Puppets of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens & Edgar Allan Poe Star in 1957 Frank Capra Educational Film

in Education, Science, Television | March 13th, 2025

Pro­duced between 1956 and 1964 by AT&T, the Bell Tele­phone Sci­ence Hour TV spe­cials antic­i­pate the lit­er­ary zani­ness of The Mup­pet Show and the sci­en­tif­ic enthu­si­asm of Cos­mos. The “ship of the imag­i­na­tion” in Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Cos­mos reboot may in fact owe some­thing to the episode above, one of nine, direct­ed by none oth­er than It’s A Won­der­ful Life’s Frank Capra. “Strap on your wits and hop on your mag­ic car­pet,” begins the spe­cial, “You’ve got one, you know: Your imag­i­na­tion.” As a guide for our imag­i­na­tion, The Strange Case of the Cos­mic Rays enlists the humanities—specifically three pup­pets rep­re­sent­ing Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dick­ens, and, some­what incon­gru­ous­ly for its detec­tive theme, Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky, who plays the foil as an incu­ri­ous spoil­sport. The show’s host, Frank Bax­ter (“Dr. Research”) was actu­al­ly a pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at UCLA and appears here with Richard Carl­son, explain­ing sci­en­tif­ic con­cepts with con­fi­dence.

The one-hour films became very pop­u­lar as tools of sci­ence edu­ca­tion, but there are good reasons—other than their dat­ed­ness or Dr. Baxter’s expertise—to approach them crit­i­cal­ly. At times, the degree of spec­u­la­tion indulged by Bax­ter and the writ­ers strains creduli­ty. For exam­ple, writes Geoff Alexan­der in Aca­d­e­m­ic Films for the Class­room: A His­to­ry, 1958’s The Unchained God­dess (above) “intro­duces the view­er to bizarre con­cepts such as the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ‘steer­ing’ hur­ri­canes away from land by cre­at­ing bio-haz­ards such as ocean borne oil-slicks and intro­duc­ing oil-based ocean fires.” These grim, fos­sil fuel indus­try-friend­ly sce­nar­ios nonethe­less open­ly acknowl­edged the pos­si­bil­i­ty of man-made cli­mate change and looked for­ward to solar ener­gy.

Along with some dystopi­an weird­ness, the series also con­tains a good deal of explic­it Chris­t­ian pros­e­ly­tiz­ing, thanks to Capra. As a con­di­tion for tak­ing the job, “the renowned direc­tor would be allowed to embed reli­gious mes­sages in the films.” As Capra him­self said to AT&T pres­i­dent Cleo F. Craig:

If I make a sci­ence film, I will have to say that sci­en­tif­ic research is just anoth­er expres­sion of the Holy Spir­it… I will say that sci­ence, in essence, is just anoth­er facet of man’s quest for God.

At times, writes Alexan­der, “the reli­gious per­spec­tive is tak­en to extremes,” as in the first episode, Our Mr. Sun, which begins with a quo­ta­tion from Psalms and admon­ish­es “view­ers who would dare to ques­tion the causal rela­tion­ship between solar ener­gy and the divin­i­ty.” The Unchained God­dess, above, is the fourth in the series, and Capra’s last.

After­ward, a direc­tor named Owen Crump took over duties on the next four episodes. His films, writes Alexan­der, “did not overt­ly pros­e­ly­tize” and “relied less on ani­mat­ed char­ac­ters inter­act­ing with Dr. Bax­ter.” (Watch the Crump-direct­ed Gate­ways to the Mind above, a more sober-mind­ed, yet still strange­ly off-kil­ter, inquiry into the five sens­es.) The last film, The Rest­less Sea was pro­duced by Walt Dis­ney and direct­ed by Les Clark, and starred Dis­ney him­self and Bax­ter’s replace­ment, Ster­ling Hol­loway.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oscar-Win­ning Direc­tor Frank Capra Made an Edu­ca­tion­al Sci­ence Film Warn­ing of Cli­mate Change in 1958

The Great­est Shot in Tele­vi­sion: Sci­ence His­to­ri­an James Burke Had One Chance to Nail This Scene … and Nailed It

Pri­vate Sna­fu: The World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Cre­at­ed by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Story Of Menstruation: Watch Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

in Animation, Education | March 3rd, 2025

From 1945 to 1951, Dis­ney pro­duced a series of edu­ca­tion­al films to be shown in Amer­i­can schools. How to bathe an infant. How not to catch a cold. Why you shouldn’t dri­ve fast. Dis­ney cov­ered these sub­jects in its edu­ca­tion­al shorts, and then even­tu­al­ly got to the touchy sub­ject of biol­o­gy and sex­u­al­i­ty. If there was ever a com­pa­ny suit­ed to talk about “vagi­nas” in the 1940s in a fam­i­ly-friend­ly way, it was Dis­ney. Hence The Sto­ry of Men­stru­a­tion.

The film runs 10 min­utes, com­bin­ing sci­en­tif­ic facts with hygiene tips, and it was actu­al­ly com­mis­sioned by the Inter­na­tion­al Cel­lo-Cot­ton Com­pa­ny, the fore­run­ner of Kim­ber­ly-Clark, the mak­er of Kotex prod­ucts. An esti­mat­ed 105 mil­lion stu­dents watched the film in sex-ed class­es across the US. And, accord­ing to Tin­ker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny from the Inside Out, the film remained a main­stay in schools until the 1960s. It’s now in the pub­lic domain. When you’re done, you’ll also want to watch Fam­i­ly Plan­ning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Pro­duc­tion, Star­ring Don­ald Duck.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Fam­i­ly Plan­ning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Pro­duc­tion, Star­ring Don­ald Duck

No Women Need Apply: A Dis­heart­en­ing 1938 Rejec­tion Let­ter from Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion

Your Body Dur­ing Ado­les­cence: A Naked­ly Unashamed Sex Ed Film from 1955

Watch Dat­ing Dos and Don’ts: An Old-School Instruc­tion­al Guide to Teenage Romance (1949)

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Noam Chomsky Defines What It Means to Be a Truly Educated Person

in Education, Philosophy, Politics | January 24th, 2025

There may be no more con­tentious an issue at the lev­el of local U.S. gov­ern­ment than edu­ca­tion. All of the socioe­co­nom­ic and cul­tur­al fault lines com­mu­ni­ties would rather paper over become ful­ly exposed in debates over fund­ing, cur­ricu­lum, dis­trict­ing, etc. But we rarely hear dis­cus­sions about edu­ca­tion­al pol­i­cy at the nation­al lev­el these days.

You’ll hear no major polit­i­cal can­di­date deliv­er a speech sole­ly focused on edu­ca­tion. Debate mod­er­a­tors don’t much ask about it. The Unit­ed States founders’ own thoughts on the sub­ject are occa­sion­al­ly cited—but only in pass­ing, on the way to the lat­est round of talks on war and wealth. Aside from pro­pos­als dis­missed as too rad­i­cal, edu­ca­tion is most­ly con­sid­ered a low­er pri­or­i­ty for the nation’s lead­ers, or it’s roped into high­ly charged debates about polit­i­cal and social unrest on uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es.

This sit­u­a­tion can seem odd to the stu­dent of polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy. Every major polit­i­cal thinker—from Pla­to to John Locke to John Stu­art Mill—has writ­ten let­ters, trea­tis­es, even major works on the cen­tral role of edu­ca­tion. One con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal thinker—linguist, anar­chist, and retired MIT pro­fes­sor Noam Chom­sky—has also devot­ed quite a lot of thought to edu­ca­tion, and has force­ful­ly cri­tiqued what he sees as a cor­po­rate attack on its insti­tu­tions.

Chom­sky, how­ev­er, has no inter­est in har­ness­ing edu­ca­tion to prop up gov­ern­ments or mar­ket economies. Nor does he see edu­ca­tion as a tool for right­ing his­tor­i­cal wrongs, secur­ing mid­dle class jobs, or meet­ing any oth­er agen­da.

Chom­sky, whose thoughts on edu­ca­tion we’ve fea­tured before, tells us in the short video inter­view at the top of the post how he defines what it means to be tru­ly edu­cat­ed. And to do so, he reach­es back to a philoso­pher whose views you won’t hear ref­er­enced often, Wil­helm von Hum­boldt, Ger­man human­ist, friend of Goethe and Schiller, and “founder of the mod­ern high­er edu­ca­tion sys­tem.” Hum­boldt, Chom­sky says, “argued, I think, very plau­si­bly, that the core prin­ci­ple and require­ment of a ful­filled human being is the abil­i­ty to inquire and cre­ate con­struc­tive­ly, inde­pen­dent­ly, with­out exter­nal con­trols.” A true edu­ca­tion, Chom­sky sug­gests, opens a door to human intel­lec­tu­al free­dom and cre­ative auton­o­my.

To clar­i­fy, Chom­sky para­phras­es a “lead­ing physi­cist” and for­mer MIT col­league, who would tell his stu­dents, “it’s not impor­tant what we cov­er in the class; it’s impor­tant what you discov­er.” Giv­en this point of view, to be tru­ly edu­cat­ed means to be resource­ful, to be able to “for­mu­late seri­ous ques­tions” and “ques­tion stan­dard doc­trine, if that’s appro­pri­ate”… It means to “find your own way.” This def­i­n­i­tion sounds sim­i­lar to Nietzsche’s views on the sub­ject, though Niet­zsche had lit­tle hope in very many peo­ple attain­ing a true edu­ca­tion. Chom­sky, as you might expect, pro­ceeds in a much more demo­c­ra­t­ic spir­it.

In the inter­view above from 2013 (see the sec­ond video), you can hear him dis­cuss why he has devot­ed his life to edu­cat­ing not only his pay­ing stu­dents, but also near­ly any­one who asks him a ques­tion. He also talks about his own edu­ca­tion and fur­ther elu­ci­dates his views on the rela­tion­ship between edu­ca­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty, and crit­i­cal inquiry. And, in the very first few min­utes, you’ll find out whether Chom­sky prefers George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. (Hint: it’s nei­ther.)

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Noam Chom­sky on Chat­G­PT: It’s “Basi­cal­ly High-Tech Pla­gia­rism” and “a Way of Avoid­ing Learn­ing”

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

Niet­zsche Lays Out His Phi­los­o­phy of Edu­ca­tion and a Still-Time­ly Cri­tique of the Mod­ern Uni­ver­si­ty (1872)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Bertrand Russell’s Ten Commandments for Living Virtuously (1930)

in Education, Life, Philosophy | November 18th, 2024

Image by J. F. Horra­bin, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Bertrand Rus­sell may have lived his long life con­cerned with big top­ics in log­ic, math­e­mat­ics, pol­i­tics, and soci­ety, but that did­n’t keep him from think­ing seri­ous­ly about how to han­dle his own day-to-day rela­tion­ships. That hard­ly means he han­dled every such rela­tion­ship with per­fect aplomb: take note of his three divorces, the first of which was for­mal­ized in 1921, the year he mar­ried his lover Dora Black. Pos­sessed of sim­i­lar bohemi­an-reformer ideals — and, before long, two chil­dren — the cou­ple found­ed the exper­i­men­tal Bea­con Hill School in 1927, intent on encour­ag­ing their young pupils’ devel­op­ment as not just thinkers-in-train­ing but full human beings.

A few years lat­er, Rus­sell pub­lished his per­son­al “ten com­mand­ments” in a cul­ture mag­a­zine called Every­man, and you can read it in full in this 1978 issue of the Rus­sell Soci­ety News. (Go to page 5.)

“Every­body, I sup­pose, has his own list of virtues that he tries to prac­tice, and, when he fails to prac­tice them, he feels shame quite inde­pen­dent­ly of the opin­ion of oth­ers, so far at any rate as con­scious thought is con­cerned,” he writes by way of intro­duc­tion. “I have tried to put the virtues that I should wish to pos­sess into the form of a deca­logue,” which is as fol­lows:

  1. Do not lie to your­self.
  2. Do not lie to oth­er peo­ple unless they are exer­cis­ing tyran­ny.
  3. When you think it is your duty to inflict pain, scru­ti­nize your rea­sons close­ly.
  4. When you desire pow­er, exam­ine your­self close­ly as to why you deserve it.
  5. When you have pow­er, use it to build up peo­ple, not to con­strict them.
  6. Do not attempt to live with­out van­i­ty, since this is impos­si­ble, but choose the right audi­ence from which to seek admi­ra­tion.
  7. Do not think of your­self as a whol­ly self-con­tained unit.
  8. Be reli­able.
  9. Be just.
  10. Be good-natured.

In the full text, Rus­sell elab­o­rates on the think­ing behind each of these virtues.  “When you wish to believe some the­o­log­i­cal or polit­i­cal doc­trine which will increase your income, you will, if you are not very care­ful, give much more weight to the argu­ments in favor than to those against”: hence the impor­tance of not lying to your­self. When it comes to lying to oth­ers, not only should gov­ern­ments tell the truth to their sub­jects, “par­ents should tell the truth to their chil­dren, how­ev­er incon­ve­nient this may seem.” And fam­i­lies as in states, “those who are intel­li­gent but weak can­not be expect­ed to forego the use of their intel­li­gence in their con­flicts with those who are stu­pid but strong.”

Rus­sel­l’s fifth com­mand­ment also applies to rela­tion­ships between the old and the young, since “those who deal with the young inevitably have pow­er, and it is easy to exer­cise this pow­er in ways pleas­ing to the edu­ca­tor rather than use­ful to the child.” And by his eighth com­mand­ment, he means “to sug­gest a whole set of hum­drum but nec­es­sary virtues, such as punc­tu­al­i­ty, keep­ing promis­es, adher­ing to plans involv­ing oth­er peo­ple, refrain­ing from treach­ery even in its mildest forms.” Alas, “mod­ern edu­ca­tion, in less­en­ing the empha­sis on dis­ci­pline, has, I think, failed to pro­duce reli­able human beings where social oblig­a­tions are con­cerned.”

This “pre­scrip­tive empha­sis — notably the stress placed on the mer­its of some hum­ble virtues — may have been influ­enced then by his prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence of pro­gres­sive edu­ca­tion,” writes The Col­lect­ed Papers of Bertrand Rus­sell edi­tor Andrew Bone. But Rus­sell still revised his deca­logue long after he left the Bea­con Hill School in 1932, with world events of the sub­se­quent decades inspir­ing him to use it in the ser­vice of what he regard­ed as a lib­er­al world­view. One ver­sion broad­cast on the BBC in 1951 includes such com­mand­ments as “Do not feel absolute­ly cer­tain of any­thing,” “Find more plea­sure in intel­li­gent dis­sent than pas­sive agree­ment,” and “Do not use pow­er to sup­press opin­ions you think per­ni­cious, for if you do the opin­ions will sup­press you” — all of which more of the last few gen­er­a­tions of stu­dents could have done well to inter­nal­ize.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bertrand Russell’s 10 Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing in a Healthy Democ­ra­cy

Bertrand Rus­sell: Author­i­ty and the Indi­vid­ual (1948)

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Watch James Earl Jones Read Kurt Vonnegut’s Letter Urging High-School Students to Create Art & “Make Your Soul Grow”

in Art, Education, Letters | September 23rd, 2024

As cul­tur­al fig­ures, the late James Earl Jones and Kurt Von­negut would seem to have had lit­tle in com­mon, but each could eas­i­ly be rec­og­nized by his voice. Jones’ will come to mind as soon as you think of Darth Vad­er, Sim­ba’s father, or “This is CNN.” Von­negut’s dis­tinc­tion was the voice evi­dent on any giv­en page of nov­els like Cat’s Cra­dle, Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons, and of course Slaugh­ter­house-Five — a voice many of us have known since ado­les­cence. They come togeth­er in the Let­ters Live video above with Jones read­ing a Von­negut let­ter to the stu­dents of Ms. Lock­wood’s Eng­lish class at New York’s Xavier High School in 2006.

Von­negut was writ­ing in response to five such stu­dents, who’d cho­sen him when assigned to write to their favorite author. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his let­ter here on Open Cul­ture as read aloud by Sir Ian McK­ellen, but its mes­sage bears repeat­ing by any­one who will speak it, beloved actor or oth­er­wise. “Prac­tice any art, music, singing, danc­ing, act­ing, draw­ing, paint­ing, sculpt­ing, poet­ry, fic­tion, essays, reportage, no mat­ter how well or bad­ly,” he writes. The idea is “not to get mon­ey and fame, but to expe­ri­ence becom­ing, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”

The cel­e­brat­ed nov­el­ist even hands down an assign­ment to his teenage fans: “Write a six line poem, about any­thing, but rhymed. No fair ten­nis with­out a net. Make it as good as you pos­si­bly can. But don’t tell any­body what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to any­body, not even your girl­friend or par­ents or what­ev­er, or Ms. Lock­wood.” After thor­ough­ly dis­pos­ing of this entire­ly pri­vate piece of art, know that “you have expe­ri­enced becom­ing, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.”

None of this con­flicts with the stan­dard advice about writ­ing, which tends to empha­size just get­ting start­ed, work­ing under restric­tions, and not mak­ing an undue rush to pub­li­ca­tion. But they make a dif­fer­ent kind of impact when rec­om­mend­ed by Von­negut in what would turn out to be the last year of life, and with his char­ac­ter­is­tic ten­den­cy to reach for the heav­ens while nev­er depart­ing from the mun­dane, even sil­ly things of this earth. “Dance home after school, and sing in the show­er and on and on,” he sug­gests. “Make a face in your mashed pota­toes. Pre­tend you’re Count Drac­u­la.” There writes a grand old man of Amer­i­can let­ters who knew how com­mu­ni­cate across a dis­tance of gen­er­a­tions.

Relat­ed con­tent:

James Earl Jones (RIP) Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

James Earl Jones Reads Oth­el­lo at White House Poet­ry Jam

Fred­er­ick Douglass’s Fiery 1852 Speech, “The Mean­ing of July 4th for the Negro,” Read by James Earl Jones

Darth Vader’s Voice: The Orig­i­nal Voice Ver­sus the Vocals of James Earl Jones

Kurt Von­negut Urges Young Peo­ple to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

Sir Ian McK­ellen Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Let­ter to High School Stu­dents: Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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What It Takes to Pass “the Knowledge,” the “Insanely Hard” Exam to Become a London Taxicab Driver

in Education, History | August 8th, 2024

Any­one who’s fol­lowed the late Michael Apt­ed’s Up doc­u­men­taries knows that becom­ing a Lon­don cab dri­ver is no mean feat. Tony Walk­er, one of the series’ most mem­o­rable par­tic­i­pants, was select­ed at the age of sev­en from an East End pri­ma­ry school, already dis­tin­guished as a char­ac­ter by his ener­getic man­ner, clas­sic cock­ney accent, and enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly expressed ambi­tion to become a jock­ey. By 21 Up, how­ev­er, he’d got off the horse and into a taxi­cab — or was aim­ing to do so, hav­ing immersed him­self in the stud­ies required for the nec­es­sary licens­ing exams. For many non-British view­ers, this con­sti­tut­ed an intro­duc­tion to what’s known as “the Knowl­edge,” the for­mi­da­ble test­ing process licensed Lon­don taxi­cab dri­vers have under­gone since 1865.

The Great Big Sto­ry video at the top of the post pro­vides an intro­duc­tion to this “insane­ly hard test,” which demands the mem­o­riza­tion of 320 routes around Lon­don, involv­ing 25,000 streets and roads, with­in a six-mile radius of Trafal­gar Square. “Its rig­ors have been likened to those required to earn a degree in law or med­i­cine,” writes Jody Rosen in a 2014 New York Time Style Mag­a­zine piece on the Knowl­edge.

“It is with­out ques­tion a unique intel­lec­tu­al, psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal ordeal, demand­ing unnum­bered thou­sands of hours of immer­sive study.” For the Tony Walk­ers of the world, it has also long offered a route to sta­ble, well-com­pen­sat­ed, and even pres­ti­gious work: every­one, regard­less of social class, acknowl­edges the exper­tise of Lon­don that the black-taxi­cab dri­ver pos­sess­es.

In recent years, those clas­sic black cabs have faced great­ly inten­si­fied com­pe­ti­tion from rideshare and “mini­cab” ser­vices, whose dri­vers aren’t required to pass the Knowl­edge. Instead, they rely on the same thing the rest of us do: GPS-enabled devices that auto­mat­i­cal­ly com­pute the route between point A and point B. Though one would imag­ine this tech­nol­o­gy hav­ing long since ren­dered the Knowl­edge redun­dant, the flow of aspi­rants to the sta­tus of black-cab dri­ver has­n’t dried up entire­ly. Take Tom the Taxi Dri­ver, a full-fledged Lon­don cab­bie who’s also mil­len­ni­al enough to have elab­o­rate tat­toos and his own Youtube chan­nel, on which he explains not just the expe­ri­ence of dri­ving a taxi in Lon­don, but also of tak­ing the tests to do so, which involve plot­ting Point-A-to-Point‑B routes ver­bal­ly, on the spot.

The ques­tion of whether the Knowl­edge beats the GPS is set­tled on the chan­nel of anoth­er, sim­i­lar­ly named Eng­lish Youtu­ber: Tom Scott, who in the video above, dri­ves one route through Lon­don using his mobile phone while Tom the Taxi Dri­ver does anoth­er of the same length while con­sult­ing only his own men­tal map of the city. This mod­ern-day John Hen­ry show­down is less inter­est­ing for its out­come than for what we see along the way: Tom the Taxi Dri­ver’s per­cep­tion and expe­ri­ence of Lon­don dif­fer con­sid­er­ably from that of Tom the non-taxi dri­ver, and as neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic research has sug­gest­ed, that dif­fer­ence is prob­a­bly reflect­ed in the phys­i­cal nature of his brain.

“The pos­te­ri­or hip­pocam­pus, the area of the brain known to be impor­tant for mem­o­ry, is big­ger in Lon­don taxi dri­vers than in most peo­ple, and that a suc­cess­ful Knowl­edge candidate’s pos­te­ri­or hip­pocam­pus enlarges as he pro­gress­es through the test,” writes Rosen. The appli­cants’ hav­ing to mas­ter fine-grained detail both geo­graph­ic and his­tor­i­cal (over a peri­od of near­ly three years on aver­age) also under­scores that “the Knowl­edge stands for, well, knowl­edge — for the Enlight­en­ment ide­al of ency­clo­pe­dic learn­ing, for the human­ist notion that dili­gent intel­lec­tu­al endeav­or is ennobling, an end in itself.” For any of us, habit­u­al­ly offload­ing the men­tal work of not just wayfind­ing but remem­ber­ing, cal­cu­lat­ing, and much else besides onto apps may well induce a kind of men­tal obe­si­ty, one we can only fight off by mas­ter­ing the Knowl­edge of our own pur­suits, what­ev­er those pur­suits may be.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Growth of Lon­don, from the Romans to the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Visu­al­ized in a Time-Lapse Ani­mat­ed Map

The Old­est Known Footage of Lon­don (1890–1920) Fea­tures the City’s Great Land­marks

“The Won­der­ground Map of Lon­don Town,” the Icon­ic 1914 Map That Saved the World’s First Sub­way Sys­tem

Meet Madame Inès Decour­celle, One of the Very First Female Taxi Dri­vers in Paris (Cir­ca 1908)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Oscar-Winning Director Frank Capra Made an Educational Science Film Warning of Climate Change in 1958

in Education, Environment, Film, Science | July 15th, 2024

In 2015, we high­light­ed for you The Strange Case of the Cos­mic Rays, a large­ly-for­got­ten 1957 edu­ca­tion­al sci­ence film. The pro­duc­tion is notable part­ly because it was shot by Frank Capra, the influ­en­tial direc­tor who had won not one, not two, but three Oscars for best direc­tor. And also because the film fea­tured pup­pets of Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky, Charles Dick­ens & Edgar Allan Poe. Don’t believe me? Then watch here.

But the sub­ject of today’s post is not The Strange Case of the Cos­mic Rays. It’s anoth­er of the four films that Capra cre­at­ed for “The Bell Lab­o­ra­to­ry Sci­ence Series.” It’s called The Unchained God­dess, and it has its own rea­sons for get­ting high­light­ed here.

Shown on Amer­i­can TV and lat­er in US class­rooms, The Unchained God­dess explains what weath­er is, and how weath­er works. And, real­ly quite pre­scient­ly, it talks about the risk of man-made cli­mate change … in 1958. One of the nar­ra­tors declares:

Even now, man may be unwit­ting­ly chang­ing the world’s cli­mate through the waste prod­ucts of its civ­i­liza­tion. Due to our releas­es in fac­to­ries and auto­mo­biles every year of more than six bil­lion tons of car­bon diox­ide, which helps the air absorb heat from the sun, our atmos­phere may be get­ting warmer.

And is that bad, the ques­tion gets asked?:

Well, it’s been cal­cu­lat­ed a few degrees rise in the Earth’s tem­per­a­ture would melt the polar ice caps. And if this hap­pens, an inland sea would fill a good por­tion of the Mis­sis­sip­pi val­ley. Tourists in glass bot­tom boats would be view­ing the drowned tow­ers of Mia­mi through 150 feet of trop­i­cal water. For in weath­er, we’re not only deal­ing with forces of a far greater vari­ety than even the atom­ic physi­cist encoun­ters, but with life itself.

Inter­est­ing dia­logue, to be sure. But what makes it all the more intrigu­ing is this: Frank Capra co-wrote the script for the film, and he was no lib­er­al. He was a con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can, who strong­ly opposed F.D.R. and cel­e­brat­ed Amer­i­can indi­vid­u­al­ism. But Capra stud­ied chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing at Cal­tech and put stock in sci­en­tif­ic research — before it became ide­o­log­i­cal­ly anath­e­ma to do so.

You can watch the key cli­mate change scene from The Unchained God­dess up top, and the full film below. It’s also added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Warns Con­gress about Cli­mate Change (1985)

Pup­pets of Dos­to­evsky, Dick­ens & Poe Star in 1950s Frank Capra Edu­ca­tion­al Film

Open Plan­et Lets You Down­load & Use 4,500 Free Videos That Doc­u­ment Nature & Cli­mate Change

 

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Isaac Asimov Predicts the Future of Online Education in 1988–and It’s Now Coming True in the Age of AI & Smartphones

in Artificial Intelligence, Education, Technology | May 20th, 2024

“I have nev­er let my school­ing inter­fere with my edu­ca­tion.” Though that line prob­a­bly orig­i­nat­ed with  a Cana­di­an nov­el­ist called Grant Allen, it’s long been pop­u­lar­ly attrib­uted to his more col­or­ful nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry con­tem­po­rary Mark Twain. It isn’t hard to under­stand why it now has so much trac­tion as a social media-ready quote, though dur­ing much of the peri­od between Allen’s day and our own, many must have found it prac­ti­cal­ly unin­tel­li­gi­ble. The indus­tri­al­ized world of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry attempt­ed to make edu­ca­tion and school­ing syn­ony­mous, an ambi­tion suf­fi­cient­ly wrong­head­ed that, by the nine­teen-eight­ies, no less pow­er­ful a mind than Isaac Asi­mov was lament­ing it on nation­al tele­vi­sion.

“In the old days you used to have tutors for chil­dren,” Asi­mov tells Bill Moy­ers in a 1988 World of Ideas inter­view. “But how many peo­ple could afford to hire a ped­a­gogue? Most chil­dren went une­d­u­cat­ed. Then we reached the point where it was absolute­ly nec­es­sary to edu­cate every­body. The only way we could do it is to have one teacher for a great many stu­dents and, in order to orga­nize the sit­u­a­tion prop­er­ly, we gave them a cur­ricu­lum to teach from.” And yet “the num­ber of teach­ers is far greater than the num­ber of good teach­ers.” The ide­al solu­tion, per­son­al tutors for all, would be made pos­si­ble by per­son­al com­put­ers, “each of them hooked up to enor­mous libraries where any­one can ask any ques­tion and be giv­en answers.”

At the time, this was­n’t an obvi­ous future for non-sci­ence-fic­tion-vision­ar­ies to imag­ine. “Well, what if I want to learn only about base­ball?” asks a faint­ly skep­ti­cal Moy­ers. “You learn all you want about base­ball,” Asi­mov replies, “because the more you learn about base­ball the more you might grow inter­est­ed in math­e­mat­ics to try to fig­ure out what they mean by those earned run aver­ages and the bat­ting aver­ages and so on. You might, in the end, become more inter­est­ed in math than base­ball if you fol­low your own bent.” And indeed, sim­i­lar­ly equipped with a per­son­al-com­put­er-as-tutor, “some­one who is inter­est­ed in math­e­mat­ics may sud­den­ly find him­self very enticed by the prob­lem of how you throw a curve ball.”

The trou­ble was how to get every house­hold a com­put­er, which was still seen by many in 1988 as an extrav­a­gant, not nec­es­sar­i­ly use­ful pur­chase. Three and a half decades lat­er, you see a com­put­er in the hand of near­ly every man, woman, and child in the devel­oped coun­tries (and many devel­op­ing ones as well). This is the tech­no­log­i­cal real­i­ty that gave rise to Khan Acad­e­my, which offers free online edu­ca­tion in math, sci­ences, lit­er­a­ture, his­to­ry, and much else besides. In the inter­view clip above, its founder Sal Khan remem­bers how, when his inter­net-tutor­ing project was first gain­ing momen­tum, it occurred to him that “maybe we’re in the right moment in his­to­ry that some­thing like this could become what Isaac Asi­mov envi­sioned.”

More recent­ly, Khan has been pro­mot­ing the edu­ca­tion­al use of a tech­nol­o­gy at the edge of even Asi­mov’s vision. Just days ago, he pub­lished the book Brave New Words: How AI Will Rev­o­lu­tion­ize Edu­ca­tion (and Why That’s a Good Thing) and made a video with his teenage son demon­strat­ing how the lat­est ver­sion of Ope­nAI’s Chat­G­PT — sound­ing, it must be said, uncan­ni­ly like Scar­lett Johans­son in the now-prophet­ic-seem­ing Her — can act as a geom­e­try tutor. Not that it works only, or even pri­mar­i­ly, for kids in school: “That’s anoth­er trou­ble with edu­ca­tion as we now have it,” as Asi­mov says. “It is for the young, and peo­ple think of edu­ca­tion as some­thing that they can fin­ish.” We may be as relieved as gen­er­a­tions past when our school­ing ends, but now we have no excuse ever to fin­ish our edu­ca­tion.

Find a tran­script of Asi­mov and Moy­ers’ con­ver­sa­tion here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts the Future in 1982: Com­put­ers Will Be “at the Cen­ter of Every­thing;” Robots Will Take Human Jobs

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

The Pres­i­dent of North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty Pre­dicts Online Learn­ing … in 1934!

Salman Khan Returns to MIT, Gives Com­mence­ment Speech, Likens School to Hog­warts

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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