Videotape cassettes and selected transcripts of broadcasts of a televised series of question-and-answer sessions with high school students conducted by Ronald Reagan as governor of California, relating to California state political issues.

Ronald Reagan described The Governor and the Students this way:

"During my last two years in office we had a program in cooperation with the department of education. Each week a different high school class would come to the Capitol and I would field their questions (or try to) for one hour. The program was entirely unrehearsed. I would meet them only a few minutes before we actually started and, of course, had no preview of their questions.

"The hour was taped for television and made available for closed circuit classroom use in all of California's 1100-plus school districts. It was also played on the educational TV network." [Box 1; original source unidentified]

The program gave Reagan a way to connect with young people. Modeled on the press conference format, the idea for the show originated with Reagan aides Michael K. Deaver and Joseph R. Holmes. High school students were chosen over college students on the theory that they lived with their parents, had not been exposed to liberal college professors, and would therefore be more polite and less radical.

The shows were taped on a weekday after school, and the videotapes were distributed to TV stations in California to air at no cost. While most were public broadcast stations, it aired on a commercial station in Visalia because there was no public broadcast station in that area. The series was produced by JRH and Associates in Sacramento. The name Young People's Television (YPTV) is also associated with this program.

Source: John H. Fund, "Leave It to Deaver: 'Close Reagan Aide Dies.' I Remember Him from High School," Jewish World Review, 20 August 2007, http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/fund082007.php3 .