HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) – The bus was parked conspicuously on State Street, blocks from the Capitol.
“Currently, we’re on our 50 state capitals tour,” a spokesman said. “We’re visiting every capital in the country.”
Harrisburg was their third stop, following Dover, Delaware, and Trenton, New Jersey. The C-SPAN bus is an attempt to get kids on board, understanding current affairs.
“Getting them engaged in politics and civics and government, it’s a real struggle,” said Lynn Williams, a social studies teacher at Cougar Academy.
But C-SPAN, the network devoted to government reporting, has found a way to excite a group with a notoriously short attention span.
“I’m Nathan Clancy and I’m broadcasting from the White House right behind me,” the ninth-grader said while holding a C-SPAN microphone in front of a monitor with the White House.
“I’m enjoying myself,” the cub reporter said with a smile.
It is an actual set. Education Secretary Pedro Rivera was live on the network from the mobile set on the bus Thursday morning.
Seventh-grader Iliana Lopez was checking out the touchscreen library with 200,000 hours of C-SPAN videos, speeches and hearings. She even found pop star Demi Lovato.
“It’s important to see how the world is working around us and the politics,” Iliana said, “and how they’re gonna make changes.”
C-SPAN doesn’t just visit capitals. It visits schools near capitals, like Harrisburg’s Cougar Academy. The network believes that getting to the young people is as important as getting to the places.
“They’re gonna be the future leaders of the country,” C-SPAN’s Doug Hemmig said. “By exposing them to how we cover Washington, they say, ‘Wow, I can use this in the classroom and outside especially as I get ready to vote.'”Get breaking news, weather and traffic on the go. Download our News App and our Weather App for your phone and tablet.