By Wyatt
Television had two Uncle Walts, in my book and probably much of the nation's-- the more famous, at least to kids, Walt Disney, and the more serious and revered by the adults, Walter Cronkite. I dub Cronkite as a national uncle because he just seemed like one. Steady, mustachioed, believable, authoritarian. When he signed off on his newscasts with, "And that's the way it was," we knew that's the way it was. No foolin'.
You might well have missed Walt Cronkite's second TV gig, the Sunday afternoon entertainment history, You Are There. It had to be a boring Sunday to watch, but in the pre cable/satellite days, one didn't have much choice of what watch. YAT, in case you missed an exciting episode, (I use the word "exciting" quite loosely), the program would take a significant event in US history, and actors would play historic characters or persons of the time. The idea was as the title indicates--putting the viewer on the scene of a history- making event. Pretty novel approach, but even though history was my favorite class and enjoyable enough that I made a career of teaching it to segments of the Youth of America (Oregon Division), it just didn't click with me. Not very exciting. No action. Too much talk. I tried. I tried several times. It just didn't fly.
But it sure did with two of our Rogers history teachers--Lloyd Mabbot and Jim Forsysthe. I wondered then and I wonder now if they really thought it was good history to show episodes to Friday combined history classes or if it was teachers' way of having an easy Friday. I was in Forsythe's class, which met in one of the portables. He'd tell us the day in advance if it was to be a Friday to report for student duty in Mabbot's class. We were obedient and reported as so- directed. Not enough desks for two classes, we crammed, bungie-to- bungie in one of those 1930s style desks, the kind bolted to wooden runners. Being as it was a post-lunch class period, we were naturally sleepy from Friday's macaroni and cheese or tuna casserole, and the room was stuffy with all those adolescent, hormone-driven bodies.
I don't think any of us paid much attention anymore in that academic environment than we might have at home. But wait! We had to take notes and turn them in. I'd hate to see what my notes look like if I looked at them today, though. Still, not a bad technique to get kids active and forcing them to pay attention. I've used it on occasion, particularly when a classroom film I've shown that had what I thought was important material, but acknowledging that the kids probably wished, as I recall I did, when trapped to watch You Are There, that I wished I wasn't.
- Wyatt Newman