Entertaining and Educational

Many New York City students will dutifully read textbook chapters on 20th-century American history topics such as immigration, civil rights, and the Cold War in their social studies classes in the coming months. But the Museum of Television & Radio is betting that the heartbreaking story of immigrants depicted in the 1983 film “El Norte,” or gripping footage from 1960s news reports on the Civil Rights movement may give students an even more profound and immediate understanding of these topics.To offer teenagers an additional perspective on the subjects they study in school while providing free entertainment, the Museum of Television & Radio is inaugurating an after-school screening series that addresses the same momentous events as the students’ coursework.“Witness to History,” which kicks off Thursday, January 13, with a 4 p.m. showing of “El Norte,” enlivens the standardized public school curriculum with made-for-TV documentaries and – even more enticingly – topically relevant episodes from primetime TV hits such as “All in the Family,” “I’ll Fly Away,” and “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” “It’s like going to the movies,” said the museum’s high school programs coordinator, Claire Riccardi. Some teenagers may scoff at this claim, as the second-floor Mark Goodson Theater has neither the stadium seating of a local multiplex nor a lobby snack bar. But these young critics may forgive her hyperbole upon learning that the weekly program is free to students with valid school IDs.Ms. Riccardi knows her audience well. A former New York City public school teacher who has worked in the museum’s education department for three-and-a-half years, she curates tactically and astutely. On January 27, for example, during a month traditionally devoted to the study of immigration in 11th-grade classes preparing for Regents Exams in American history, she will complement a PBS special on refugees (“Lost Boys of Sudan”) with an episode of “The Simpsons” satirizing the naturalization process. On February 17, as the semester shifts its focus to the Cold War, she will pair a “Twilight Zone” parable of Red Scare hysteria with a piece of anticommunist propaganda (“Red Nightmare”) hosted by “Dragnet” creator Jack Webb. Subsequent Thursdays in March, April, May, and June explore topics such as civil rights, the 1960s, human rights, and the role of the media, respectively.According to Ms. Riccardi, the second semester’s concentration on the latter half of the 20th century is ideally suited to the museum’s strengths. RCA introduced the television, a medium perfect for communicating current events, at the New York World’s Fair in 1939.”The start of prime-time programming was the 1940s,” said in-house television curator David Bushman, who was among those Ms. Riccardi consulted for additional selections.“We’re not programming down in any way,” Mr. Bushman said. “We’re treating the students with as much respect as possible.”With that in mind (and in contrast to most of the seminars and workshops run by the museum’s education department), “Witness to History” doesn’t excerpt the most relevant material from a show or contextualize an entry outside its placement within the larger calendar. Everything is aired in its entirety and without commentary.The buffoonish mammy at the center of “The Beulah Show” (1950-1953) is purposefully mismatched with the sympathetic nurse in “Julia” (1968-1971). Viewers must figure out for themselves how these diametrically opposed portrayals of African-American women relate to the Civil Rights movement and the efforts of the NAACP.“They all have their ‘Eyes on the Prize,'” said Ms. Riccardi, in reference to the best-known documentary on the subject. “We have material from the period that no one else gets to see.”That includes Beryl Fox’s landmark anti-war cinema verite work “The Mills of the Gods: Viet Nam” and its MTV reality-TV counterpart “I’m Living in Iraq”; a cinematic memoir of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, “Heir to an Execution”; and an all-but-forgotten precursor of “Law and Order,” “The Defenders.” In the end, “Witness to History” is as much a sweeping look at small-screen developments as it is an archival account of the news of the day.As to the political content, Ms. Riccardi repeatedly emphasized, “Any conversation that follows will be the teacher’s responsibility.”Indeed, direct marketing for the series has primarily targeted instructors. On December 17, just before the holidays, 1,700 pamphlets were mailed to educators in all five boroughs as well as the tristate area. The reason behind the approach was simple: The department’s internal database is built around visitors’ names. For field trips, the most common way for students to encounter the museum, the chaperone/teacher is generally the only person to register. Yet whether Web-surfing teens discover the online schedule or the pamphlets resurface on teachers’ desks as the new year begins remains to be seen.“It’s an experiment,” Ms. Riccardi said. “It could be great. It could be a dud.”But for those who do come, Ms. Riccardi promises to deliver many visually arresting images to enrich their textbook learning.“Here is a picture. Imprint it on your mind,” she said.“Witness to History” is scheduled from January 13 through June 30, every Thursday at 4 p.m. at the Museum of Television & Radio, 25 W. 52nd St., 212-621-6800, www.mtr.org. Groups larger than 10 should call 212-621-6724 to make reservations.

Entertaining and Educational

Entertaining and Educational

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