I dont remember if i have had a TV in any of my class's or not.. (I reckon i did and have forgotton) I wonder if they were watching IN BLACK AND WHITE?
Depended on how far away the tv channel was since back then, there was no cable. Could have been watching it in color is they bought one of those celliphane(sp), rainbow colored sheets that you put on the picture tube. The bottom was green and the top was blue (grass & sky). lol
The key is they really didn't look at it as a shitty picture. Bear in mind that a little over half the households even had a TV in '54 so the kiddos probably looked at that shitty, black and white picture a little differently than you or I do. Most of the people who were of school age and older in '54 could remember when such a purchase was cause to invite family and friends to gawk at and admire the living room monstrosity. To many, "watching the news" was something you did once in a while... before the movie you paid to see at the theater. The kids in that photo were old enough to have remembered the very end of WWII. I bet more than a few of them bubbled over about having a TV in the classroom- and the parents, who were likely trying to impress a "count every penny" because of their experience with the great depression may not have looked all that favorably on wasting their tax money on frivolous things like TV-- and a few of those parents may have clung to the assumption that television was a passing fad. There may have been one or two parents who considered pulling their kid out of a school that would have their kids watch TV instead of the teacher "doing his/her job". In 1954 I would expect such a situation would have been a bit too cutting edge for some tax payers' purposes.
