On Your Marks for "Question Mark"’

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 869, 29 March 1956, Page 16

On Your Marks for "Question Mark"’

URING last year’s Question Mark "season," a Christchurch panel took the air for four weeks on end, developing the theme of the family as a social unit and the outsice pressures that tend to disrupt it. The broadcasts were successful enough to justify a similar project this year, and at 8.30 p.m. on April 5 the 1956 Question Mark discussions will start with the first of four by a Canterbury panel on "The Individual and His Relation to Pressure Groups." They will be heard from 2YA, 3YA, 4YA, 1YZ and 4YZ. The permanent members of this year’s panel will be Bernard Smyth, Adult Education Tutor for North Canterbury (chairman), the Very Rev. Martin Sullivan, Dean of Christchurch, and two housewives, Margaret Scott and Judy

Lunn. In the first discussion, which will define pressure groups, the guest member of the panel will be Gordon Troup, Liaison Officer at Canterbury University College. The second discussion, with Professor A. J. Danks, of Canterbury College, as guest member, will be concerned with Community pressure groups, such as Parent-Teacher Associations, women’s ‘organisations, Streét Beautifying Associations, and so on, With John Stewart, advertising manager of a New Zealand family magazine, the panel will discuss in its third programme commercial pressure groups such as cinema and advertising. And for the final discussion George Manning, Metropolitan Tutor of Adult Education in Christchurch, will join the panel to .consider those semi-political groups which seek to influence the Government.

Though these programmes’ were planned as broadcasts with the ordinary intelligent listener all over New Zealand in mind, they will have also-like the four heard last year-a_ special audience: small listening groups formed all over Canterbury under the guidance and encouragement of the Adult Education Department at Canterbury University College. "Judged by group enrolments so far this season,’-says Bernard Smyth, "‘the group listening scheme is spreading. Radio ciscussions always provoke interest, but their interest is far greater if the arguments can be carried on after the radio panel has opened up the subject." Last year 51 small listening groups heard the broadcasts. These groups varied widely in strength and make up. One or two had as few as three members, others had

as many as 10 or 12. Some were just the members of a single family, others were an offshoot of an established organisation such as a local’ Parent-Teacher Association. And several were mixed groups specially formed to listen to these discussions. The Adult Education Department supplied each group beforehand witl an account of the radio discussion and added questions that the group might discuss after hearing the programme; and groups were asked. to draw up a simple report after each broadcast. commenting on the radio panel’s work and adding their own observations on the theme. Then, just before each Question Mark was broadcast, Donald ‘Rutherford, Director of Adult Education at Canterbury College, was heard briefly from 3YA giving the groups further advice on the discussions, and commenting on the reports sent in, A similar pattern will be followed in this year’s discussions.