The+Children+of+Telstar

The Children of Telstar

Moody, K. (1999). //The children of Telstar.// New York: Vantage.

Kate Moody wrote what she witnessed and participated in the Larchmont schools in the 1960's during their early experiments with television production. She tells the full story of those days, the challenges involved and what became of the young people who participated in the project. Moody maintained that the people involved in the project were strongly influenced by Marshall McLuhan.

In the late 1960s the Mamaroneck school district introduced closed circuit televisions for most of their classes, and allowed students to control the production of materials for the televisions. As pioneers of media use in schools, the Larchmont-Mamaroneck public schools, declared "understanding media" as a basic skill that should be taught in schools and during the period 1965 to 75, Mamaroneck High School.



The story began in 70s, a period of unprecedented freedom. The establishment of SWAS (School within a School) changed the organizational structure of traditional school by encouraging more education to take place outside the confines of the school buildings.

It was in this environment of freedom that the first high school TV studio was established in Mamaroneck High School. In 1972, Michael Witsch was hired as an English teacher and he wanted to ‘play around’ with the studio. Witsch’s teaching method was to play and experiment with the students taking the lead. This encouraged the students to make things change and happen, frequently taking matters into their own hands.

In 1973, TV Class was introduced as an elective in the curriculum. Mamaroneck media educators believed that producing of doing television helped develop critical viewing skills in the participants. The class was very much hands-on building set, handling cameras and repairing equipment. The students, the ‘media-activists’ excelled.

In 1975, the Performing Arts Curriculum Experiment (PACE) was initiated as an attempt to integrate the visual and performing arts. Television, considered one of the arts, was one of the elective offered. Students took to PACE as they said that the classes involved them totally – mind and body and was a welcome change from academic study.

The TV studio experiment was considered a success as it not only encouraged creativity but self motivation. Students worked not for the sake of grade but for the learning experience. They would work on their projects into the evenings and on weekends simply for the love of it.

"The value of the program is -- to do television is -- the physical involvement in creating something. I think we were always making something or figuring something out. Regular education doesn't have a discovery mode, really. It's not that the things we discovered didn't exist, but we were discovering what we could do with what we had." - David Gumpel, 6th grade