Listening While I Work (36)

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 265, 21 July 1944, Page 14

Listening While I Work (36)

By

Matertamilias

of the Federation of School Committees raised again the question of radio serials for children, It is a hardy annual and little brother of the Censorship-of-Films-for-Children question. There are three main _ points against radio serials for children, One is that listening to serials robs children of necessary sleep. The second is that it robs them of nerves and even possibly of morals. A third point of view is that the average serial is just tripe. | AST week the Dominion Conference Of course radio serials need not interfere with sleep. Roughly speaking, serials begin at 10 a.m. and go on until 10 p.m. or later, with only a few breathers. There is also a commendable if sometimes misjudged attempt to predict the taste of listeners at certain stages of the day. Housewives are given romances such as Big Sister (which is getting sillier and sillier as the months roll on), and Linda’s First Love, Rebecca, or Judy and Jane, Between -6 p.m. and 8 p.m. there is an attempt to cater for young people with thrillers and ‘adventure stories, and after 8 there are programmes intended more for the adult, such as War Corres- pondent, Eye Witness News and Women of Courage. We do, however, get quite a sprinkling of stories with an appeal to the young after 8-enough, anyhow, for them to be tempted to stay up to listen. A matter for parental discipline? Of course, but parents don’t like appearing always in the role of spoilsports. Besides, in these enlightened days when rods are buried or used as tomato sticks, other weapons for training the young are useful. It is easy and effective to be able to punish by withholding the privilege of listening to a favourite sérial. Parents are tired at the end of the day, and it is infinitely less trouble to let the children listen-in than to read to them or fell them stories, And so radie wins because it is the easiest course for all. bd * * UT apart from the question of sleep -and there are figures given from time to time which seem to show that too many children stay up too late too often-there is still the question whether the serials themselves are harmful. On the whole, I would say that the average 6-8 p.m. radio serial differs considerably from the average film in that there is more excitement and less love interest. Run your eye over the programmes: The Green Hornet, Commando Story, Nightcap Yarns, The Mystery at Whitley Head, A Doctor’s Case Book, The White Cockade, The Lone Ranger, Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, This Man is Dangerous. There are others, but it is the thrillers that excite young listeners. I would myself discount the effect on morals. In thrillers the bad men are led to justice even if it takes 200 episodes to get them there. And the effect on nerves? Well, that depends on the child, his age and his temperament, I remember many thrilling nights spent with my head under the covers trying to follow the adventures of ~- Arsene Lupin, Dr. Fu Manchu or Sherlock Holmes by the light of a torch. I (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) may for a time have peopled my bedroom with imaginary dangers, but I doubt whether the ultimate effect on my nerves was half so serious as the effect on my eyesight. There is a period in most people’s lives when thrillers have an enormous appeal. Hence the demand for detective fiction, horror films, and adventure serials. In itself I doubt whether this is harmful. But there are several big Buts. There is the danger of young children listening to serials that their older brothers and sisters listen to. There is a danger that the child who would not read a thriller because he is too young will get caught up into listening to something. like The Green Hornet or This Man Is Dangerous — this serial is dangerouswhich is full of gunfire, stabbing, gangsters and brutality. The deplorable feature of serials is that they are serials. An exciting book can be read straight off. You can put -your mind at rest by finishing it. But a serial episode ends always at the most thrilling point. An adult sayg "Well, well," smiles and forgets about it until the next day or ‘week. But the child who has been listening keyed up with excitement is then expected to settle down quietly to a night’s rest. ; It is not so much that any particular serial is harmful-though some are-as that children would be better without them, But as they are here, and likely to remain, it should be somebody’s business to try to sort out those serials which are best suited to school boys and girls. Commando Story, for instance, is quite an exciting adventure story for the 10-year-old boy and upward, though a younger child might find it alarming. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Halliday and Son are also, generally speaking, suitable for primary school children in the upper standards. But most other bedtime serials that I have heard are rubbish. In the days of penny dreadfuls it was sometimes argued that the boy who read them by the dozen acquired the reading habit, and soon tired of trash and graduated to literature. That doesn’t happen with listening, as there is nothing (excluding good music, of course) to graduate to. * * * HE STONES CRY OUT, when it was: first released, was one of the BBC’s best propaganda productions, It was written and produced for radio, and radio effects are fully exploited — the switch-back into historical scenes, the full range of voices, deep, thrdaty, high, guttural or Cockney. We heard it first two years ago when London, Coventry, Bath, York and other ancient and beautiful cities had felt the worst blows of the Luftwaffe. It was designed to rouse us to anger and tears at the senseless destruction of old buildings and living homes. But to-day we are in 1944. To-day it is Berlin, Cologne, Bremen, Hamburg and many other German cities that lie in ruins. In playing these records again (2YA, Friday 4 p.m.) we cannot but be reminded that we are now doing what Hitler tried to do three years ago, and that the tenementdwellers of Berlin may say as the tene-ment-dwellers of Britain said three years ago-that bombs will never break their spirit and that houses can be built again.