To do any kind of history of classroom film, you need to understand the scholarship in a lot of fields, im going to be quoting and referencing and pulling together work that ive done, work thats been done by other historians of science. Film studies people. Communications studies scholars, even folk lorists. For reasons that should now be obvious, the topic is interdisciplinary. In particular were going to return to this question, right. What are the relations between art, science and entertainment and culture, in cinema . How do they reinforce one another in these particular contexts . Were going to see the movement of people, the same people across institutions, right, across media forums. And across science. So its all going to be kind of blending together. And also Science Education. Obviously in Science Education what students are taught depends on what the stateoftheart knowledge is for that period. We have to consider what is the scientific and technical knowledge. To understand this historically we have to understand how Science Education is both a product and a driver of culture. What i mean is that any form of Science Education is going to incorporate attitudes and approaches towards both education and science. That are kind of predominant at the time. So before we move way back to the 1950s. I want to kind of unpack sitcom assumptions you might have when i say science on tv. Some of you are probably old enough to remember either seeing the first time or watching in rerun, bill nye, the science guy. Bill nye is this generations predominant tv science educator, he wears the white coat or blue. And he does interactive science experiments very enthusiastic. He himself is a scientist, right. Or you remember someone like sheldon from the big bang. The science sitcom is another model. Or maybe i didnt put it up here because i thought it would make me sound really old, things like e. R. The medical doctors, numbers the mathematician working with his brother. These are contemporary genres or images we have of what science on tv is. To really understand whats going on in the 1950s, you have to back up. Because tv was new media. Particularly for education. So tv was to education then what Something Like the internet or mooks or Online Education is to education now. Its this brave new frontier. Its not so new, its really comes out of the use of 16millimeter film in classroom. Which is something weve talked a little bit about for the 20s and 30s. Moving that discussion forward, whats going on in the 50s is a massive expansion of the use of 16millimeter film in classrooms. Thats driven in part by technology. You see a picture there of the kodak pageant projector. The pageant projector was a new projector that kodak invented, lighter, more portable, easier to thread, the film didnt burn, always good when a School System invests in it although the film did sometimes burn. It was advertised as not burning. This new version of Classroom Technology really sort of fostered the expansion of the educational film industry. So film historian Jeff Alexander in his book films you saw in school estimates that there were approximately 100,000 or so give or take. Films that were made in this period. They were made largely by educational film companies. So these would be Companies Like coronet, archer, were going to see archer today, when we watch duck and cover. Even encyclopedia britain did the ica. So any time that a new technology is introduced into a classroom. Maybe this didnt happen when teachers had their pointers. Any time a new technology is introduced in the postwar period, theres a little bit of handwringing goes on. You see the appearance in the 1950s of a series of books, this one, television and education in the u. S. Who is credentialed in the school of education and the department of communication, he asks the question to which the obvious answer is yes. Can it be that education in our time is suffering the a sea change. His next question what is excellence in kind of classroom film and video instruction . And just as importantly how is it absorbed . Kind of focusing not just on the production of the knowledge, but on the consumption, the learning as we would call it. So some handwringing is to be expected. But theres also a lot of enthusiasm. The fcc commissioner in 1951 published a piece in variety a trade magazine for hollywood and the performing arts, in which she articulated her vision for television and education. Television, she said is one of the greatest forces known for education. She says are we going to let this genie serve as a unvarying diet of Horror Stories or can we harness the genie to perform wonders of public enlightenment unequalled since the days of the ref nance. Renaissance, another enlightenment in television which is something that today is pretty mundane, pretty much a part of our everyday life. So its a very Successful Use of film particularly for propaganda and newsreels, and first theyre used before movies and people liked them so much that they developed dedicated newsreel theaters and you could go to a theater just to watch one after another newsreel in big cities like new york and l. A. And in 1948 newsreels became a television program. Nbc launched a tenminute, not a long one, a tenminute called camel newsreel theater. Something like the first cnn except its not running 24 hours. Its running every ten minutes, every once in a while. So newsreels were very popular. Propaganda films like why we fight it was made during world war ii by frank capra who had some army experience, but joined back up after the bombings of pearl harbor and was immediately grabbed by his Commanding Officers because by that point he was an Oscarwinning Hollywood director, right . So he had some incentive to be used in this way rather than at the front, and so his Commanding Officer recruited him to do what he called and im quoting, now. Documented factual information films that will explain to our boys in the army, the principles for which we are fighting. So kind of invoking the documentary ethos, but clearly meant to persuade with douchltry and propaganda for diet of the wills which is considered to be the best, if not the best, in quotes, propaganda films of all time. So theyve had a lot of success with the use of film for conveying information for persuading, for convincing. Of course, they would think that it would have more applications in the classroom, but this became even more urgent in the context of the dropping of atomic bombs on hiroshima and nagasaki in japan and the real escalation of what several people have called the Nuclear Culture or the nuclear future, right . So this nuclear future, on the one hand, right . Everyone knew about this, everyone knew that this ended the war and it was a massive loss of life, right . It was a very grim, dark scene and it was the dark side of atomic culture. The thought is in the postwar period harnessing Nuclear Energy for positive uses, so and 1958 became known as the adams for peace speech and it became a propaganda for peaceful uses of Atomic Energy would include reactors for generating energy, but also things like radioisotopes, that then become medical tracers. So then you have in the logo that eventually gets made, the medical icon, too, right . Medicine, science, engineering, agriculture. Its all going to be a part of our nuclear feature. Just in case the speech and those methods of persuasion didnt work, they also developed a series of traveling museum exhibits. That is Atomic Energy commissionsponsored exhibit and atoms for peace and it would be likely if you were an elementary or middle School Student and you went to a museum in the 50s that you would see one of these and they would have things like radioactive frogs and frogs that have been injected with radio i i isotopes and it would start clicking. Some of the First Interactive exhibits and adams for peace exhibit and thats a good example of museums reinforcing other mediums, right . Museums trying to become new just as film is trying to become new on television. And we find out from looking behind the scenes documents because it wouldnt be marketed this way in public and it was emotional management of the tensions involved in the Nuclear Culture and the tension being on the one hand, escalating Nuclear Armament thats the hallmark of the cold war period, but on the other hand, the home front uses of atomic that they want to domesticate. So educating civilians and in particular, educating children became a high priority. So bo jacobs talks about how this generation was the first generation that learned to live in a nuclear world, and you can see the folks from the Indian Springs school in nevada which is next to an air force base, right . Its a tworoom school, and and duck and hold one, and they learned how to spell atom and bomb before they learned how to spell mother. Just imagine that shift and learning those words that had much bigger and more than the word mother. In particular, a lot of children in the procedures of Civil Defense in what are the actual threats of an atomic attack. What would it look like . And so they devised this film called duck and cover. What well do here is watch a small clip of the introduction to duck and cover featuring the theme song. A major threat and he never got hurt he knew just what to do hes duck and cover duck and cover he did what we all must learn to do you and you and you and you duck and cover be sure and remember what bert the turtle did because every one of us must remember to do the same thing. Thats what this film is all about duck and cover, this is an official Civil Defense film produced in cooperation with the federal Civil Defense administration and in consultation with the Safety Commission of the National Education association produced by its going to go again. All right. Because if it goes again youll want to sing it. All right. So what do you notice about that introduction . A couple of things. So i played through the song, so that it could talk a little bit about the ways in which the production values of both the content and the production values were framed by interactions between lots of different kinds of artists and those who were interested in conveying the actual information. So for those who were interested in conveying the information, the federal Civil Defense authority and School Safety organization, from the National Educational association, right . So Government People collaborating with school teachers, collaborating with fairly high quality talent that was recruited by the producers at archer films. So the film was written by ray meyer and directed by Anthony Rizzo and the jingle was writtenian wards. It didnt initially start with the jingle. The jingle was written afterward by the same team that advised see the usa in a chevrolet . That slogan, when it resonated for the generation and if you watched madmen, i think it was the advertising culture that produced these slogans that became a part of massive Advertising Campaigns and even in the case of the chevrolet slogan became a hit for a pop singer named dinah shore, right . So theres crossover here. So its a very upbeat and positive song. Its very memorable and we have female voices and male voices. The goal of this film, bo jackie be on jacobs talks about how to teach children how to survive an atomic attack by themselves. Thats important, right . Because part of whats going on here there are two parts to whats going on here. On the one hand you have to inform children if they see an atomic a jack. Bo jacobs says making the threat normative, something as scary as an atomic attack you cannot show film of to children, right . Because its too horrifying. So instead, using the medium of animation they portray the bright light. The light is described as a bright flash, brighter than the sun, right . And it transitions into the animation where clearly the atomic bomb is and the narrator is saying this in a calm tone, smashing through buildings and causing a burn worse than your worst sunburn, right . So these are all ways to kind of take this knowledge and convey it, but in a way that maybe children would understand and would be a part of their world. Now, the other side is not just conveying what it is that youre actually seeing, knowing that youre doing this and that youre being a part of this, but what to do. So the narrative there also takes a kind of domestication tone, right . It talks about responding to a bomb is not unlike responding to a fire, right . Or an automobile accident, right . These are all things that can happen in your daily life, just add atomic bomb to the list, right . And come up with a plan for responding and both use of animation as the technology and the narrative of the film is one of the hallmarks the other thing that jacobs talks about is the way in which this film acknowledges and now were kind of transitioning to attitudes towards education, right . So the idea that you would have to respond as a child by yourself to an atomic bomb rather than through a teacher or some authority figure, right . Is a real shift. Its a shift in traditional social roles that is really part and parcel of the new atomic world, right . So what the film does is they assure children that grown ups will be around, so im quoting from the film now, older people will help us. By the way, its an adult narrator pretending to be a child. Older people will help us like they always do, but there might not be grown ups around when the atomic bomb explodes and then youre on your own, right . So they can help you get across the street and they can help you find a shelter, but in that moment, what are you going to do to respond . And so really try to heighten the alert of your children and be aware of when this is happening, so places like you can see the girl carrying against the School Building wall, right . It can happen in the school yard and it can happen when youre riding your bike in the neighborhood and its timmy or tommy, i can never remember his name and he immediately drops his bike, right . And covers. So jacobs talks about how in order to achieve these new social roles what the film has to do is make some traditionally idyllic childhood spaces kind of scary, right . If youre in the school yard or riding your bike, an atomic bomb could fall. So he says this is are the so of the dark side of cold war Science Education and this is a movie that tells a tale, im quoting now, of a dangerous presence and a dismal future because then it begs the question, if youre around and the atomic bomb drops and youve done your duck and cover, when you come up, maybe youre still alone and maybe this is the future in this decimated, nuclear world. So duck and cover is a film that educates about the actual phenomenon and also tries to persuade children that can have a response if they have a social role on the home front that can respond to this and that ge goes beyond that they have some control. Pretty heady stuff for elementary schools. The lighter side of Science Education coming at it from the other angle still addressed at children all of the way from College Students and really focused on enhancing funding and investments by the government in Science Research and Science Education. This is not new to the 1950s and this is something that comes out of world war ii and the president ial science adviser described here on the cover of Time Magazine, the fact that the president ial science adviser is making the cover of Time Magazine should tell you something, should tell you this is the vision of the future that government will support Research Activities by public and private organizations and in particular, Science Education, right . So the first thing to come out of this vanvar bush, the general of science and the general of physics heads the National Science board that is rolled over into what is now the National Science foundation becomes the first very Big Government foundation and there were institutes of health before that and this is Pure Research and education thunder. As the 50s move on, sputnik which you may or may not be familiar with, sputnik, what the soviets fired into space that were circling the u. S. , spying on us, really escalated our attentions between the russians and us and in particular around the issue of what they would call today the pipeline problem. The pipeline problem is the idea that you need to have people at every level of Science Education, staying in Science Education so that we can build what they call scientific manpower and same language is the language of war. Except with these scientific manpower and women power people are going to do is work for research to counter the soviet threat. So in addition to sputnik and kind of all of the existing efforts for the government to fund science and push an agenda of research and education, was there a massive economic boom afte