Education by Radio (1932)

The Radio and the American Future Glenn Frank President of the University of Wisconsin With the improvement in the Stevens Point radio sta¬ tion, and the improvement we are about to make in the university radio station, hereafter to be the voice not only of the university but of other departments of the state government as well, Wisconsin takes another step for¬ ward in the betterment of the means of contact between her people and their agencies of government, information, and education. I have an exalted conception of what radio can mean to the American future. I think the invention of the radio equals in significance the invention of the printing press. Specifically, the radio promises to render two important services to the American future: [1] it promises to unify us as a people, and [2] it promises to debunk our leadership. The radio is potentially the most important single instru¬ ment we have for gaining and guaranteeing national unity. This vast nation, with its 123,000,000 people, faces a dilemma. It must not iron itself out into a dull sameness. It must resist the forces that seek to impose an extreme standardization upon its thought and life. It must, at all costs, maintain the color, the character, the charm, and the creativeness of its various regions and classes. But it must, at the same time, play for national unity. This is a difficult order for a vast territory and a vast population. All history shows that far-flung empires have sooner or later failed because they could not maintain the necessary unity of mind and purpose. They fell apart because they lacked the cement of a common vision of their problems and of their possibilities. The Greek republics began to slip when they grew beyond the city-state stage in which the whole population could at once have access to the counsels in which public policy was being shaped. The Athenians gathering en masse at the Acropolis had an ideal agency of unification. They could all listen at once to their peerless leader, Pericles. Until radio was invented America lacked her Acropolis. Her Pericles, when she has been lucky enough to have one, had had to make the swing around the circle if he wanted to speak to the people of America face to face. And even then he could touch only the strategic centers. The masses had to “hear” him at second hand as they scanned the reports of his speeches in the next day’s press. With radio, an American Pericles can have his Acropolis and speak to all America at once. As a medium for the discussion of political, social, and eco¬ nomic issues, the radio promises also to have a profound in¬ fluence towards a more rational consideration of problems by our leaders. The microphone is the deadly enemy of the demagog. Two-thirds of the appeal of the rabble-rousing of the old-fashioned shyster lay in the hundred and one tricks of posture and voice that caught on when the crowd was massed together and the speaker was looking in its eye. Even the most average of average men are more critical listeners when they are not part of a mass meeting. The slightest trace of pose or of insincerity shows up on the radio. A new type of leader is likely to be developed by the radio. Ideas must stand on their own feet without the benefit of the crutch of emotionalized crowd-reactions. Long and involved sen¬ tences must go. And the realization that millions may be listen¬ ing to him puts the speaker on his mettle. He has an added compulsion towards accuracy. When the speaker resorts to demagogic tricks over the radio, there is likely to drift back to him the thought that here and there and yonder in quiet rooms thousands of Americans are laughing derisively. In WLBL and WHA stations, Wisconsin is perfecting agen¬ cies thru which her departments of state can maintain inti¬ mate contact with and seek to serve the people of Wisconsin in the following half-dozen ways: [1] To serve the agricultural interests of the state by fur¬ nishing technical and market information, and sound guid¬ ance in economic organization. [2] To serve the households of the state by furnishing technical counsel on the construction, care, and conduct of the efficient home. [3] To serve the adult citizenry of the state by furnishing continuous educational opportunities. [4] To serve the rural schools of the state by supplement¬ ing their educational methods and materials, by sending over the air the best teaching genius we can muster. [5] To serve public interests and public enterprise by pro¬ viding them with as good radio facilities as the commercial stations have placed at the disposal of private interests and private enterprise. [6] To serve the interests of an informed public opinion by providing a statewide forum for the pro and con discussion of the problems of public policy. The state of Wisconsin, by long tradition, is interested in the safeguarding and promoting of a free and full discussion of the problems of the common life of the commonwealth. And these state-controled radio stations may enable Wisconsin to recreate in this machine age the sort of unhampered and inti¬ mate and sustained discussion of public issues that marked the New England town meeting and the Lincoln-Douglas de¬ bates. If Wisconsin could demonstrate the practicability of recreating the New England town meeting with the state for a stage, it would render a national service. It is our eager hope to realize thru these two stations a state-wide forum in which issues of public policy may be threshed out. Permit me, then, to say again how gratified we should be that, in these improved radio stations, Wisconsin is perfecting an important social agency for the unification of its people and the rationalization of its public discussions. Education by Radio is published by the National Committee on Education by Radio at 1201 Sixteenth Street, Northwest, Washington, D. C. [75]