Radio Broadcast (May-Oct 1925)

480 Radio Broadcast to his book, provided that he speaks clearly, slowly, and with a sense of real interest in his subject. That is what the men at the University have had to discover. They must talk with more energy to a class that they cannot see than to one that is in the room with them, because the voice is their only chance of appeal. What applause is to a vaudeville rope climber, the presence of a flesh and blood class is to the teacher. He needs applause, and he has to fight the blankness of the microphone while he delivers his radio lecture. It is amusing to see a teacher stand before a microphone and wave his arms with his usual class-room gestures and find that they mean nothing to the silent microphone or to the man on the North Dakota farm who is wondering "why doesn't that chap talk so I can hear." Is radio instruction reaching an audience that wants such help? As an answer to this important question, the University could look only to whatever letters came in. But would anybody care enough about political parties and the contemporary novel to write even a post-card! And if they heard the talks, would they like them? The answer came almost immediately. The files of the radio room are stuffed with letters from listeners from Canada and thirty states, including Nebraska in the West, Minnesota in the North, Louisiana in the South, and every state on the Atlantic coast. Among the writers are lawyers, dentists, physicians, bankers, business men and women, high school students, farm men and women, teachers, housewives, college students, club-women, and grade school children. Of course, there were complaints. The University expected them, more than came in. But not one letter of objection to the idea as a whole appeared. All the writers liked to listen to the talks, but they objected to big and little things in the way the talks were given — and mostly with justification. One man objected to the pronunciation of the word "vaudeville," and he was right. One man said the speaker talked too fast; he had sat by his typewriter and tried to take down the names of books to read, and the speaker rushed through them without a chance for a note. The lecturer of that night, who was accustomed to dumping masses of material on college classes who could go to a library later, spoke more slowly on the following nights. Another writer asked if we wanted any one to hear what we were saying. If we did, would we talk louder? And we did. Several wo men who were normal school graduates and wanted college work insisted on getting credit for the lectures; they asked for examinations and papers to be graded. That request, much as the University wished to help, was refused. WHAT THE PEOPLE SAID APPRECIATION for the new thing came in all forms, from the serious to the funny. The people who wrote ranged from men and women with college degrees to farmers who had little advanced schooling, and yet thought it was worth their while to say that they liked the programs. Stationery ran from beautiful sheets of embossed personal writing paper and bond sheets of discreet banking houses to the printed splash of an Iowa seed store, and the pencilled scratchings of an old man who found the " radio was something to look forward to once a week." A letter came from a friend of a young man sick with tuberculosis. He asked for a reading list that might "be of some benefit." The boy wanted "in that way to educate himself as much as possible from this source." Needless to say, the English department got busy. A group of students from Wittenberg College were gracious enough to want the lecturer to know that they were taking a course in the novel with him. A club woman from South Carolina found that the lectures helped her in preparing a program on the contemporary novel. A woman on a New Hampshire farm, who had taken a course in the novel with Katherine Lee Bates in her college days, said "I now live on a remote farm, and I am especially pleased with your proposed course, What that means in terms of days on a farm, no mere city reader can quite understand." A mother wrote for the novel bibliography. "We are desirous of putting the best of reading matter before our four children." A man from Philadelphia wrote to the University and asked for an outline of the lecture, because he missed part when his daughter ran a splinter into her finger, and he had to leave the phones and help. Unfortunately he did not give his address. A directory searcher gave us his address, and the following letter is the result of this correspondence. Did I hear the announcer say to send 10 cents for the program? My daughter run a splinter in her finger so Dad missed part of the broadcasting. I had to get that splinter out. Well I am one of kdka listeners in and must say I am very much interested in education and if nothing prevents me I will be a regular listener. In Phila. we have a lot