National Educational Television and Radio Center McCutchen, Dick Davidoff, Norma

Description

Episode Number: 2331 hour program, produced in 1969 by NET, originally shot on film in color. This program studies Atlantic Citys Project WILL in the larger context of secondary school education in America today. The project, backed by $100,000 in Title I funds, was set up for two six-week periods at the Hotel Traymore on the boardwalk at Atlantic City. Here, some 80 students, black and white, engaged in a process of living and learning. Each of the students checked into the hotel daily after attending regular high school classes. The goals of the project: an effort to remove students from the totality of their environment; to foster interracial understanding and learning skills in a relaxed, though structured, atmosphere. The documentary is a report on the project its goals and its shortcomings. It focuses on Rod MacDonald, assistant director, who comes to recognize that to have change you must necessarily upset the static condition that exists. He is opposed in the projects regimen by director Edgar Harris. What right have these students got to evaluate me? Ive got my Masters and Im working on my PhD, he says, defending his hardline approach. Their opposing philosophies reflect a split within Project WILL, with many of the students contesting the value of the project and of their current education. Walking along the boardwalk, a student who has dropped out of Project WILL tells MacDonald: Its the educational system thats preparing us for the larger system. I could care less about the square...

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Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive

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Digital Commonwealth