I wonder if they aren't watching classroom educational programming. A year earlier, we had that in DC schools. Can't remember what we were taught, but remember a TV being brought for the class, and sitting on the desks to watch it. My only memory of the programs themselves, were that they were boring.

Here's a link on ETV.

Just had to wonder what these kids were watching, so I looked up the TV listings for 11/4/54. No doubt it's WRGB. The only other station to operate at that time of day was Channel 41 (now WTEN), and they ran a test pattern half the day.

So, the schedule for WRGB was

8am - NBC's Today show
9am - Home Fare
9:30 - Conservation Road *my guess as to the program on tv
10am - Ding Dong School (pre-school program)
10:30- Weigh Your Words
11:00- Home
12:00 to 1pm - soap operas
1:00 - Farm Spotlite
1:15 - With Stone
1:30 - Dave Cameron
2pm - Taste Time
2:30 - Trader Van
3pm - Strike It Rich
3:30 - Bob Crosby Show
4pm - Brighter Day

Chairs? Sitting on the floor on cushions? A television that isn't bolted to a 9-foot tall, horribly topheavy wheeled cart? Incredible. Watching something on TV in the classroom that isn't a Mercury or Gemini launch? Unheard of.

I am trying to guess which of the possible colours the floor tile is... I am going with either green and white or that sort of brick-ish pink and white "Kenflex"-type. Indubitably, it is vinyl and asbestos.

I was on the Freddy Freihofer Show for my 8th birthday! (1956)

My brother Mike got to do a "squiggle." I came home with a birthday cake and fudge cupcakes, courtesy of Freihofer's Bakery. The show was done at the station's old downtown location, corner of State St and Washington Ave, at the Schenectady end of the Western Gateway Bridge. (WRGB is now located up on Balltown Rd.)

Also, we used to ride our bikes to go swimming at Grout Park, adjacent to that school.

As Cosmo Kramer famously noted, "That Dewey Decimal System -- what a scam that turned out to be, huh?"

Why isn't the title Rabbit Ears? What am I missing?

[Annette Funicello. - Dave]

Do you think ONE teacher with twenty-some students of that age could have them all sitting quietly and paying attention today? Not in my opinion.

The kids might be watching WRGB, Schenectady, the first television station in the United States.

Me, I miss the Freddie Freihofer Show.

I'd take any of the furniture, and possibly the teacher, home in a heartbeat.

Now transmogrified into this blah-looking bunker of lower education.

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I see quite a few slouchers. Good posture started to go out in the '20s.

Can we zoom in on the TV?

My initial thoughts were how the room or building must be new, as the TV table (with "hairpin" legs), chairs, floor, side tables and card catalog all look so unused. For a "public" room it has quite the 50s retro look which many fail to achieve today in their own living rooms. So many people have such a cliched image of Midecentury Modern, where had they perused some old photos they would learn so much.

Rich (from Jersey!)

Not part of today's classroom. I'm just sayin'.

Wow, as a kid in the 60's I think every public building had the same floor tile.

The driftwood and coconut sculpture is the best. And the teacher looks hot from the back.

[There's no driftwood there. That's a coconut inflorescence: Spadix, spathe, nuts. - Dave]