Until this century I was an active Latin verb, you see, but in my post-modern incarnation I've been assigned to the most inactive of all human activities: viewing recordings of television programmes. I am proud of my contribution to the development of human thought and knowledge.
Humans first coined me as the word, vidya, to convey the idea of insight or knowledge. The ancient Greeks had the right idea about me; the Anglo-Saxons, Norse and Germans developed the word, wisdom, from my ancient root. In 1907 I was hijacked to coin the word, television; later I became the name for the box used to record and replay television programmes.
In staffroom and classroom I am hailed as the Great Liberator from centuries of talk, chalk and frayed plastic maps and charts. From my trolley perch I am the audiovisual explicator of everything from scientific experiments to soap operas.
Most teachers consider me an invaluable teaching aid but there are some, I'm sorry to relate, who regard me as a pill for every classroom ill: an aspirin for harassed teachers, a Prozac for pupils. I even get back to my ancient Greek environment on Friday afternoons when I am sometimes used as a deus ex machina.
Pupils flop in front of me, some with grade expectations, others with no expectations at all other than uninterrupted entertainment. When a teacher brandishes the remote control box the most dreaded F-words in education form on pupils lips: freeze frame.
Most pupils become apoplectic with rage when a teacher interrupts my flow to explain a point. The young MTV consumers demand intense emotional excitement, images and sequences that change every few seconds. If an image is not eye-catching, compelling, even hypnotic, then a state of unrelieved boredom descends on a class.
The difference between the pupils' reaction to teachers and to me is extraordinary. I can see it in their eyes. Student eyes are focused as they listen to their teacher. As soon as my cassette begins to roll eyes become glazed, even vacant. Some teachers assume that because my images are rolling that communication is occurring, an assumption never made by the Great Communicators of this century, advertisers.
An old clapped-out friend in the school store room remembers the days before I was born. He remembers Telefis Scoile in the Seventies and the days when pupils watched Gus Martin delivering lectures straight to camera. Students had longer attention spans then.
All in all, though, I've become an indispensable teaching tool. Graphic and dramatic representations of the effects of drugs, for example, carry more power than the spoken or written word can ever carry. I still have the power to reach parts of the mind, imagination and emotion that words cannot reach.
I wish a happy and successful `freeze-frame' year to teachers who still have faith in my splendid educational powers.
