TEACHING BY RADIO

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 29, 4 February 1937, Page 23

TEACHING BY RADIO

SCHOOLS OF THE AIR

With a view to raising the standards of educational programmes representatives of eighteen organisations met recently in Washington for trie first national conference in America on educational broadcasting.

The speakers included the author, and originator of the "University of the Air," Hendrik Willem Van Loon, who warned educators against expecting too much of the radio in the way of mass education.

"There is only one way in which to give a person a real education, and today, as a thousand or ten thousand years ago, a school consists of just two things: of a teacher and pupils sitting—the one teaching, the other learning," said Mr. Van Loon. "This, however, does not in any way weaken or defeat the role the radio can play in our general scheme of education.

"Education, as we have discovered during these experimental years, is still primarily a matter of two men sitting at two ends of the same log, the one teaching and the other learning. Without some sort of personal contact, no true educational results can ever be achieved.

"To provide the student with just so much information is not enough, for without the personal element nothing can ever be achieved within domain of education. But logs, unfor 1 tunately, refuse to. float in the air, and we cannot very well hire a whole Zeppelin. We can, however, bring about some sort of 'direct contact.'"

Any educational system on the radio would be a hollow thing if it were not fundamental in that those participating were free at all times to seek the truth wherever it might be found, and,.having found it, to proclaim it, said the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Harold L. Ickes. .

Freedom of the Press, of assemblage, of speech, and academic freedom, he said, "constitute the piles driven to bedrock upon which our institutions clearly stand."

"These rights must extend to and be inseparable from any programme of educational broadcasting that is worth the snap of a finger," said Mr. Ickes. "While radio should not be subjected to abuse, neither should it suffer from the strangulation of either standardisation or censorship.

"Often with a feeling of despair, not unmixed with disgust, I snap off my radio, which I had turned on in the hope that I could pick from somewhere in the air something besides blaring discords, rough-and-tumble dialogue and ecstatic panegyrics of some commercial product. This same privilege of 'tuning in' is shared by all."

The broadcaster should aim at the intelligence of his audience by using the type of vocabulary suitable to be understood by the average age from 16 to 23 years, said Dr. Irving Lorge, of Teachers' College, Columbia University.

He pointed out that for the age range four to eighteen years the relationship between age and intellectual attitude is plus .80 or better. Thus knowing the age of his child audience, the broadcaster has opportunity readily to gauge their levels of ability and develop materials accordingly. Dr. Lorge said that all the facts concerning children of school ages are readily available for hjs application to the preparation of materials.

"It is the age range above 18 or 20 years that constitutes an important1 gap in his available information," said Dr. Lorge. ' "Not only are.facts not known, but some of the supposed facts are wrong. For instance, the broadcaster acts as if the intelligence of 4he adult audience is at some definite level in general, and that intelligence of adults declines with advancing age. SEVERAL EFFECTS OF AGE. "An adult is: probably, at his .prime in motor ability, in sensory functions, in intelligence, and in learning between the ages of 18 and 25. As age advances his sensory functions decline; he does not hear as much or.as well; his reaction time becomes slower; his rate of co-ordinated action will increase. He will not, however, decline in his intellectual power to cope with problems and affairs that he. must solve. He may take longer to solve such intellectual problems, but the quality of his performance will be as good as.it was at prime. His learning rate, that is, amount per unit time, will probablby diminish at about 1 per cent, per year from about forty years of age." Dr. Lorge suggests that broadcasters plan their programmes so that: h The rate of - presentation of materials be adjusted to the age of his audience; (2) the materials of the broadcast be limited to relatively single coherent units per period;. (3) the review of each unit in a continuous sequence of, broadcast be clearly and definitely made; (4) the .rate of speaking be slowed' down;' (5) minimise unco-ordinated discussions because of .'the possible attendant confusions. "As the publisher considers format, content, presentation, organisation, and propaganda, so must the broadcaster," continued Dr. Lorge. "The format of a radio programme ought to consider such problems as length of programme, relative amounts of monologue, dialogue, and music, time of day andrday of week. Under content ought to be considered theme, nature' of subject, and requisite listener's background; under organisation, title, speaker, unity of programme, continuity, and development of sequences; under presentation, vocabulary, language, construction, style, idiom, and appeal, and under propaganda, interest, attitudes, prestige, and social pressures."