Eyes and Ears

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 10, 1 September 1939, Page 12

Eyes and Ears

life becomes more bewildering. It is bad enough not to know friends from enemies in any part of the world, to confuse flags, and to forget whether the fingers should be clenched or extended when we salute. But worse things than that are happening. For three thousand years at least we have believed that seeing is believing. And it is true no more. What The Preacher said would happen has happened: the eye is not satisfied with seeing. In New York a few weeks ago the eyes of four thousand pupils in Junior High Schools were tested against their ears; and the ears won. Half of the pupils, for the whole of one term, were given health lessons in the ordinary class-room way-face to face with their teachers and with charts and diagrams. The other half heard radio broadcasts on health for the same period, and, when the examinations came, beat the first half by three marks. No doubt they did a little more than listen to broadcasts. They probably took notes, and may even have had notes in advance. We have not the full story. But New York papers announced the result of the experiment as a victory for aural over ocular accuracy. It would be pleasant to leave it there. But if 4000 ears are safer than 4000 eyes, the microphone is safer than Hansard; what Hitler says to-morrow means more than the Notes he signed last week; even The Listener itself is a snare and a delusion. But there is one ray of hope. The American experiment came to us in print. Even in New York the results were not announced on the air, but incorporated in an annual report. We are under no obligation to believe our eyes in the absence of cone firmation by our ears, F ie ® day in the most disturbing ways