B.B.C. AND SCHOOLS

Evening Star, Issue 23421, 11 November 1939, Page 4

8.8. C. AND SCHOOLS

MEETING NEW CONDITIONS EMERGENCY PROGRAMMES OPERATING Thousands of school children from Britain’s cities aro now in the country, settling down to the winter term in new and strange circumstances. _ It is highly important that the education of these young citizens should go on, and tho times are proving that this is a sphere in which the 8.8. C. is able to play a useful part. Normally, the autumn season of broadcasting for schools would have started on September 25. By the end of the first week in September, however, it was evident that the 8.8. C. had an urgent task awaiting it. Tho children needed something to keep them occupied. Almost all the schools that were then open were acting as social centres, able to make no attempt at formal teaching, so the 8.8. C. designed an emergency programme to meet the occasion. It contained more entertainment than normally, _ and made a feature of special talks aimed at helping town children who had been transferred to tho countryside to understand and respect their new environment.

Ori September 25 the full programme of broadcasts for schools was resumed, with, of course, certain necessary modifications. Each session, for example, has been made rather _ shorter than usual, to avoid the strain of unbroken listening. The demand on studios has meant a certain curtailment of dramatised lessons, but that there is no lack of variety in teaching is proved by a typical day’s school programmes—2o minutes of ‘ Music and Movement ’ for juniors of from seven to nine years of age were followed by a 15-minute talk on ‘ Living in the Country.’ Then the seniors heard S. P. B. Mais speaking about the ‘ Fun of Writing.’ Sir Walford Davies occupied the next quarter of an hour with one of his inimitable talks on music-making, and the last two sessions of the day concerned were given up to biology for seniors and English for juniors.