H is a Daa oargain ior several reasons. First,

is a Daa oargain ior several reasons.

First, it is a compulsory pro* gram. The students will be a captive audience for the promoter. As Sharon Percy Rockefeller, CEO of WETA, said, in a recent column explaining the difference between commercial and public TV, “Commercial television’s primary goal is to deliver viewers to advertisers. Public television’s standard is programming that stimulates and informs.” Since Channel 1 is ineluctably commercial, the bargain requires that whatever the proprietor of Channel 1 wishes to say and sell for the 10 minutes must be attended to by the students, excepting only such matter as may be censored by the school’s preview.

In a similar situation some years ago, it was proposed to have canned music, interspersed with ads, played on D.C. streetcars. By public outcry, the proposal was defeated, on the grounds that it was unfair to allow a promoter to profit by inflicting his ads and music on a captive audience.

Second, it is suggested that the infamous 10 minutes will not come out of “instructional time.” But if the school requires students to enter the classroom early, it necessarily means that the 10-minute period will be instructional time, mandated by the school and supervised by teachers.

Third, the bargain is justified by th$ argument that “other schools do it.” We should hope that one of the things our schools is not only able to teach but also to practice is the ability to make critical evaluations for which one is individually responsible.

Fourth, the promoter proposes to lend valuable TV equipment to the school in return for getting his captive audience. In his “Modest Proposal” (1729), Dean Jonathan Swift recommended, in a famous bit of savage irony, that the poor of Ireland should alleviate their poverty by fattening their children to feed the rich. In a somewhat similar vein,