Life & Living:  A Recollection – 1956 Educational TV Experiment, Suddenly Relevant 64 years Later

In 1956, when most classrooms still had chalkboards and film projectors, our third-grade class in Hagerstown suddenly had a TV.   Not for cartoons — for school. We didn’t know it then, but we were part of one of the first experiments in digital learning.

Before the internet or even widespread videotape, Washington County pioneered the idea of using television to expand and enhance classroom instruction.  The Class of 1966 in Hagerstown, MD was one of the 1st classes anywhere to use ETV (Educational TV).  We were part of a big, historic experiment.  I don’t know about my fellow “guinea pigs,” but that made me feel special.

The Washington County Closed-Circuit ETV started in September 1956, when we were starting 3^rd grade.  (For me, Miss Gordon at Surrey Street.)   At first, it only served elementary schools in Hagerstown.  Later it served all 45 schools in Washington County and every grade.  (Hagerstown, the county seat, had a population of about 40,000.  It was surrounded by many smaller towns, with perhaps 5 large enough to warrant their own high school.)  

As I understood it, the purpose was to see if the use of ETV would raise standardized test performance of kids outside of Hagerstown to those achieved by Hagerstown kids.  The conclusion was that it raised everyone’s performance but did not close the gap.  The prime mover was the superintendent of Washington County Schools, William Brish, who was having problems hiring enough teachers.  The experiment received funding from the Ford Foundation.

The ETV lessons supplemented the classroom teacher’s lessons.  In elementary school, I remember TV lessons taught by specialized French, Music, and Art teachers.  That would have been impractical without ETV, even in good sized elementary schools.    (And even less so at the many smaller schools.  As an extreme example, the Dargan Elementary School was 2 classrooms with 2 teachers for grades 1 thru 6.)  In the 12^th grade, I had Advanced Math (introductory calculus).  Of the 5 classes each week, 2 were on ETV.

The ETV system connected every classroom, which meant that when national events unfolded, we were uniquely able to watch them live.  When President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, we were in 10^th grade.  As we changed classes after lunch, word spread.  When we got to our next class, we were able to watch the live national news reporting on TV.

C&P Telephone of Maryland provided the transmission system from the studios at the Board of Education to all the schools.  

The system was about 120 miles of coax cable with about 250 amplifiers, each with 12 vacuum tubes.  

My Dad, Bob Harrison, led the C&P team that installed and maintained the initial system.  During college summer jobs at C&P, I climbed poles helping Jack Harshman, a wonderful senior technician and human being, with the annual preventative maintenance, repairing cable faults, and upgrading the system from vacuum tube electronics to transistorized.  I worked 12-hour days, Monday thru Friday, and 8 hours on Saturdays.  On a typical 12-hour day, I’d climb 32 poles.  I’d drink a gallon of ice water every day (and the better part of a gallon of beer every night).

When schools went virtual in 2020 during the COVID pandemic, I couldn’t help but think back to those old black-and-white TVs in our classrooms. We were doing remote learning and learning in digital classrooms before those terms even existed.

PS. I am somewhere in that Life magazine photo of 1,700 kids taught over TV by 1 teacher.