Whittle Communications' Channel One and Cable News Network's Newsroom are two popular media that facilitate the study of current events in American classrooms. We have used them in our own classrooms since 1990. What are the implications for curriculum? In our discussions with public school teachers in Atlanta, Georgia, and Austin, Texas, who use one or the other of these programs, we identified three issues.
Inconsistencies in Usage
Each teacher with whom we talked had a different way of using the newscasts, and some teachers did not see them as part of the curriculum at all. Nevertheless, most of the teachers' concerns involved the usefulness of accompanying materials and the relevance of the content to their courses.
Some teachers were aware of a monthly classroom guide for Channel One, but others were not. Teachers who had seen the guide described it as a useful reference of what would be on that month, but the guide did not meet their definition of curriculum materials.
By contrast, Newsroom provides daily lesson plans with objectives, discussion questions, activities, blackline masters, cross-references to standard subject headings, and correlations with a particular set of textbooks. Atlanta teachers who use Newsroom think the guides are comprehensive and well written. Nevertheless, many added that they often do not use them because it is difficult to devote an entire lesson to the 15-minute newscast.
Linking Program with Classroom
To what extent do teachers connect concepts in the newscasts with the content of their classes?
A geography teacher who works primarily with high-achieving students in an Austin, Texas, magnet high school often finds ways to use Channel One in her class. She likes the maps and “visually interesting graphics” and also the periodic special features on, for example, Somalia or the electoral college. When “something special” is coming up, she informs her students. She frequently refers to previous segments in class discussions or takes notes on features to use in later lessons. If the broadcast were optional, she said she would still show it occasionally.
Another Austin teacher said, “Since Channel One is shown in my class, I feel as though I should discuss the program in order to lend it an academic feel. However, I teach mathematics, and I cannot afford to spend valuable time discussing something that is more appropriate for a history class.”
A geography teacher, who has students of varying abilities, emphasized that if he had a choice about turning it on, he would use the broadcast only “as a pacifier.” In other words, if he had a group that he could “keep productively engaged,” he would ignore the program “99 percent of the time” and find other ways to teach current events.
A social studies teacher in the gifted program of an Atlanta junior high school typified the way many of her colleagues showed Newsroom to their students. She shares a television/video-cassette recorder setup with two other teachers; each may show the taped newscast three or four times a week, depending on how much time they can spare from their lesson plans. Teachers in this school who use the newscast do so in varying degrees. Some simply show the tape without discussion. Others take a few minutes to recapitulate the major stories of the day. Still others use questions and activities gleaned from the daily viewing guide.
Teachers in this school are not required to show Newsroom; in fact, there has been no schoolwide dissemination of information on the availability or program content, so many teachers may be unaware that the option exists. Regardless of the extent to which they related the newscast to their curriculums, social studies teachers seemed to be the only regular users of Newsroom at this particular school.
Some of the inconsistencies in teachers' use of Channel One and Newsroom originate from scheduling conflicts. Both formats, some teachers criticized, limit their flexibility in current events instruction, although for different reasons. A school's agreement with Whittle Communications entails consent to show the newscast in its entirety, and the school airs the program to all classrooms at a set time each day. Thus, some students watch the news in a class whose subject matter is not directly related to the study of current events. One Austin teacher observed that there were times when she would prefer to use Channel One selectively, when it directly relates to her curriculum or to her students' interests.
Newsroom can be shown repeatedly throughout the school day, provided the school has sufficient equipment. One teacher uses it for each of her five class periods almost daily. A colleague who uses it less often commented that she would more frequently plan her curriculum around the newscast if she had advance notice about upcoming in-depth reports and features. She felt that a systematic cataloguing of the videotapes and classroom guides would enable her to show segments when the topics came up throughout the year.
Controversial Content
A third concern with the programming is the treatment of controversial content. If a controversial issue were the subject of a story on Newsroom or Channel One, could the teacher assume license to discuss the issue openly?
An Atlanta teacher who described a Newsroom segment on homosexuality in the armed forces as “shocking” expected a barrage of questions on homosexual behavior from her 13- and 14-year-old-students. Because there seemed to be no administrative guidelines for Newsroom at her school, she used her own judgment about what to show and discuss. However, she wondered if her principal would support her if parents raised concerns about their children's exposure to certain topics.
Principals of schools subscribing to Channel One have the contractual option to preview and reject newscasts that contain inappropriate subject matter. But teachers seem unsure about the extent to which they can discuss controversial topics. For example, an Austin teacher was uneasy about a Channel One segment on the famine in Somalia because of the portrayal of Western aid to that country. While pleased that Somalia was not being ignored in the news media, he was uncomfortable with having to defend the motives of the U.S. in giving or withholding aid to certain countries.
If a newscast is aired, can teachers assume that their principal has monitored and approved the particular program, or do they assume a tacit endorsement of all newscasts with the concomitant freedom to deal with any controversial subject that arises?
Further Questions
Our anecdotal study yielded three conclusions. First, there seem to be no administrative directives or faculty unity about the standardized use of either Channel One or Newsroom in the curriculum. Teachers who currently use the newscasts as part of their curriculum might conclude that they have considerable discretion in how they use them and may actually benefit from the lack of standardization. However, teachers who use the programming as a “filler” or who are unaware of the program's availability may be open to more standardized directions as long as they can justify them intellectually. Either way, the issue is one of curricular integrity that should be taken up with the entire faculty.
Second, teachers using Channel One should ask whether it can be highly effective as currently aired. Does its structure prevent the widespread incorporation of its content into the curriculum? Teachers showing Newsroom must ask whether it can be fully effective if teachers cannot plan for upcoming newscasts or access previous ones as needed. Perhaps most important, could both programs be used more effectively if faculty and students were better informed about their potential uses?
Finally, schools subscribing to either service should have a coherent policy for the treatment of controversial topics. Teachers should not be placed in the untenable position of assuming they are free to discuss such topics as they see fit—only to find later that their administrators will not support them if objections to the material are raised. With a supportive administration and clear guidelines to follow, teachers can use controversy as a stimulus to student interest in current events.
