Monday, Nov. 24, 1941

Keeping Civilization Alive

The pearl of all educational programs shone again last Sunday. After seven weeks off the air, CBS's Invitation to Learning (TIME, Oct. 21, 1940) returned at a new time, 11:30 a.m. to 12 E.S.T., with discussion of the second most popular books in the world (Don Quixote). The talkers Mark Van Doren, John Peale Bishop and Jacques Barzan, examined the mad knight of Cervantes as an archetype of all high-minded but ill-informed reformers, found a recent treatment of the same subject in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. They agreed, however, that Cervantes' Man-in-the-Street. Sancho Panza, learned from Don Quixote a lot that he needed to know.

Invitation to Learning's new series of 32 programs was planned on a slightly different basis from its previous 67. Of the three regulars who made up the old team, Mark Van Doren, who is both keen and engaging, alone remains regular. The other two, Allen Tate and Huntington Cairns, are to make occasional appearances. CBS's notion is to vary Mr. Van Doren's companions for the sake of a less foreseeable meeting of minds.

The books to be talked about will be varied likewise. Instead of being laid out under imposing categories, as before (History, Poetry and Philosophy, Fiction, etc.), they compose a fluid series with a little more contemporary glitter. This Sunday Historian Allan Nevins will have a chance to link up Herodotus' History (of how the Greeks stood off the Persians) with World War II. On Dec. 14 a classic of conservatism, Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, will be taken up along with a classic of revolution, Tom Paine's The Rights of Man.

Invitation to Learning is the only network sustaining program that has successfully brought out the drama that exists in the disinterested play of ideas. It has done so by getting articulate thinkers to talk spontaneously about a great work of literature. The principle of the thing, as expressed by a CBS adviser: "While we are planning to defend our civilization we should not fail to keep it alive. . ."

Without talking down to anybody, Invitation to Learning reached an audience computed at a million listeners. A collection of 27 of its discussions, published last spring,* sold nearly 10,000 copies.

*Invitation to Learning (Random House; $3).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.