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Originally Posted by wa2ise
My grammar school had B&W sets installed when NYC's educational channel 13 (ancestor of PBS) went on the air around 1961 or so. These sets were rarely used, maybe they saw 10 hours a year. We did watch some badly written anti-drug shows (just like sex ed at the time, they didn't want to really say what they were talking about).
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In the '80's, my elementary school had a ton of those commercial grade steel cabinet RCA CTC39 tube sets connected to Sony U-matic tape machines all housed on roll about steel carts. We usually watched interesting films such as: tornado safety, '50's cold war era "what to do" in case of nuclear attack, and films on nutrition. If we were good, they would take us into the library and show us a tape of "Sesame Street" or some animated cartoon. There was one newer '80's era 25" particleboard Zenith with pull on volume knob and a green LED channel readout connected to a Panasonic U-matic tape machine. I don't think the school got a regular VHS player until '87 or so (and, it was donated). Even in the '80's, our school system was about 15-20 years behind on technology. Heck, that school didn't even have A/C until late '88.
In '89, the school system caught up a little when they installed 19" Magnavox sets in all the classrooms. They were used to show a short "news" broadcast called "channel one" every morning and they were also connected to a CCTV system located in the library. I think the TV's were donated by the communications company that produced "channel one". If a teacher wanted to show a film, he/she just had the library feed it to their classroom. I think those TV's are still in use.
For some reason, my 10th grade Biology classroom didn't get one of those newer TV's and there was still one of the old tube RCA's in there for "channel one" use. The last time I saw it play, it needed some 6GH8's bad. That was back around '92-'93 and I'm sure that set has long since been dumped.