Bob Keeshan update - text of a speech he gave in 2000

Capt. Kangaroo passed on the other day (blogged here). In 2000, he gave a speech to a Vermont NEA convention and had some amazing things to say about education and such... (link here): We now think of children's television characters as two-dimensional cartoon 'puppets' but the people that a lot of us grew up with were much much more. Jen and I were talking the other night about how Capt. Kangaroo had raised about four generations of children. The TeleTubbies are totally pass� after three years, new "kid-TV" characters are coming and going like gangbusters - for what reason - maybe they do not have traction, staying power... bq. This is one of the most important meetings held in the State of Vermont this year. It of great importance because gathered here are the legions who are in the forefront of an institution called "public education" in this Green Mountain State and that institution, public education, is under attack in this state and this nation as it has rarely been in the one-hundred fifty years since a noble idea became a glorious institution. bq. Even those who spend every day on the ramparts of public education often forget what a unique institution America has to protect and serve the nation. It was not always so. When our nation was being founded and its lofty ideals set to writing, "We hold these truths to be self-evident," the author of those radical notions, proposed another radical notion in his native Virginia. Thomas Jefferson proposed to the Virginia state legislature the notion that children be given an education at the expense of taxpayers. It was a truly off the wall idea and got nowhere, but sixty years later in New England, in Massachusetts, Horace Mann advanced the idea of the "common school", a place where children would be educated at taxpayer expense and, concurrently, Henry Barnard was advancing a similar idea in neighboring Connecticut. The idea caught on and public education, much the same as we know it today, was born and spread across the new land, educating immigrants and the children of immigrants, teaching children of many cultures the lessons of the new democratic culture, arming generation after generation with basics in reading and math, in agriculture and technology. Even at the post secondary level, New England was nurturing the development of knowledge dissemination when Vermont�s own, Justin Smith Morrill, authored the land grant college act, signed into law by Abraham Lincoln. New England had given birth to a noble idea, the concept that knowledge strengthened a nation, solidifying its culture and furnishing it with great minds and developed its collective intellect to succeed as no other nation has ever succeeded. From the industrial revolution to modem dot. com technology, this nation owes its prosperity to the institution of public education. bq. In a very real sense it is public education, the education of all its citizens, which has set this nation apart and engendered undreamed of economic prosperity and great social advances. Public education is the rock upon which this nation and its greatness has been built. Upon this rock we shall build our nation. bq. It has not been a perfect experiment; for many years many children received a separate and inherently unequal education. But the mainstream of public education educated a citizenry about the unfairness of this and, thus, the needed corrections have come from the educated product of public education. We remain an imperfect institution but there is none like it existent anywhere else on this earth. As we have for a century and a half, we are moving in the right direction. bq. Somewhat in the middle of this experiment in public education, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Henry Adams wrote those enduring words: "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." bq. These are such simply stated words, and yet, through the years, I have dwelled upon the concept of extending circles of influence, as with a pebble in a still pond, emanating from a skilled teacher and reaching to worlds the teacher is unaware of, but in the beginning is the teacher and eternity is influenced by his ideas as those ideas are passed on and on and on, beyond light, beyond years, beyond light years. What a noble and awesome power you have, a power beyond the reach of virtually every other calling. bq. Therefore, this is a meeting of great importance, not only because we carry on the cause of public education and, make no mistake, you are in the forefront of our public education system. It is an important meeting because public education is under attack as it rarely has been in the past. Because of judicial rulings, with which most of us agree, we in Vermont have radically altered the way we educate our children and the way in which we pay for that education. The resulting legislative and executive solutions, Act 60, have caused acrimony and divisions among our well-meaning people. These divisions have eroded the enthusiastic support Vermont public schools have traditionally enjoyed. Two years of Act 60 have seen improvements, a shrinking of the initial perceived inequities, but some mending needs yet to be done, particularly in capital improvement budgets. These questions are being addressed and, with patience and good will, our people shall once again be enthusiastic supporters of our excellent public school system. bq. More ominous threats can be seen in other states and in the platforms of some national candidates. We have floating around the spurious notion that the remedy for public school improvement lies in the abandoning of the system, giving taxpayer money to private, selective institutions to educate our children, children who should be educated in the public school system. These private schools are, by nature, selective; we will take this student but we will not take that student, picking and choosing, with taxpayer money, money that is taken from, directly from the public school system. Imagine your school turning away a child because, for whatever reason, you wished to reject him. bq. Public schools are, arguably, the most democratic of this nations democratic institutions; we serve everybody, that�s everybody. If we have challenges in our schools, and most of us believe we do, the solution lies in directly addressing those challenges, the solution is not in depriving public schools of the resources to do so and shunting public funds to private, selective institutions. bq. Those threats inside and outside this state are real and that is why this is such a critical meeting. You are in the forefront every day and you wield great influence politically and socially in this state. Organize to defend the noble institution of public education. bq. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops ...... bq. With your leadership you influence more than children. You influence, by example and by persuasion, the people we need to preserve our public schools. Use your influence and use it well. bq. You may have noted in my biography that I have served in various capacities in education from school board member to college trustee. In many ways, my experience from my school board days enables me to understand what is happening in your district in troubled times... bq. ...The span of my professional life matches almost exactly the life span of television. I first saw a television picture as a twelve year old at the New York World�s Fair in 1939. Like everybody else in the audience at that RCA exhibit I considered it pretty heady stuff, I mean the sheer magic of pictures traveling through the air. Why, America had spent the previous decade growing accustomed to voices, radio voices traveling by air, the voices of Jack Benny, Jack Armstrong, the All American Boy, Dick Tracy and Flash Gordon. Pictures? Well, now, that was a miracle. Of course television did not come to the American living room for almost another decade, the trio of Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini sapped all of our industrial energies as we fought fascism, we were focused on more urgent concerns. bq. Of course even though the technology was available it took a few years for the marketing geniuses to hype television enough to get people to buy the very expensive sets and place them in the American living room. That marketing success is quite a story in itself. bq. I feel somewhat avuncular about television because, as I said, I did not grow up with the medium, in fact I helped with the birthing, way back when, before Uncle Milty even, and Sid the Caesar and the "great one," himself, Jackie Gleason. I am in my fifty-third year as an actor, producer, writer. Fifty-two years. Wow! I am so old I am close to being venerable. I have done somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty thousand television shows. Some of them were even done in Mister Roger�s Neighborhood. bq. I had just returned from the Marine Corps and was back at my old job at NBC-NBC radio, where I was a page working my way through college on my way to law school. You see, I intended to become a lawyer not an actor, but many years later I�m not sure there�s that much difference between the two professions. bq. Back then, in 1947, there were less than 100,000 television sets in the entire nation and most of them were in saloons and bar rooms. There were only a dozen or so television stations on the air. No, television was far from a presence in American homes. Behind my page desk at NBC radio was the office of a genial early-morning radio host who played records, no tape or CD�s back then, and played the piano. NBC had a parent company, RCA, which was in the business of manufacturing and, hopefully, selling television sets. At about this time, some marketing genius figured out that the way to sell television sets was to give people something to watch on those television sets! What an unbridled display of raw genius. bq. These geniuses approached Bob Smith, the radio host, and proposed that he do a television program for children. Even then they knew that by appealing to children they could reach the pocketbooks of adults. It was hoped that this strategy would induce substantial numbers of adults to purchase their very own television complete with that giant five inch tube. bq. Bob Smith sought the help of the professionals, the radio actors, but was met with laughter. They were making very big money in radio on soap operas, drama and comedy shows. Television? Why there was no money paid to actors there, they didn�t even have a union. I suppose in desperation, Bob turned to the page on his doorstep and asked if I would help. Of course, I would help. Why look at the numbers. NBC paid me forty dollars a week, the GI bill added twelve dollars, and, now, this radio host was going to tip me five dollars for helping him out, five dollars for each and every show! "Why," said to myself, counting on my fingers, "I�ll be rich!" bq. The part that I played on that show, which became Howdy Doody, was that of a clown. I honked a horn, squirted a seltzer bottler and twenty years later became a question in a board game, Trivial Pursuit. bq. The character, of course, was Clarabell, a part I created and played for five years until 1952 when I decided it was time to move on, to take advantage of the opportunities television presented for informing and educating young people while not losing sight of the important task of entertaining them. You see, I had become a parent and my perspective had changed. Parenthood will do that sort of thing. bq. Meantime, television did grow up, at least economically. The one-two punch of Howdy Doody and Milton Berle moved television out of the bar room and into the living room. Networks of stations spanned the nation, connected by telephone lines and thirty million television sets had found their way into homes... bq. Much has changed in the nation and certainly much has changed here in the years since I began in television, since television itself began. The family, most of all, has changed. Our attitude toward marriage and divorce has changed. Thanks to these changes and because of teen pregnancy almost half our children live in single parent families. Few us live close to where we were born. The blue highways have been succeeded by the interstates criss-crossing the nation getting us there, anywhere, fast. Jet planes move us coast to coast and in-between in minutes and hours, not days, The inner cities have faced decay, farmland is now theme parks and shopping malls and suburban sprawl. bq. This changed environment has done little to augment the efforts of families to nurture. Even parents who are dedicated to positive nurturing find it often to be a daunting task. Despite our rhetoric, we are not a very family-friendly society. Politicians kiss babies and proclaim their devotion to families prior to elections and then, once that ritual is over, go back to the business of politics. Children are not the business of politics and why should they be? Have you ever met a child who switched his vote or lobbied Congress or was successful in pleading a cause with a state legislator? Ever met a child who was a large contributor to a political action committee? Politicians know there is no money in child causes, there are no votes to tally in such fields. People with gray hair, like me, we are the ones who scare the daylights out of politicians. We seniors were once this nation�s principal underclass until we let them know in Washington, in state capitals, in city halls, that we were not going to take it anymore. We leaned out of windows and elsewhere to shout our message, "we are not going to take it anymore!" Politicos listened because we have the power to change lives, the lives of politicians, change their lifestyle, to take away their office, their power and to send them back home. Kids have no such power, the power of the franchise, and are largely ignored. For almost thirty years children have been this nation�s principal underclass. Shame on us! Shame on the land of opportunity. bq. Over twenty percent, almost a quarter of our kids live in this land of plenty, the land of thriving business and industry, the land of booming stock markets, the land of consumer confidence, the land of plenty and promise, over twenty per cent of our kids live in poverty. Are we nuts? Are we ready to take such a resource and toss away one in every five kids, are they our throw-aways? And we wonder about Littleton and Oregon and Kentucky. Many of the complex answers sought to those tragedies lies in the attitude of this nation that is ready to throw away one out of every five of our children. bq. Poverty breeds desperation and stress and frustration and anger. Many of our kids who are abused in homes are abused because of conditions rooted in poverty. Oh, abuse occurs in more affluent surroundings but poverty is a prime breeder of abuse. Capital gains legislation does not help kids in poverty. Nothing wrong with capital gains legislation but ladies and gentlemen of the Congress and the legislatures, keep your eye on the kids. They are potentially our greatest capital gain... bq. ...Perhaps the greatest prevention for many conditions assailing children comes from a strong school program. School is the common denominator, every child has one. I speak of a school which is academically strong but also has been given the resources to identify and treat children in need. That means, among other things, classroom size that enables a teacher to know her students, a teacher who is trained in identifying children with special needs and having the resources within the school to pass such children on for special attention. I know it places a heavy responsibility on teachers, but such a program saves lives, quite literally. bq. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops ....... bq. When I was fifteen years old, I lost my mother. I was devastated. In months I went from a happy teen to a morose pessimist. My grades dropped off the cliff. From a very fine and interested student I fell to a 'C' average and was just hanging on. I had an adviser, an English teacher, Gertrude Farley. Miss Farley observed my decline, she knew the tragedy I had suffered. She began working on me with the tenaciousness of a terrier. Miss Farley would not let go; she was not going to lose me. She didn�t. Thanks to Gertrude Farley, sent to me from heaven, I came out of my tailspin. Anything I have accomplished in my lifetime I owe to Gertrude Farley. bq. A teacher affects eternity. Gertrude Farley never knew where her influence stopped. bq. Each and every one of you has that enormous power at your fingertips. It is for you to remember that power that you hold every morning passing through the portals of your school. It is our job, the rest of us in this state and in this nation, to see that you are able to use that power, that you shall be able to affect eternity. Go forth and teach ye all children.