Education: Bringing learning home: Instructional TV: New experiments with television as a teaching medium are promising a democratization of learning beyond even that accomplished by the public schools

The invention of movable type and the printing press by Johann Gutenberg, a mechanical revolution in education, extended access to knowledge stored in print from elite scholars and scribes to the masses. This, in turn, gave rise to universal literacy and the establishment of public schools for education. But the growth in applications of electronic technologies may have an even more rapid and democratic effect than the public schools have had. It will extend formal learning beyond the classroom into the home and work place.