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Educational Television, Fred Rogers, and the History of Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Robert A. Levin  and
Laurie Moses Hines
Robert A. Levin
Affiliation:
Education and American Studies at Youngstown State University
Laurie Moses Hines
Affiliation:
Cultural Foundations of Education at Kent State University-Trumbull
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Extract

The history of teaching and learning via television has compressed into a half-century many of the same stages and themes of the larger story of common schooling in the United States. Responding to a variety of public, private, and foundation interests in the post-World War II period, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) set aside 242 television frequencies for noncommercial educational purposes in 1952. Three decades earlier, the Federal Radio Commission (FRC) had asserted a need for broadcasting to serve a common good for the broad public and civic interest. During the 1920s, nonnetworked educational radio stations were formed on various college and university campuses.

Type
Commentary
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , Summer 2003 , pp. 262 - 275
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 by the History of Education Society 

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References

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8 See, for example, Cuban, Larry Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology since 1920 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1986), as well as Cuban's later work, Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

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20 “Fred Rogers’ Biography,” see note 11.Google Scholar

21 Ibid.Google Scholar

22 “Fred Rogers: America's Favorite Neighbor,” documentary film jointly produced by WQED-Pittsburgh and Family Communications, Inc. hosted by actor Michael Keaton (a former backstage employee of Rogers’ on the Neighborhood), May 2003.Google Scholar

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26 “What are your kids watching?” USA Today Magazine 131 (August 2002).Google Scholar

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28 Ibid.Google Scholar

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31 See, for example, Donovan, Robert J. and Scherer, Ray Unsilent Revolution: Television News and American Public Life, 1948–1991 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, published by Cambridge University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

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