WHAT IS BEING DONE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 45, 3 May 1940, Page 10

WHAT IS BEING DONE

Overcoming Isolation of Classroom and Teacher The proposals made in the interview with Mr. Harris are interesting. Even more interesting are the facts of what actually is being done for schools broadcasting in New Zealand. We are able to add this comment: INCE the national organisation of broadcasts S to schools got into its stride in 1934 it has built up a following of more than 68,000 pupils in more than 1,000 schools. Unless, like father playing with the children’s toys after bedtime, they have found something to interest them in the weekly sessions, listeners may not have an intimate knowledge of an organisation which for its extent and its effect deserves the greatest possible prominence. Functions of the teacher are by no means usurped by radio. Professor Shelley states the situation in a foreword to one of the books issued to illuminate the broadcasts: Radio can never provide a substitute for the intimate give-and-take between teacher and pupil, But radio can do something to overcome the isolation of the classroom and the teacher. And in another foreword: It has been remarked that some of our talks have strayed from the path of the curriculum. That is in fact the very reason for their inclusion. Fourteen Million Hours of Education! Cursory examination of the programmes. might not indicate the true extent of the work, Once a week each of the YA stations, with relays to other (Continued on opposite page)

(Continued from previous page) stations, broadcasts its hour for schools. To prepare these broadcasts radio and education authorities combine with musicians, historians, agriculturists, transport officers, city and municipal officers, zoologists; in fact, with experts of almost every kind. Central themes are developed and round them are built up the incidentals of a presentation of life and living to supplement the pupil’s general knowledge, increase his awareness of his background, knowledge of his environment, and thought for the future. Dramatisation methods increase the effect where suitable. Four hours a week come to 208 a year, and 208 hours represents for 68,000 pupils a total of 14,000,000 education-hours. Is not this a startling illustration of the force of the broadcast word? From Small Beginnings It all grew from small beginnings. Attempts were made to organise a service in 1926, 1930, 1931 and each failed. First, sets and transmitters were not sufficiently powerful, then in 1933 the closure of Wellington Training College was a setback. But by the next year Auckland and Christchurch had taken up the running, 4YA soon arranged to rebroadcast 2YA when Wellington joined in, 3ZR tuned in to 3YA and 2YA, 4YZ to Dunedin, and from small beginnings the NBS and the Education Department quickly built up a service which each year comes closer to an ideal of radio programmes specifically linked with the school curriculum, not duplicating it or attempting to outdo it, but amplifying it in those ways within the peculiar scope of broadcast work. With the broadcasting has grown up, inevitably, the subsidiary industry of the printed word. Each of the three series of broadcasts is described and illustrated by the publication of books which are more or less programmes with annotations. Also included in the organisation is the Post and Telegraph Department, whose Radio Section arranges the purchase of receiving sets for school committees and boards of governors through the Education Department. Sets are rigorously tested, the selected firms give substantial reductions, and the school is assured of the best and most economical service possible. Correspondence schools benefit by the same service for their weekly broadcast. "There is every indication that schools are taking to the service more and more, Applications for sets are continuous," said the chairman of the Educational Broadcasting Advisory Committee last year. It is hoped, naturally, that the organisation will in time be extended, both in its breadth of scope and in various details. In Other Countries In all these things New Zealand is well up in line with other countries. In America one of the most significant developments in educational radio (which has now overcome a certain amount of antagonism, or at least ignorance, in the commercial radio interests) is the establishment of radio workshops in high schools where students learn to write, dramatise, and produce radio scripts for broadcast. Now 750 schools are included in a group which circulates scripts through an exchange system established by the Office of Education. In England international crises have caused a noticeable slackening in the number of registered listening schools (last year 9,759). It is thought, however, that such a crisis should increase rather than diminish the value of the service to schools. With " justifiable pride" the Scottish Council for School Broadcasting records that 1,262 schools now make use of the service. In a statement of the aims of the programmes it is suggested that the modern school cannot well afford to ignore the influence of broadcasting on the mind of the community, and it has therefore a responsibility to train its pupils in its proper use, to give them practice in listening wth discrimination and a critical mind. a Sete In Australia about 90,000 children now listen to the various programmes of the ABC.