Educating children through TV programs

By Nicolas Colombant

JAKARTA (JP): Singaporean parents are encouraged to haul their children out of malls and onto the family couch, so they can watch educational TV programs together on Saturday afternoons.

In the Philippines, the government has set up TV sets and recorders in classrooms so that animated video lessons can be transmitted to the most remote areas.

On the local front, private educational channel TPI is developing "edutainment", programs which educate and entertain.

Odds are heavily stacked against them as they fight to end the stigma that TV that educates people also puts them to sleep. UNESCO estimates that children worldwide spend, at most, 25 percent of their television time watching programs with educational content.

"How can television make a difference in a population's educational level?" was the question experts tried to answer at a regional seminar at the Sari Pan Pacific hotel last week.

Olivier Chambard, first counselor of the French Embassy in Jakarta, had the answer: "New technology can help to improve the performance of educational TV."

The embassy, which sponsored the event, invited French experts to share their knowledge in the field and to outline new perspectives in the digital and information highway era.

France has successfully established a state-run network of institutions, television stations, satellite broadcasters and Internet sites specialized in the difficult art of teaching through images and new technology.

The experts say educational TV realizes its full potential beyond live broadcasts, which means commercial ratings should not be valued as performance evaluators.

"Content television should try to make a difference in people's lives rather than focusing on attracting advertisers," said Franck David, programming director for La Cinquieme television channel "for knowledge, discovery, and society".

La Cinquieme has programs to help the unemployed, programs designed for the hearing and speech impaired, and compact 13- minute "lessons" on a wide range of topics.

It is now experimenting with a database of services and programs, whereby video and information can be accessed by the Internet and downloaded onto VHS tape via satellite and computer hook-up.

The National Center for Distance Learning is working in close cooperation with the channel. This open university has set up satellite connections with 700 higher learning institutions throughout France so that interactive question-and-answer sessions with the most eminent of professors -- spiritual leaders, Noble prize winners and CEOs -- can take place.

Audiovisual matter is supplemented by teaching and reading material.

"An image cannot stand alone as an educational tool," UNESCO expert Genevieve Jacquinot said. "Someone who sits in front of a television will not learn anything if there is not a complete framework which surrounds the broadcast."

President of the ABN-CBN Foundation in the Philippines, Gina Lopez, said France's example may not be appropriate for Asia.

"It is all nice and dandy the way the French government is visionary and has enough money to support this extensive network of educational television. But let's face the facts, this is not the reality in Southeast Asia. Our challenge is to find private cost-effective ways of educating through television."

Lopez, who is also president of the Southeast Asian Foundation for Children's Television, said one of the programs her foundation produces, the computer-animated School on Air, has higher ratings than the Power Rangers in the Philippines.

Yoenarsih Nazar, programing director for the forthcoming Indonesian educational channel on the soon-to-be launched Cakrawarta satellite, said the seminar had given her many ideas.

"I learned that educational TV must not follow the established format of TV. We shouldn't sacrifice the educational quality just because we are in the TV business. We need shorter formats to fit the concentration span of our viewers. We have to set up centers where our programs can be watched with the help of teachers."

TPI program planning and development manager, Endah Hari Utari, said her station was repositioning itself because the new broadcasting bill delegated state-run TVRI an educational mission.

"We try to make learning fun and attractive, this is a first, important step to break the ice," Utari said.

TPI is getting a little French help.

The French Embassy's audiovisual attache in the region, Michel Houdayer, has recruited model and actress Maudy Koesnadi to host the French-learning program Pique-Nique

"The romantic French language could be taught to Indonesian viewers by a truly beautiful woman," Houdayer said.