Executive Offices of the Governor American Samoa Government

 

19
Educational Experiment Buildings
(currently KVZK Television and Department of Education)

This site is comprised of Educational Experiment Buildings discussed in Bold Experiment: The History of Educational Television in American Samoa. Included in this group of buildings is the local television station, KVZK (a), the Department of Education Building (b) and a small ancillary building (c) behind the Department of Education Building which has served as the Superintendent's office. These buildings are hallmarks of a project begun in the early 1960's which attempted to overhaul and modernize the educational system in American Samoa by initiating an educational television program. With this new program, lessons would be televised and would be "capable of reaching even the most remote villages of the six islands of American Samoa, along with parts of Western Samoa" (Scharamm, Nelson & Betham 1981:44). This program had a major impact on Samoa in areas outside of education, as it "represented the first introduction of modern technology on a broad scale...made necessary the extension of electrical service throughout the islands...opened opportunities in building construction [for new schools] as well as having significant repercussions on fa'aSamoa by exposing it to new customs and traditions of the outside world (ibid 1981:68). While this site is less than fifty years old, it played an important role in the history of the Twentieth Century Samoa.