[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 60 (Monday, May 16, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 16, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
       LECTURE BY FCC CHAIRMAN REED HUNDT: CHILDREN AND THE MEDIA

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, On February 28, 1994, Reed Hundt, 
Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission [FCC], gave a lecture 
to the Harvard Graduate School of Education on media and children. 
Chairman Hundt offered insight into a variety of issues concerning 
education, children and the media. I was particularly impressed with 
his remarks about television violence because of my long-time interest 
in this subject. He has provided great leadership on this issue, and 
his suggestion that the television industry take the challenge of 
reforming their relationship with their audience by creating 
prochildren and profamily programming is another important 
contribution.
  I ask that Chairman Hundt's February 28 lecture ``First Annual Action 
for Children's Television: Lecture on Media and Children'' be entered 
at this point in the Record.

  First Annual Action for Children's Television Lecture on Media and 
                      Children, February 28, 1994

       I have been at the Federal Communications Commission as its 
     chairman and chief executive officer for just three months. 
     Last Tuesday, we at the Commission gained a measure of public 
     notice for our unanimous vote to lower the prices of certain 
     regulated cable television services by an additional 7 
     percent, pursuant to the Cable TV Consumer Protection and 
     Competition Act of 1992. That law was sponsored by, among 
     others, the able and visionary Congressman from 
     Massachusetts, Ed Markey.
       Later last week I read in the newspapers that our cable 
     rate decision allegedly broke up the Bell Atlantic-TCI 
     merger, making me and my fellow Commissioner the biggest 
     trustbusters since Teddy Roosevelt.
       I appreciate the compliment, but I think it may have been 
     underserved.
       However, it is true that we at the FCC have a fair amount 
     of responsibility for developments relating to the greatest 
     story in history of communications since the invention of the 
     printing press: the National Information Highway. For the 
     record, that term was coined in the late 1970s by a graduate 
     of the Harvard Class of 1969: a first-term Congressman named 
     Albert Gore Jr.
       (Incidentally, I hope someone's counting my references to 
     Cantabridgians: I'm going for a record here. After 30 years 
     of trying to get into Harvard, I can't count on returning.)
       Tonight, I want to talk to you about three topics: First, I 
     want to discuss how we approach all decisions at the FCC. 
     Second, I want to explain how that approach relates to the 
     three most important issues in our jurisdiction that bear on 
     children. Finally, I want to call, and indeed beg for, your 
     attention to a little-recognized fact. At this very moment, 
     the Administration, certain key members of Congress and the 
     FCC are discussing--almost as if in an otherwise empty room--
     a momentous shift in the power and method of educating 
     children in America today.
       As to the first issue--how we at the FCC approach our 
     decisions; we at the Commission are doing our job in the 
     light of two guiding principles.
       First, in our decisions we aim to increase economic growth 
     and create jobs, particularly by encouraging competition 
     wherever and whenever possible, or by regulating rates to as 
     to replicate the competitive model when that is necessary. 
     That is what we tried to do with respect to our recent cable 
     ruling, and I firmly believe that when our regulations are 
     officially published and studied, they will greatly promote 
     investment and economic growth.
       Second, we will take actions that enhance access to markets 
     for consumers, producers, and new entrants.
       Decisions to promote economic growth and access have 
     increasing significance because we increasingly live in an 
     electronic age and work in an information economy. Already 
     American business is largely transacted over what the 
     Economist magazine recently called one of the seven wonders 
     of the modern world: a telephone network that provides active 
     service to 95% of all households and businesses.
       We have 55 phone lines for every 100 Americans. In Brazil, 
     there are 7 lines per 100 people in Africa, the number is 
     0.7.
       These statistics do not just measure our economic 
     development; they are a major cause of it.
       For our economy depends on the networks. Approximately 60% 
     of the workforce consists of ``knowledge workers''--people 
     who use the networks to communicate and learn in order to do 
     their job. This number will go up. And the communications and 
     information sector will also grow; depending in part of the 
     FCC's decisions, it could reach one trillion dollars, one-
     sixth of current GDP, by 1997.
       The influence of the networks is not just in our 
     livelihoods; it is woven in the fabric of our lives.
       Daniel Boorstin wrote that ``America grew in the search for 
     community,'' our ubiquitous cable and telephone networks, as 
     well as over the air broadcast networks, are crucial to our 
     ongoing search for community.
       Without attention to issues affecting access; however, our 
     already divided communities may shatter. If these networks do 
     not reach into every community and bring us together, they 
     could end up dividing us further--leaving whole segments of 
     our country without the skills and information necessary to 
     prosper in our post-industrial economy.
       The principles of economic growth and access have 
     particular application, I submit, to the three most important 
     children's issue in our jurisdiction. These are the 
     following:
       (1) The Children's TV Act regulations.
       (2) Violence on Television.
       (3) The extension of our interactive networks into the 
     classroom.
       I want to focus tonight primarily on the third of these, 
     not because the others are in any respect unimportant but 
     because of the critical timing of actions you can take to 
     influence what we do in Washington. However, let me discuss 
     initially the other two issues.
       First, in response to the Children's Television Act of 
     1990, the FCC promulgated regulations in April 1991 requiring 
     TV stations to broadcast programming responsive to the 
     educational and information needs of children 16 and under. 
     No quantitative guidelines were set.
       About a year ago, the FCC began an inquiry as to whether 
     the rules should be modified. It is about time to bring that 
     inquiry to a close and we intend to do so in the near future. 
     The issues include the definition of ``educational and 
     information'' programming and the wisdom of quantitative 
     standards. In addition, I am particularly interested in the 
     question of the economies of children's programming. What is 
     likely to encourage marketplace economics to generate high 
     quality children's programming?
       This leads to a second children's issue: the impact of TV 
     violence on children. At a convention of independent TV 
     station owners and managers and programmers last month, I 
     cited Dr. Leonard Eron, Professor of Psychology at the 
     University of Michigan, who said that when it comes to 
     determining whether violence on TV contributes to making 
     children more violent ``the scientific debate is over.'' 
     Numerous studies over more then thirty years have proved a 
     causal connection between TV violence and real-life violence.
       I suggested to the broadcasters that the violence issue 
     challenges television in much the same way that the concerns 
     about auto safety challenged the car companies in the 1960s. 
     These was then for the car companies and there is now for 
     television a fork in the road: one way is the path of denial 
     and confrontation. The other way is the route to opportunity 
     and renewal.
       Yogi Berra explained what to do in this situation: ``When 
     you come to a fork in the road, take it.'' And I suppose that 
     there inevitably will be in a diverse industry some who want 
     to go one way, and some who want to go the other.
       But, as I said, I think the better way is clear. Non-
     violent programming can be for broadcasters what safety now 
     is for the car companies: an opportunity to win again the 
     trust of the public. It can be a chance to redefine the 
     product so that it embodies the values of our country. Just 
     as Chrysler invented a whole new family car, broadcasters can 
     invent a new kind of family programming.
       If programmers, cable operators, and broadcast TV licensees 
     were to eschew violence in TV programming, they could invent 
     a whole new kind of pro-children television. This new product 
     would reforge their relationship with their audience. And it 
     would further the implementation of the Children's TV Act. 
     For although it is not inevitable that nonviolent programming 
     would be educational and informative, certainly the new 
     product that I called upon the industry to create will 
     include programs that meet the words and the spirit of the 
     Act.
       Creating this new product, industry will provide children 
     across this country with access to information and learning 
     that too often today is unavailable. At the same time they 
     will gain access to new business opportunities that will 
     generate further economic growth.
       My third, and time urgent, children's topic, concerns the 
     country's classrooms. In Los Angeles, on January 11 of this 
     year, the Vice President challenged every telecommunications 
     company, school board, teacher, librarian, and citizen of 
     this country to ``connect and provide access to the National 
     Information Infrastructure for every classroom, every 
     library, and every hospital and clinic'' in the country by 
     the year 2000.
       In his State of the Union speech two weeks later, the 
     President said: ``The Vice President is right--we must also 
     work with the private sector to connect every classroom, 
     every clinic, every library, every hospital in America into a 
     national information superhighway by the year 2000.'' He went 
     on: ``Think of it--instant access to information will 
     increase productivity, will help to educate our children.''
       That was the first time telecommunications was mentioned in 
     a State of the Union speech. It was mentioned as the path to 
     a new kind of education. This national information 
     infrastructure of which the President and the Vice President 
     have spoken will rely heavily upon our telephone and cable 
     networks, as they exist and as they will become. Already 
     telephone lines easily have sufficient capacity for some 
     video applications and many voice, data, and computer linkup.
       Meanwhile, cable operators are replacing coaxial cable with 
     fiber optics cable, so as greatly to expand channel capacity 
     at low cost. They are motivated to add channels to increase 
     subscription revenue. (And, I might add, our recent 
     regulations will make this incentive stronger than had been 
     the case.) With the increase in fiber deployment, cable 
     operators will be able to transmit all imaginable quantities 
     of data and full motion video. In short, when the networks 
     are built, any child can have access through a computer, 
     TV set or telecomputer to any teacher and any group of 
     children with access to the new network. Any child can at 
     all times be in the virtual classroom that is right for 
     his or her development or interest.
       Whether cable combines with the switched telephone network, 
     or whether cable companies install their own switches while 
     telephone companies expand their bandwidth, are questions 
     that private industry, academics, the FCC, and others in 
     government will address in coming months and years. However, 
     it is inevitable that switched, broadband, interactive 
     networks will be built across the country. The President, the 
     Vice President, and I hope all of you believe that these 
     networks should reach all of the classrooms of all of our 
     schools as soon as possible.
       Already Bell Atlantic, PacBell and Ameritech have said, 
     with some modest reservations that I think can be overcome, 
     that they will connect all the schools in their regions to 
     the developing broadband networks. A major cable company, 
     TCI, made the same commitment. These commitments will extend 
     the networks to more than \1/3\ of American schools.
       If--or dare I say when?--the Administration's challenge is 
     met by everyone, education in this country will be 
     reinvented, forever and for better.
       Because of the extension of the networks to the classrooms, 
     education is about to experience an evolution and 
     transformation that accords with the theory that Stephen Jay 
     Gould in his book of essays ``The Panda's Thumb'' called 
     ``punctuated equilibrium.'' According to this doctrine, a 
     static ecosystem does not so much evolve gradually, but 
     rather occasionally experiences jolts of change that cause 
     entirely new species to emerge suddenly from the great pool 
     of genes and to become dominant.
       The current equilibrium in education has long consisted of 
     a closed environment with a single teacher facing the 
     churning inattention of the classroom of kids, with chiefly 
     the voice and the book as the modalities of communication.
       Like everyone my age, I learned in this environment. My 
     perennial classrooms at the Walnut Hill Elementary School in 
     Falls Church, Virginia, each with the single female teacher 
     and three dozen dazed children, constituted an environment 
     not much different from that in which education was meted out 
     to my father and his father before him in Milwaukee, 
     Wisconsin.
       I can't report on educational conditions farther back than 
     that, since Horace Mann's dream of public education never 
     reached my nineteenth century potato farming forebears in 
     Schleswig-Holstein.
       I discovered the teacher's side of this static environment 
     in 1969 when, with a Yale diploma in one hand and a copy of 
     Jonathan Kozol's ``Death at An Early Age'' in the other, I 
     took my first job: teaching seventh grade social studies in 
     an inner-city school.
       I had five classes of 35 kids each. Before the first class 
     on the first day I was issued 35 textbooks. I distributed the 
     books to the class. We covered a few pages. The bone-
     shattering bell rang. The kids raced to squeeze through the 
     door en masse simultaneously. After more than half had 
     escaped, I remembered that I had no other books, but 140 more 
     kids to teach. I desperately shouted for everyone to return 
     their books. I retrieved approximately 11. These did not 
     survive past lunch. The rest of the year I taught with purple 
     stained fingers and distributed for ``material'' sheaves of 
     wrinkled mimeograph paper. I made up each lesson from whole 
     cloth. Our ``social studies'' was supposed to be about global 
     climate. I hope our environmental Vice President will forgive 
     me--it turned into African History and, by spring, five 
     parallel performances of Macbeth.
       Fortunately for the curriculum committee, after one more 
     year in teaching I elected to go to law school.
       I tell this story as a prelude to suggesting that 23 years 
     after I left teaching, the ecosystem (if you will) of the 
     classroom is not nearly as changed from that of the junior 
     high school I so inadequately served as it should be or could 
     be.
       Of course it is true that in the better schools there are 
     many more than 35 books for 175 children, and most of our 2.5 
     million teachers are far more skilled now than I was then.
       Indeed, it is the case that slightly more than half of all 
     classrooms have computers, whereas when I was teaching the PC 
     hadn't even been invented. And about one third of classrooms 
     have cable television, thanks in very significant part to the 
     admirable Cable in the Classroom program that programmers and 
     cable system operators have initiated.
       We need 100% penetration to classrooms in those respects, 
     and it is hardly good news that there are almost no 
     classrooms with more than one or two computers. Indeed, it is 
     distressing that out of an average $6,400 spent per pupil per 
     day, only $35 goes to technology. This is a sad misallocation 
     of scant resources in light of studies showing that using 
     interactive computer-based instruction is the most cost-
     effective way to increase educational achievement.
       However, the special concern I want to share with you 
     tonight is that our classrooms still in large part are 
     enclosures in which a single teacher trying to communicate 
     with a large group. And studies have repeatedly demonstrated 
     that the larger the group, the worse the learning. But the 
     fundamental problem is not the size of the classes, but the 
     limitations of relying on one to many communication as the 
     core of teaching.
       I do not want us to tear down the walls around our 
     classrooms. I want us to pierce them by connection of what we 
     all now copy the Vice President by calling the information 
     highway. Teachers are ready: a recent NEA study showed that 
     most teachers appreciate the benefits of these advanced 
     technologies and feel that, when given the tools, they have 
     been more effective teachers because of technology. School 
     districts, in places like Issaquah, WA, have already 
     leveraged the investment of money by using students and 
     parents to set up and run their interactive networks.
       There are in this country only about 100,000 schools and 
     20,000 libraries. Within each school there are on average 
     about 20 classrooms. (No one seems to know precisely how 
     many). It is readily possible for us to connect the 
     interactive networks to the two million classrooms in the 
     country's schools.
       But today, we are far from that goal.
       Only about one-eighth of all classrooms have a telephone 
     line. Only 4% have a modem to connect a computer to other 
     computers, to the great electronic storehouses of knowledge 
     that are proliferating everywhere, to President Clinton and 
     Vice President Gore on Internet, to--most importantly--other 
     kids and other teachers in other classrooms.
       The extension of the networks to the classrooms--first the 
     current phone networks and eventually the great broadband 
     networks of the near future--is the great event that in 
     Gould's phrase, will punctuate, the static equilibrium of 
     learning and cause profound change in education.
       There are two reasons. First, an interactive network will 
     create an explosion of learning by two-way communication. The 
     one teacher addressing the single group of students is one to 
     many discourse. Yet over the network, communication will be 
     from many to many. When all the students participate, the 
     teacher knows learning is happening and a community of 
     knowledge is being built. Just as the great books, whether 
     Newberry Award or Booker Prize winners, create a community of 
     readers, so the great network will build communities of 
     knowledge and learning among all teachers and all kids.
       Second, the networks will allow students and teachers to 
     escape the confines of the classroom and to join new learning 
     groups over the networks. In the current definition of 
     schooling children leave the classroom by occasionally moving 
     to a different classroom, or by making the much-maligned 
     field trip. Alternatively, they can escape by reading or, if 
     they are lucky, looking at a computer.
       When connected over networks, students can discover and 
     participate in collective learning experiences that transcend 
     the traditional classroom environment. These experiences will 
     be diverse and rich. Over networks students may learn 
     languages not spoken by any teacher in the student's school. 
     Over networks, students may communicate not just to the pen 
     pals of my youth, but through E-Mail, in real time to 
     explorers in the Antarctic, as Vice President Gore did for a 
     school in Silicon Valley in January. Over networks students 
     may visit the vast electronic libraries that populate our new 
     cyberspace. In the event of the networks, we can be assured 
     that the illimitable soul of our teachers, as Emerson put it, 
     will find boundless solutions over networks to the problems 
     of education students with physical or learning disabilities.
       Many in this country and, I am sure, in this room, share 
     this vision. Indeed, Business Week focused on this last week 
     with a cover story on ``The Learning Revolution.'' As the 
     story pointed out, education experts see interactive 
     multimedia software as a key technology in revamping American 
     education. Whether measured by numerous increases in test 
     scores, or the anecdotal stories of kids' increased 
     enthusiasm for learning, the power of interactivity to 
     enhance education is extraordinary.
       The article left no doubt that if the networks connect to 
     the classroom, we will see an explosion of outstanding 
     educational materials to serve our children. Savvy investors 
     are investing millions in software to excite and to educate 
     our children.
       And on the non-profit side, Walter Annenberg recently made 
     an astounding gift of over $500 million for the support of 
     education. That gift came with a challenge to reform 
     education and increase electronic access. Without such 
     access, this gift would be too much like giving a child a 
     book in a darkened room--linking the network to the classroom 
     can be the light.
       As Peggy Charren has always emphasized in her work on 
     children's television, it is far better to focus on getting 
     quality children's programming on the air than to focus only 
     on getting bad programming off. Is there any doubt, then, 
     that the best way to promote quality educational software is 
     to create a market from just for the children rich enough to 
     have personal computers at home, but for tens of millions who 
     attend our schools everyday?
       Perhaps the most visionary is George Lucas, of Star Wars 
     fame. His Lucas Educational Foundation is leading the way 
     into the interactive educational age. He has dedicated his 
     Academy Award winning talents creating products which have 
     been used by thousands of schools. When I talked to him this 
     afternoon he described to me numerous ways in which his 
     foundation is using technology to communicate the great ideas 
     of our time.
       Now, with the help of everyone from George Lucas to 
     Business Week to this entire audience and beyond, I assume 
     that like Captain Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation, 
     you are willing to simply ``make it so.'' In that event, how 
     are we going to get these networks into the classroom?
       Congressman Markey has already surveyed the 20 largest 
     telephone and cable companies to determine their views on 
     linking America's classrooms to the information superhighway. 
     A majority do not oppose linking the classrooms essentially 
     for free, but they are concerned with details.
       There are many questions. Should cable companies and 
     telephone companies race each other into the classrooms?
       Who does the internal wiring? Would asbestos be disturbed 
     in some schools, electric conduits disrupted in others?
       Should we set the standards for carrying capacity and 
     interoperability?
       Who will pay for transmission costs after the networks are 
     installed? If a student calls long distance, who pays?
       There are questions relating to how this will work in the 
     classroom: What applications will be created? Who will 
     control the content? How will students and teachers be 
     trained? What will change in the relationship between student 
     and teachers?
       These are good questions, but when I hear them, I inwardly 
     smile. For these are not questions about the grand unified 
     theory of physics, or the balancing of the budget. These 
     questions are the kind that can be readily solved and 
     reasonably quickly. They are, in fact, questions that can be 
     solved by you in this audience.
       There is already a vehicle designed for you to help address 
     these questions. It is S. 1822, a bill entitled the 
     Communications Act of 1994, introduced by Senator Hollings, 
     along with more than a dozen other Senators. When I testified 
     about this bill last week, I told the Senators the most 
     important part of the bill might be the language that directs 
     the FCC to promulgate rules that will ``enhance the 
     availability of advanced telecommunications services to all 
     public elementary and secondary school classrooms * * * and 
     libraries.''
       Congressman Markey is the author of another 
     telecommunications reform bill, H.R. 3636. This noble bill 
     should be amended also to grant the FCC the authority to 
     monitor and, where necessary, to compel the construction of 
     the information highway into every classroom. I believe 
     Congressman Markey agrees that is in the public interest to 
     make this change.
       We have a glorious opportunity in this Congress to do a 
     very right thing, but I have not heard from a single educator 
     or academic in support of the goal that the President 
     outlined, that Senator Hollings aims to achieve and that 
     Congressman Markey may well support. Certain telephone 
     companies and cable companies have been helpful, but isn't 
     the vision of the interactive educational enterprise 
     compelling to Harvard? Harvard itself is going to be wired 
     for interactivity within a few years, according to an 
     announcement a couple of weeks ago. But all the schools and 
     classrooms in the country should be included.
       So how do we make this happen? It is most likely to happen 
     if the people in this room join together, by forging public-
     private partnership to address the many issues raised by this 
     opportunity.
       We in government can help write rules but we need the 
     wisdom of you here, a combination of not just of educators, 
     broadcaster, and cable operators--but of utilities companies, 
     regulators, software providers and most importantly, parents, 
     to make it work right. This is my challenge to you--to form 
     such a coalition and make it an effective voice for the 
     children of America. Just as Peggy Charren fought, and is 
     still fighting, to create quality children's programming on 
     television, so you must together expand that fight by leading 
     an effort for quality education technology in the classroom.
       We cannot let it be the case that if you don't get into 
     Harvard you're not on the network; if you don't go to a very 
     fine school, you're destined to be electronically illiterate: 
     no one here would accept that policy. So won't everyone here 
     let me know, and let others know, just how they will help 
     pass the legislation I have talked about, and just how they 
     want the vision of interactive education to come to pass.
       Back in the 1920's, E.M. Forster offered the famous dictum 
     ``only connect.'' By this he advised those of the lost 
     generation awash with the cynicism created by the horror of 
     the First World War, to focus not on the tragedies of life 
     but on the joy of connecting with individual human beings.
       When one looks at a number of statistics about the state of 
     our schools, and the children in them, one could easily 
     choose the path of despair. And there are many problems that 
     linking the classroom won't solve.
       But while Forster couldn't have foreseen it, his advice to 
     ``only connect'' is an appropriate and utterly liberal 
     paradigm for the generation coming up in the 1990s.
       You in this group, at any rate, can make it so, if you 
     wish.
       Thank you very much for inviting me.

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