Radio Serials

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 276, 6 October 1944, Page 5

Radio Serials

E print to-day some fur-. ther comments on the influence of radio serials.. The subject was discussed recently in Parliament and some of the points raised made it seem desirable to get additional opinions. We have therefore seen one or two educationists, a city missioner, and a psychiatrist, and are indebted to them for some interesting remarks; but the problem is how to enforce a policy of wisdom even if one could be arrived at. It. is not sufficient to decide whether exciting serials are a good or a bad influence in the lives of the young. We must begin there, and get the answer if we can. But we must decide also how far good and bad influences can be controlled by law or by any kind of central authority in a democracy. There is no doubt a point in vulgarity beyond which all would agree that it is dangerous to go; but who fixes the starting and stopping points before that extreme limit is reached? In short, is there wisdom or safety. in coercive morality? If there is, then democracy is a failure and a menace. The best government -would be that which interfered most drastically with all our wayward impulses; which prescribed our reading, our pictures, our music, and our plays; and started on young people before the Old Adam who is in us _all had been given time to establish himself. In the _ political sphere that means fascism; in the moral, puritanism; and the world has had rather painful experiences of both of those philosophies. Complete liberty on the other hand does sometimes spell demoralisation, but there is very little evidence yet that we are running that risk in New Zealand. We are running the risk that the world always runs when it discovers something new; in other words, we have reached a point in education and entertainment at which we must be observant and careful. But it is one thing to send children to bed to make sure that they get sleep and rest, and another thing altogether to say that if they stay up and listen to the things their parents are listening to they will be started on the road _ to ruin.