of the study in the next paper, to be followed, if thought desirable, by a fourth discussion which would subject the whole idea to critical scrutiny. This is the second in a series of articles dealing with various aspects of the relationship between automation and education. The first, which appeared in the Winter, 1957, issue of the Review, dealt with the general relationships between the two. This article reviews the specific proposals for automatizing the classroom through audio-visual devices in terms of the organizations leading the movement and the theoretical justification for these proposed changes in educational procedure.