BBC TRAINS YOUNG PEOPLE TO BE SOUND CITIZENS

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 25, 2 December 1938, Page 6

BBC TRAINS YOUNG PEOPLE TO BE SOUND CITIZENS

t en §INGULARLY vital, alert in mind and body, New Zealand’s fine woman novelist, Miss Nelle M. Scanlan, confessed to the ‘‘Reeord’’ last week that she thought indiseriminate radio listening a postive menace. There is. nothing she dislikes more about radio than the way it is allowed these days to mumble on as a vague background to conversation. But there is one session she listens to in London almost without fail. When she stops work for tea at five.o’clock, she switches on to the BBC children’s hour. The children’s hour in London, she says, is one of the most interesting in the whole day’s broadcast. It has gone far away from the old system of just calling the children’s birthdays. There is some one to give the children a talk on international affairs. Every happening of vital importance in the world is explained in terms every child can understand. The day after the abdication of King Edward the Bighth, for instance, the whole tragedy was explained to the children in the simplest terms. oo

ver onto? eset They were frankly told that the lady whom the King wished to marry was one who could not be accepted for the Queen in England because she had been twice divorced and her husbands were still living. By this means the BBC was ingraining in the children an interest, which would remain with them all their lives, in public affairs. In their children’s session, too, the BBC dramatised important events ic British history.. Outstanding moments in the country’s history were retold in simple, dramatic form, with good actors and actresses taking part. Noises off and atmosphere gave realism to the productions. — Then, said Miss Scanlan, there was the zoo man, a most important member of the staff for the children’s hour. The zoo was not something remote from the lives of the children of London. It was on2 of the most vital factors as far as they were concerned in England. The zoo man told them about new birds and beasts, and about any new arrivals, and the children could hardly wait until Saturday to go and see them. The children were told, also, about the birds they might hear

at each particular season, the flowers they might expect to see and the trees that were coming into bloom. Children were encouraged to write in to the BBC about the things they saw and did. When they were having their school holidays they would be told what they could look for in each part of England they were visiting. They were given a multitude of interests and new things to discover so that they were not solely dependent on ice cream and the cinema for their amusements. They were encouraged to develop a life-long interest in birds and flowers and trees. Musical interludes were wedged into the sessions, fragments of some well-known and melodious composition, within reach of the children’s understanding. Competitions were included, general knowledge tests and nursery rhymes for the little ones. "The whole policy of the BBC," said Miss Scanlan, "is to train the children to be intelligent listeners and intelligent citizens. "And it is very necessary for people to become intelligent lis-

teners," she said. "If radio is allowed to become just a mumbling noise that goes on all day and most of the night it becomes a menace instead of a force for good. "Listeners who use it like this are like people who munch biscuits all day and lose their taste for foods. "Listeners," she says, "should be trained from childhood to treat

their radios with respect, to listen to the radio when they want te listen or to turn it off when they don’t."