"Textbooks are becoming obsolete; things are happening so quickly." So says Brian J. Brown, editor of the TIME Education Program, through which 130,000 high school and junior college students are using TIME in the classroom. In addition, their 5,000 teachers receive free each month a bundle of supplementary educational materials--pamphlets, charts and maps--designed to make social science and humanities curriculums as up to the minute as possible.

Each month's packet of materials centers around a theme. "We play editorial roulette," says Brown. "We try to anticipate what's going to be hot." Sometimes it is uncanny how hot the subject can be. A pamphlet entitled "U.S. Prisons: Schools for Crime" was published in September 1971, just two weeks before the Attica revolt. Other timely topics have been impeachment and women's liberation, as well as lighter subjects like "body language" and the Beatles' lyrics. After describing a bloodless coup in Bolivia, one pamphlet suggested that students analyze the power structure of their schools as if they were going to stage a coup of their own.

Several principals were less than enthusiastic about this game plan, although no successful student takeovers were reported. The supplementary materials prepared by Brown, Researcher Elizabeth Rudulph, and occasionally by TIME writers, are geared toward the teacher, but the pamphlets also contain selections designed to be duplicated and distributed to students as well. A year ago, Brown instituted Fragments, a magazine to which student subscribers contribute poetry, cartoons, and answers to questions like: "Do you agree with a University of Massachusetts professor that 'the grading system is the most destructive, demeaning and pointless thing in American education'?" (Most students agreed heartily.)

Brown, a graduate of St. Francis College in Loretto, Pa., worked for newspapers, wrote political speeches and made television documentaries before coming to head the TIME Education Program in 1967. He has also taught English literature at Purdue University and Hunter College. Brown further broadens his background--and rustles up ideas--by visiting students in schools around the country each spring. "The kids today are just frightening in the extent of their awareness," he says. "They're pushing the teachers to talk about topics that were once taboo, like abortion and drugs."

When a class orders ten or more TIME subscriptions (at a 50% student discount), its teacher gets an extra copy plus the monthly selection of teaching aids. For further information, write TIME Education Program, 541 North Fairbanks Court, Chicago, 111. 60611.

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