Film and Radio Guide (Oct 1945-Jun 1946)

18 FILM AND RADIO GUIDE Volume XII, No. 7 (Friday, 11 :15) . Children themselves set the stage for the broadcast by reading newspapers and trying to determine what items of news Alexander Griffin will choose for comment. When he mentions foreign countries the youngsters are eager to learn for themselves the manners, customs, and forms of government of those countries. Controversial subjects introduced on the program usually result in spirited discussions in the classroom, after school, and at home. The program can fit into any subject in the curriculum, help to vitalize any curricular activity. The radio assistant who visits classrooms regularly to observe the utilization of this program reports : “The program starts a ball rolling, and where it stops is simply a tribute to the resourcefulness of the teacher and the class.” Such a program helps a child to adjust himself to this modern, atomic, r a d a r-contr oiled world. Another way in which we can make curricular activities real and vital and significant is to bring a recognized authority into the classroom via the air waves. With a twist of the wrist, it becomes our privilege to hear from a well-known news analyst or to go “Exploring Music” with Mary Van Doren, pianist and musician, every Monday morning at eleven-fifteen (WIP). That the experience of listening to good music presented by a recognized artist does vitalize instruction is borne out by the results. After Mary Van Doren’s program, children enter upon a variety of activities. Some of them paint in free style what the music has suggested to them. Sometimes, as a class project, friezes are painted illustrating the music. Boys and girls keep notebooks and scrapbooks on musicians, on mu sical forms, on newspaper stories of musical events and personalities. The musical program stimulates the writing of original compositions, letters to the broadcasters, letters of appreciation to Mary Van Doren. The wise teacher uses the musical program also as an incentive to vocabulary building. Secondly, radio directly supplements and enriches the regular work of the classroom. Elementary school girls and boys have a valuable literary experience in hearing a story told with artistry, sometimes “dressed up” with dramatic interludes, every Wednesday afternoon at two-fifteen when they tune in to the “Magic of Books” (WEIL). The program brings enchantment. It has the intangible but educationally valuable quality of showmanship. The listeners are compelled by the “magic” in books. The program stimulates interest in good reading. It provides an enrichment of the listeners’ emotional experiences. This is apparent in the rapt attention they give to the program. Since all learning begins with interest, the value of such a program is obvious. It has often been said that the good radio writer creates characters that are so real that “what happens to them matters to the listener.” We have learned that when American history is presented in highly dramatic form, as it is in “The American Adventure,” (KYW, 9:30 a. m. on Wednesday) or “Lest We Forget” (WIP, 11:15 Thursday), personalities in the story of the American dream become real, flesh-and-blood people. The student gets a sense of participation in the events of long ago. Radio shatters time and space; it transports the listener to other times and places. When the narrator says, “The scene is Philadelphia the year 1776” everyone in the room becomes part of the Philadelphia of the Revolution and grapples for the moment with the problems of that day. How easy it is after such a broadcast to relate historic problems to those which our young citizens will have to face in the America of today ! Only recently I visited in a school and heard with a class a broadcast in the “American Adventure” series, titled “Fourteen Points Over Tokyo.” It was a dramatized presentation of Wilson’s unsuccessful fight for the League of Nations, together with a graphic radio picture of the bombing of Tokyo — an incident that might not have happened if Wilson had succeeded. It happened that the broadcast was presented during the time of the UN meetings in London, and newspapers were carrying daily accounts of the problems facing the representatives of the nations of One World. After the broadcast, the significance of the meetings of UN to every boy and girl in that class was brought out in the discussion. Children had a new understanding and appreciation of the importance of world events to them as individuals. They realized then that they were a part of the “American Adventure.” Another program available to Philadelphia teachers, “Once Upon a Time” (KQW, Friday 9:30), dramatizes “stories behind everyday things,” and presents the myths and legends of every country in the world in such a way that everyday things take on new importance. The imaginative and legendary answers to “Why We Have Snow” and “Why There Is Lightning and Thunder” not only enrich classroom experience, but enlarge the concepts of the young