SPELLING-BEES AND EDUCATION

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22319, 5 February 1938, Page 10

SPELLING-BEES AND EDUCATION

jT IBy LISTENER.] Agile minds must have worked long to hit upon the idea of a transAtlantic radio spelling-bee contest. The young persons at Cambridge will be able to say that this is surely a vintage year at Oxford when two young women and four young men from there could be commissioned to keep the Union Jack flying in that historic spelling bout. Of course, there is no reason why we should continue to encourage the traditional hostility between England’s rival seats of learning, but at the same time there is a story worth repeating which certainly had its origin in Cambridge. An Oxford rowing coach, appalled by the increasing staleness of his little charges, decided to give them a complete change in the hope of bringing about recovery of form. He distributed a copy of Shakespeare to each of the eight. At the end of a week there had been a perceptible improvement in all but one member of the crew, and he had grown exceedingly morose. Inquiry revealed that he was unable to read. That’s right enough, but flowering into anecdote so early in the piece may evoke the suspicion that I have little to write about, and it so happens that such suspicion is well enough founded. In the last few weeks there has not been much novelty in the national programmes. I had meant to complain about the absence of plays on Sunday evenings, but in the coming week there are several promising plays on the list, among them a Galsworthy and a Lonsdale. And for Sunday there is “a complete recorded presentation ” of “Patience.” I may as well be frank and admit that I’m in trouble. There are times when I almost wish I had the ability to give technical advice. That would help me through the barren programme periods. If one of my readers wrote saying: “Dear Listener, would you mind telling me how to make my valves eternal,” I’d like to be able to reply, with pretty gesture of omniscience, “All j'ou need do is wrap them in the shirt of a happy man and then immerse in a solution of saltpetre and yolk of egg.” Most helpful hints seem about as reasonable as that to me. But in these things I have less skill than most. If my set went phut, it would have to remain that way unless I could get help. However, this wandering tendency must be curbed.

We started off with the radio spell-ing-bee which was mentioned in a cable message early this week. There’s an idea in that. Reasonable spelling ability is essential in. life, and ability to spell could be made a decisive test in many of the issues dividing mankind. Now then, a General Election, for example, costs much money and uses up much time. Instead of these somewhat wearisome arguments about the prosperity or otherwise of the Dominion, would it not be just as interesting if Mr Savage and Mr Hamilton decided to settle their dispute at a spelling bee conducted, say, by Professor Shelley. They could begin at cat and work up to really tricky things that I’m not going to risk spelling myself. Spelling might be just, as fair a test of statesmanship as some of the others we use now. Of course, what attracts me most is the programme draw that such a contest would be. I am certain that people would be much more interested in a political spelling-bee between Mr Savage and Mr Hamilton than they would in meetings addressed by either of these leaders. The truth is one would not need to be psychic to know, in outline at least, what either would say in a campaign speech, but there would be a delicious element of uncertainty in a spelling-bee. I’m not suggesting that either would prove indifferent spellers, but the best horses have been known to baulk at high hurdles. On Monday evening a debate between Mr Walter Nash and Mr J. H. Furniss, on “Guaranteed Versus Compensating Price” is to be broadcast, so one can only suggest, for what the suggestion ‘is worth, that Mr Savage and Mr Hamilton should give the listeners of the Dominion a lighter form of entertainment. Now to Education To pass from spelling to education is a simple step, and after my preliminary sparring it looks as if that is where I am going to end up. Not long ago I came across an article written for the “Christian Science Monitor” by Mr G. H. Payne, a member of the American Federal Communications Commission. Some of his ideas can be taken in conjunction with those expressed by Sir Arnold )Vilson, M.P., in the extract from an article by him quoted in this column last week. Of course, the American programmes mentioned by Mr Payne are likely to be rather more colourful and sensational than those to which we are accustomed in New Zealand, but if my memory does not betray me, we have had examples of this kind of thing from the commercial stations. Let me confess that I have long since given up listening to these terrible items, which must be doing incalculable harm to public taste. However, it’s with Mr Payne that I’m concerned at the moment. Here he is discussing the subject of entertainment and education in broadcasting: Assuming that the primary purpose of broadcasting is entertainment, we must also make the parallel assumption that such entertainment should be worthy of civilised human beings and not tainted by commercialism and propaganda. There is, of course, no valid reason why an education programme. unless it is about relativity or the conjugation of the Greek verb, cannot be made entertaining enough to attract a large group of intelligent people. We hope such minorities have not lost all rights and privileges, even if their buying power is relatively small. It is true, of course, that education by radio must be made interestingfar more interesting than education as presented in the schools. This requires high technical skill in the preparation and presentation of programmes. If the necessary technicians are not available they must be trained. Like the moving pictures, the average programme of the broadcasters is addressed to an intelligence possessed by a child of 12. It is important to raise this average to the adult age; otherwise there is the danger that radio will perpetuate mental immaturity in the grown-up. There is the danger that the radio and the movies will in time make us a nation of grown-up children. An

intelligence which befits a child of 12 is a beautiful thing when found in a child of 12, not in a child of 30. Radio must be stopped from stopping the growth of the American mind. Much of that criticism does not apply to New Zealand broadcasting, but some of it does. It can be said emphatically that for their intellectual content, the programmes of the National Commercial Broadcasting Service would not give a headache to a child (well, let’s be generous) a child of 14. Because of that, these programmes are popular. I have not yet had the heart to listen to “Koshinski and Clancy,” but I have by accident encountered such things as “Newspaper Adventures.” Judged even by liberal standards, they are monstrously bad. Where the Obligation Lies Whatever educational efforts are made by radio in New Zealand must come from the National Broadcasting Service, but in discussing this point it is necessary to refer back to Mr Payne. “Education by radio must be made interesting,” he said. The truth of that cannot be escaped. People will not be bored when they have so simple a remedy at hand as the turning of a knob which is invisible to the borer. It may be said that talks serve the double purpose of entertainment and instruction, and if they are to instruct, they must be entertaining. Radio talking in New Zealand, however, is smirched by a ghastly blight of solemnity. There is only one regular radio speaker in the country who has pleasantly light moments. The rest just say their piece with no more colour and joviality than are to be found in an article in the “Encyclopaedia Britannica.” This is a serious problem, and one which the broadcasting authorities must solve. It is all a matter of radio technique, and it does seem as if little progress can be made until an expert in this department is summoned from overseas to give an . instruction course. I see no alternative. In the coming winter the National Broadcasting Service will probably arrange a further series of educational talks, but it is certain that these pills will not be swallowed without a coating of sugar. It was to these solemn reflections that I have been led by mention of a spelling bee. I still maintain that Mr Savage and Mr Hamilton should be sports and think the matter over.