Guam

Gregoria Baty

Let me isolate the most influential means of communication available on Guam, the television and the school books. Almost every home on Guam has a television set. A recent research done by the University group showed that the average Guamanian watches an average of seven hours of television a day. If we watch television that long, we definitely must be influenced by it. We have everything that a U.S. television program would have, including cowboys, sexist ads., crimes, and soap operas.

In the educational media, there is an attempt to write grade school books partly in Chamorro. There are bilingual programmes in the schools. There is also KGTF, an educational television station partly subsidised by the federal page 49 and local governments. Here is shown such programmes as ‘Sesame Street’, ‘The Electric Company’, ‘Zoom’, ‘Woman Today’, and other canned shows from the mainland. There are also locally produced programmes for children and adults. A few books for lower grades are being revised to make them non-sexist and gear them to local situations.