Background
In 1972, Dr. Benjamin Spock, by then famous as both an anti-Vietnam War activist and a pediatrician, ran for President of the United States on the ticket of the People's Party. The party called for radical reduction in the scale of everyday institutions of life--government, education, and social services particularly--and for equally dramatic retrenchment of American military and diplomatic interests abroad. This tape was made on October 4, 1972, by Jane Roth, State Historical Society of Wisconsin field representative, when Dr. Spock visited the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Memorial Union during his campaign.
About three-quarters of Dr. Spock's appearance was devoted to questions from the audience and Dr. Spock's sometimes discursive answers. This exchange was advertised beforehand as "The Women Confront Dr. Spock," and the audience did raise several questions about Dr. Spock's philosophy of family life and child development. The question-and-answer session was preceded by a ten-minute presentation in which Dr. Spock defended himself against prior charges that he encouraged uncritical acceptance of traditional sex roles in his famous manual, Baby and Child Care, and in a later book, Decent and Indecent (1970). The first five minutes of the tape apparently were recorded in a different room just before the advertised appearance. The second half of the tape is given over to questions and answers concerning the campaign platform of the People's Party. Dr. Spock proves to have been a practiced spokesman for one of the prominent strands of reform philosophy that underlay the political and social opposition movements of the Vietnam War years.
The Social Action Collection of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin includes many audio tapes of speeches, meetings, public gatherings, and other events that do not conform to the format of the one-on-one oral history interview. This tape is one of the first to have been abstracted by using the TAYE processing method modified to suit less standard and predictable formats than the structured interview.
Introduction to Abstract
The tape of this presentation has two tracks: a voice track containing the presentation itself and a time track containing time announcements at intervals of approximately five seconds. The abstract lists, in order of discussion, the topics covered on each tape, and indicates the time-marking at which point the beginning of the particular segment appears. For example, the first page of the abstract lists the content of the first seventeen minutes and thirty seconds of side one. The numbers (time-markings) on the left margin indicate the point on the second track of the tape where presentation of the distinct topic listed in capital letters begins.
Thus, the researcher by using a tape recorder's fast-forward button may find expeditiously and listen to discrete segments without listening to all of the taped presentation. For instance, the user who wishes to listen to the remarks about “Women and Child-Rearing” should locate the place on the second track of side one where the voice announces the 10:00 time marking (the voice says at this point, “ten minutes”), and at this point switch to the first track to hear the commentary. The discussion on “Women and Child-Rearing” continues until approximately 12:05, at which point the next topic (“Recantation of Earlier Views”) begins.
Notice that in many cases sentences beneath each headline explain more about the content of the topic. For example the sentences underneath “Women and Child-Rearing” give further details on what appears on the tape between 10:00 and 12:05.
Statements, questions, and answers that have been transcribed verbatim from the tape to the abstract are given in quotation marks. Other entries in the abstract are either paraphrases or condensed topical statements. At certain points the abstract may give the researcher information about the quality of the sound on the tape, the identity of a speaker, the continuity of a discussion or answer, or other aspects of the recorded presentation as they occur. Information of this kind appears in brackets.
The abstract is designed to provide a brief outline of the content of the tapes and cannot serve as a substitute for listening to them. However, the abstract will help the researcher easily locate distinct topics among the many minutes of presentation.
