Teaching the Scientific ABCs

3-2-1 Contact lifts off on public TV

How do you pet a bee ?

Very carefully.

That sort of whimsical patter is a specialty of the Children's Television Workshop, producers of prizewinning Sesame Street, which uses the pizazz of commercial TV to teach preschoolers their ABCs. In a new educational TV series that begins this week on most of the 282 U.S. public television stations, CTW now applies its zingy production style to a more complex and elusive subject: science. The series of 30-min. shows, with the space-age title 3-2-1 Contact, provides glimpses of everything from leaping lizards and killer whales to computers that talk and roller coasters that whip their riders upside down.

Big Bird, Ernie and other Sesame Street favorites are gone from CTW's newest undertaking, which aims at a somewhat older and presumably savvier audience, ages eight to twelve. The show's hosts are three young people, Lisa, Marc and Trini, who are forever leaving their Tinkertoy clubhouse for short, filmed sorties to labs, beaches and races--a total of 100 trips in 65 shows. At the start of each episode, Marc announces, "Science is fun," and then tries to prove it. Cartoons are shown to explain how things work, and celebrity guests occasionally drop by to take part in the action: Tennis Pro Arthur Ashe, for example, hits a serve timed by radar, and Actor Gene Wilder illustrates communication by talking to a dog. The episodes end with a minimystery film starring three young detectives, known as the Bloodhound Gang, who reason their way to the solution of a crime.

CTW President Joan Ganz Cooney explains that her team wants "to build an appetite for science, not force feed it." Elementary-school teachers, responding to CTW's announcement of the show, have requested 100,000 copies of a free classroom guide. Though the show will generally be aired after school, the Friday program, which reviews the week's material, will also be broadcast during morning hours for classroom use.

3-2-1 Contact was developed at a cost of $11.7 million, using grants from the U.S. Office of Education and National Science Foundation, as well as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the United Technologies Corp. The sponsors hope that the show can help close a gap in science education in the early grades. Says CTW Research Director Milton Chen: "In surveys of science achievement, you see a pattern of declining interest in science around junior high. We're trying to intervene earlier to try to encourage kids to stay tuned in to science." Another goal: stimulating interest in scientific careers among minorities, who now make up only 4.4% of scientists and engineers, and among women, who constitute just 9.7% of the total. Host Marc is a young black; Trini, one of his two girl companions, occasionally speaks Spanish on the show.

For each week of the 13-week series, the shows stick to a general theme, such as hot and cold, near and far, big and little. "These are dimensions that eight-to twelve-year-olds use themselves in organizing their own experience," says Chen. For example, to demonstrate that sound consists of vibrations, Marc and Lisa play with a toy telephone made by stretching a string between two tin cans. Then the scene shifts to two cartoon characters who joke about dialing wrong numbers. To introduce gravity, 3-2-1 Contact skips the traditional account of Sir Isaac Newton and the falling apple and shows a Hollywood stunt man plummeting from a four-story building; sensibly, Marc refuses to follow him.

CTW surveyed 10,000 youngsters to help develop the series. The surveys found that students were quick to grasp pictures, but yawned at lengthy explanations. 3-2-1 Contact thus keeps the film rolling and dialogue fast paced. The inevitable result: few detailed discussions of scientific theories or principles. National Frisbee Champion Krae Van Sickle, for instance, likens the spinning disc to a gyroscope, but fails to explain what a gyroscope is, or how it works. The show rushes on to a glider sailing through the Colorado skies. It is all pleasant viewing, but does it really teach science? Probably not, in any systematic sense, as CTW admits. Says Research Director Chen: "This is a show focused on attitudes, on encouraging positive feelings toward science." Adds Joan Duea, past president of the Council for Elementary Science International: "The show doesn't replace teaching. The teacher still has a job to do."

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