SUGAR-COATING THE EDUCATIONAL PILL
New Scheme Of School Broadcasts
6¢ OU might just as well say," said the schoolboy, "that learning while I play is the same thing as playing while I learn." "It is the same thing with you," said the modern educationist.
Which may or may not be true. It is certainly true that the tendency to-day is to sugar the educational pill till it becomes a pleasant and nourishing sweetmeat. Such a sweetmeat is being offered by the NBS and the Education Department to the children in schools. There have for the last five years or so been school sessions prepared by the Training College, but in recent months the scheme for using radio as a medium for school education has gone a step further. Towards the end of last year a special committee was appointed to inquire into and produce a plan for educational
broadcasts to schools for the whole country. Following this Miss Ruth Fletcher, M.A., was appointed officer-in-charge of the plan. The first school sessions from all stations will begin on Tuesday, May 26. There are to be three sessions a week (Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays) from 1.30 to 2 p.m. The Tuesday session will be for infants up to Standard 2 and will be conducted by Miss; Dorothy Baster, of Christchurch. It will include fifteen minutes of music and rhythm work and fifteen minutes of story telling or dramatised stories. Wednesday’s session is intended for older children (Standards 3 to 6). It will» be a supplement to history and literature classes, but the method of presentation is dramatic. Back to Victorian England " What we are trying to do," said Miss Fletcher in an interview, "is to give the children something that they could not normally get in school. A_ good teacher can tell a story, can explain and talk, but he cannot act a whole scene and he,may not have the detailed knowledge needed to build up such a scene,
These sessions are not intended to be just another half-hour of school work. They are meant to be more of a stimulus and a treat. The scripts which we have been preparing have meant months of careful research so that all the details shall be accurate and so that we shall present an authentie picture of Victorian England." "How are you going to do that?" I asked, " Alice, a little girl of 1942," said Miss Fletcher, " makes a trip back a hundred years or so and visits England during the years 1837-56. As guide, she has a gentleman of that period who explains to her the things she hears and sees and cannot understand. She sees how people lived and how they travelled, what they ate, and what sort of houses and furniture they used. She sees the Queen’s coronation, and she rides in a coach and on a canal boat. She sees the industrial and agricultural conditions of the time, and makes the sort of comment that a modern child might make about the 19th century scene. We want children to know what it felt like to be alive a hundred years ago." (Continued on next page)
SCHOOL BROADCASTS (Continued from previous page) "What are you doing after you have visited Victorian England?" "After about twelve trips back into Victorian England, Alice, our little girl, visits New Zealand at about the same period-the New Zealand of the New Zealand Association, of Waitangi, of Hobson arid Wakefield and Grey. Each scene is acted by professional radio actors under the direction of Bernard Beeby, and recorded." The Thursday session, musical appreciation and singing, will be conducted by T. J. Young, of Wellington Training College. Later this half-hour may be split into two sessions, the first for singing and the second for general and scientific knowledge. "This should lend itself well to dramatisation," said Miss Fletcher. "We can have visits to factories, workshops, laboratories, or dramatic incidents illustrating scientific discoveries and inventions." In previous years, booklets have been prepared for pupils as well as teachers, but this year, because of the paper shortage, the booklets will be for teachers only. In content also they have been limited to the collection of songs that will be used in the Thursday session. This is of necessity only a beginning. The future may see broadcasts on a large scale to secondary schools-some-thing has been done already-and University courses intended not merely for dilettante listeners but to help the external student who at present labours alone.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 150, 8 May 1942, Page 10
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747SUGAR-COATING THE EDUCATIONAL PILL New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 150, 8 May 1942, Page 10
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