Our House in Order

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 482, 17 September 1948, Page 10

Our House in Order

[_TTTLE time was wasted in defining the topic of discussion from 2YA’s Monday discussion, "Does Radio Help or Hinder the Child?" (though speakers felt bound to point out that each word, "radio," "help," "hinder" and even "child" permitted of a very wide interpretation). Having thus demonstrated their awareness that they were sitting in the middle of a forty-acre paddock, they proceeded to explore one little corner of it, the one where the ZB ser-

ials flourish, The crop, they decided, had vastly improved over the last two years or so. A continual diet of any of the serials could not do the child much harm, especially.as most children seemed to prefer the Daddy and Paddy and the Bluey and Curley to the more stimulating Perry Mason. (Not, as one speaker pointed out, that there is anything wrong with a good thriller. After all, what else are Lear, Hamlet, Antigone?) However just as listeners were becoming lulled by this idyllic picture of the young sitting contentedly while their serials are spoon-fed to them, one speaker began to cast doubts on the whole system of spoon-feeding. Even if the material fed was harmless it robbed the child of his appetite for better things, and discouraged more active forms of entertainment. The feeling of the panel was therefore that in general radio was more of a hindrance than a help, that it was up to the Service to see that nothing wildly unsuitable for children was aired between 6.0 and 8.0, and to parents to select and ration children’s listening time, © Furthermore that in a radio programme harmlessness is not enough. There must be’ positive cultural and aesthetic values sufficient to compensate for what the child loses by being passively rather than actively entertained.