Talking and Discussing

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 527, 29 July 1949, Page 10

Talking and Discussing

can be just as unsatisfactory as can any other kind of broadcast. There were the occasions when Mr. Davin patronised Mr. Sargeson in public. It’s hard to say which was the more regrettable -that Mr. Davin was willing to adopt this tone with his fellow-craftsman, or that Mr. Sargeson seemed incapable of turning the tables on him. I found it all*rather embarrassing. I recall, too, a discussion on contemporary music in which the speakers disputed about what "contemporary’ meant, which could 1B proes poorly done

well have been decided beforehand. I also remember a consideration of organised games and physical fitness in which the speakers got side-tracked on to character training because, I felt, they hadn’t really thought hard about

their subject before agreeing to discuss it publicly. — What a contrast was the last (the only one I heard) of the series on Infant Welfare from 3YA! Here there had been many years of preliminary thought, since the speakers were Dr. Helen Deem, Dr, Muriel Bell, and Mrs. I. L. G. Sutherland, with Mrs. H. R. Hume as the unobtrusive chairman. Mrs. Sutherland was the informed critic, the questioner of the established order (the Plunket System). °The others were the defenders, and providers of expert comment. This combination gave us the free interplay of minds which is discussion at its best. A wide range of questions was canvassed — diet, some aspects of child psychology, self-demand feeding, similarity between the symptoms of under- and over-feeding, the dogmatism of certain Plunket nurses, and a research into the causes of prolonged crying. It turned out that to the research worker who was quoted "prolonged crying" meant crying for more than three minutes, compared with 30 minutes for certain doctrinaire parents and nurses. And so it went on. I expect hundreds of mothers and fathers were kept on their toes, as we were, by the parry and thrust of skilled opinion on these important domestic matters. At the end Mrs. Sutherland deplored that so many topics had been quite left out. That’s where a discussion differs from a talk. The latter can include everything, and so it almost invariably includes too much, and nothing is remembered, Furthermore, the talk takes less time, and so it tends to be altogether too indigestible. Also unless he is very skilful the speaker in a talk has difficulty in gripping his audience, whereas the speaker in a discussion must perforce try to hold his fellow-speakers and they him, so that all tend consequently to hold their unseen audiences. Still there remains the problem of whom to choose for discussions; and if only a fraction of them come off as suc-

cessfully as the Child Welfare one that I heard, we. should count ourselves

lucky.

A.

B.