New CPB Initiative Explores Ways to Link Television, New Interactive Media and Educators to Improve American History and Civics Learning

For Immediate Release on April 11, 2005

$20 Million Program Targets Middle and High School Students

WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 11, 2005 - Young people's knowledge of even the fundamentals of American history and civics has been on a steady and well-documented decline for a generation or more and, by any standard, remains at an unacceptable low. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) today launched a $20 million American History and Civics Initiative to help stop and reverse this decline.

The initiative calls upon the country's public television managers, film makers, content developers -- especially the high technology and interactive media sector -- to join educators in creating groundbreaking media projects and methods that measurably improve the learning of American history and civics by middle and high school students. "CPB believes the time is ripe to direct some of the spectacular recent advances in new media to improve the way young people learn history and civics," said CPB Executive Vice President and COO Ken Ferree. "Interactive platforms like the Internet and video games, for example, can be combined with technologies like documentary film and broadcast television, to advance, perhaps revolutionize, learning methods, especially if developed and coordinated with educators and their curriculum needs."

From public broadcasting's beginning, education and innovation have been central to its mission and purpose. The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which created CPB, spoke of the need for creative risk-taking in providing instructional and educational services. In signing the bill into law, President Lyndon B. Johnson said, "The time has come to enlist the computer and the satellite, as well as television and radio," to improve American education, and added: "We must consider new ways to build a great network for knowledge -- not just a broadcast system, but one that employs every means of sending and storing information that the individual can use."

"The American History and Civics Initiative may well be the next step in creating that great network for knowledge, drawing on technology that was barely imagined when CPB was created," observed Michael Pack, SVP for Television Programming at CPB. "Despite some excellent efforts by public television and others, knowledge about American history and civics has continued to decline. It is time to try something new."

The American History and Civics Initiative will award up to $20 million in highly competitive grants in the coming three years to catalyze new public-private partnerships that form in response to the Request for Proposal published by CPB today.

About CPB

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress in 1967, is the steward of the federal government's investment in public broadcasting. It helps support the operations of more than 1,400 locally-owned and -operated public television and radio stations nationwide, and is the largest single source of funding for research, technology, and program development for public radio, television and related online services.

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