Educational Television

Children's Television Workshop, the production company behind "Sesame Street" and other educational programs, is seeking a spot for itself on the 500-channel cable dial of the future. The New York-based, not-for-profit corporation says launching its own channel is the only way to ensure a home for its highly acclaimed shows, which are often passed over by networks in favor of more commercially successful fare such as "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" and "Animaniacs."

Parents, heads up: NBC is offering your children an educational opportunity this morning. It's called "NBA: Inside Stuff," and it teaches "peaceful conflict resolutions and global awareness." Or maybe they've already caught the Saturday morning music videos that a San Francisco station says give children an appreciation for the "multicultural aspect of music and the world around them."

OK, class, time for a pop quiz. What's wrong with this picture? Harry Wohlert greets his beginning German students with a hardy "Guten Tag," bids a couple of them "Happy Birthday," talks a little about the weather, chats about life in Germany, conjugates some verbs, fields some questions and outlines the next homework assignment. What's wrong? Nothing, except that Wohlert is in a television studio in Oklahoma and his 1,100 students are spread across 12 states.

To satisfy a new federal rule requiring stations to air "educational" children's programs, CBS last fall trotted out a new Saturday morning lineup that educators and TV critics alike applauded. Among other shows, CBS' children's schedule included "Beakman's World," which explains scientific concepts, and "The Ghostwriter Mysteries," a literacy-oriented program from the producers of "Sesame Street."

The programs are beamed around the clock from a nondescript studio complex in an Orange County industrial park. Distributed in the United States through a network larger than that controlled by any other Christian evangelist, the signals go overseas, too, carrying a stern anti-communist message to Central America and encouragement for the government of South Africa.

It begins one morning in a preschool in Harlem, this whimsical television experiment called "Sesame Street." Skipping quickly to the center of a large classroom, half a dozen 4-year-olds settle quietly into two rows of miniature chairs. Their faces fixed on the good-sized television screen in front of them, they watch carefully for a moment or two. Then, paired with an adult, they begin to chatter, trying their best to explain what it is they've just seen.

The Scientology movement's Foundation for Advancements in Science and Education has befriended one of America's most celebrated teachers, Jaime Escalante of Garfield High School. Escalante is the East Los Angeles teacher profiled in the hit 1988 film "Stand and Deliver," which chronicled his success in teaching advanced calculus to barrio students.

With his groomed beard and two-piece suit, David Heil doesn't look like the comic stereotype of the lab-coat-clad mad scientist--maybe because he is a scientist as well as host of the long-running PBS show "Newton's Apple." Please, he says, no lab coats, no mad science.

Two of the biggest names in children's television, Nickelodeon and Children's Television Workshop, paired up Tuesday to announce the creation of a noncommercial cable channel aimed at providing educational programming for kids between the ages of 2 and 14--including reruns of "Sesame Street."

Aiming beyond the dry textbook English lesson, state and federal officials have launched a television situation comedy to reach some of the nearly 14 million adults who lack basic English skills. "Crossroads Cafe" traces the lives of six characters of various ethnic backgrounds in a 26-part series that the program's sponsors are hoping will attract an immigrant population not being reached by standard instruction.