America Now

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 759, 5 February 1954, Page 17

America Now

T is a great mistake to regard Americans as lacking in selfcriticism. No visitor could be as critical of the limitations of their systems of government and education as many Americans are themselves; and to this attitude they add great resources of energy and a strong faith in their ability to advance as a people as far in moral and spiritual. fields as they have in technology." J. C. Reid, senior lecturer in English at Auckland University College, told The Listener this in commeriting on a series of six talks he is to give from 1YC under the general heading of Observations About. America and the Americans, The first of these, "The MidWestern Temper," will be broadcast at 9.30 p.m. this Saturday, February 6. Mr. Reid returned recently from: the United States, where he spent a year as a Fulbright Research Scholar. His impressions are, he says, "inevitably rather superficial," but he adds that he did go to some trouble to poke about in out of the way places and talk to all kinds of people so that he could compare their views with those of academic folk. In his first talk he will discuss the attitude of Mid-Westerners to Britain and the world, describing "their conservatism, faith in free enterprise, distrust of government controls, and their spontaneous generosity." In his second talk Mr. Reid will draw upon his experiences at the University of Wisconsin, where he spent a good deal of his time, to talk about various types of student, the relationship of the university to. the community, and the chief aims of Mid-Western education. Some aspects of recent American. painting and the treasures of the great galleries in New York, Boston, Washington and Chicago provide materia] for two more talks, and in his final session Mr. Reid will speak about some of the

American and foreign writers he met. A study of television in several cities and in the special laboratories established for the parpose at the University of Wisconsin formed an important part of Mr. Reid’s research work, he told The Listener. "Television in America has become so much a part of daily life that a home without a set is regarded in much the same way as people here regard a home without a radio-as something eccentric or out of date. Unfortunately, the general level of TV entertainment is poor. Too much is raucous, noisy, crude, oversimplified and designed for an _ easily satisfied or amused public. It is shot through with commercials, in poor taste, incessant, and aggressive. However, no one who has watched TV can doubt that it is one of the most wonderful means of education and amusement ever invented. Like most» such media it is in itself morally and culturally indifferent, but it can be put to good or bad uses. So far in the United States it has been more mediocre than anything else."