LISTENING IN SCHOOLS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 22, 27 January 1938, Page 28

LISTENING IN SCHOOLS

B.BfC. BROADCASTS

Nearly 8000 classrooms in England, Scotland; and Wales regularly receive the 8.8.C.'s broadcasts to schools, which have been an important feature in the British programmes for .the past thirteen years. During, each week of the .normal school terms, nearly twenty hours of programme' time^—representing about fifty broadcasts—are devoted to programmes for school pupils, every such programme being designed to supplement the work of the teacher. The policy of these broadcasts is decided by the Central Council for School Broadcasting, a body set up by the 8.8.C. and including the central and local education authorities and teachers' organisations. After each programme has been outlined by a committee, it is handled, by Miss Mary Somerville, the 8.8.C.'s director of school broadcasts, arid a staff of programme officials, each, of whom goes regularly to the meetings of the committee responsible for planning the broadcasts that that official produces.

"TALKING DOWN" FORBIDDEN. Suitable broadcasters are found with the help of learned societies, Government •departments, universities, training colleges, and innumerable private contacts. An audition before the microphone is a necessary preliminary to every engagement: it is essential that the speaker's voice should be attractive to children, and that he should read his script as if- he were talking to friends. His story must be vivid, concise, and easy to understand; and "talking down" to children.is never permitted. Dramatised history, feature programmes, and talks illustrated by gramophone records are included. In these productions effects and dialects are usefully employed, though dialect actors have to make sure that they are intelligible to those children who have never before heard anything like it in their town or village.

AMONG PARENTS. Children are by no means the only listeners. In Bath, for instance, there are some women who claim to be the "oldest-class" in the country. Each is over seventy. They meet by rota in each other's homes to hear talks on nature study.. Farmers and smallholders are ardent listeners to talks about science and gardening. One woman told the 8.8.C. that, despite the merciless leg-pulling of her neighbours, she does her "week's wash to the rhythm broadcasts intended for infants. ■ • ~ ■ There is little doubt, however, that the largest group of adult listeners to these programmes consists of the parents, and their interest is welcomed. A letter came from Chester from a bedridden father to say that he joins in the school singing lessons, and that by listening to these talks he has learned more than he ever learned at school! "Now," he says, "I know .as much as my kiddies!" x It has been proved, too, that school broadcasts Nare particularly invaluable in the education of blind and partially-sighted children. -'; ■■