Radio Broadcast (Nov 1926-Apr 1927)

DECEMBER, 1926 "EDUCATE THE MASSES" 167 And all the time radio's real mission was so different! It's educational — There won't be any textbooks a few years from now — that's the impression I get from the enthused and higher-domed-than-me advocates of the University of the Air idea. A great thought. That slant would have been so useful, interwoven with some of those 1921 lectures into which crept and was fondled the phrase, "broad dissemination of intelligence" by radio, tied up to the notion that broadcasting educated inductively — establishing appreciation of good things in the arts, to say nothing of putting the ruralites hep to public questions through eavesdrop absorption of opinion. The sages who gather at the rostrum and while away after-coffee hours in the banquet hall — it's those serious fellows who do it. ETHER-WAVING THE "OLOGIES" MENTAL astigmatism, that's all that conception was. The broader view, as I gather it from theecstatic intelligentsia, is that the new generation is to have all "ologies" ether-waved. The syllabus is set; it but remains to cram dogma into the waiting cerebrum via the headphones. Now that's a pretty good idea; a smart fellow thought that one up. Education will poke itself into every nook and cranny. All evening I have been thinking about that. Great; why, all along the R. F. D. routes, out on ranches in the great open spaces, in lonely cabins on the mountain top, there are seekers after the truth, alone, neglected, uneducated. Here and now, isolation ends! In the land where all men are born free and equal, learnin' shall be free and equal. Free as the air, one might with originality say, and equal to the task of reaching even the remotest places. Deeply cogitating on the subject, there came to me the vision of the great struggler for enlightenment. Abraham Lincoln, the youth, by the flickering candle light in his cabin of rough hewn logs poring over his one book. The ideal example. It determined me to write this article. Always, my heart has been wrung at the thought of the Emancipator scrimping and saving his meagre earnings to get together the price of the succession of books that moulded his, later, massive mind. But no more will the boy without opportunities have to struggle for possession of the printed word. Not even a single book will be necessary; the University of the Air aims to relieve both eyestrain and pocketbook. Just a simple receiving set, assembled from parts bought, perhaps, at the five and ten, mental receptiveness, and the education job is begun. Something worth while, that; I had decided to write this article anyhow; but filled with the spirit of Lincoln and the gtneral seriousness of the subject, it didn't seem right to dash it off without acquiring a background of practicality. What better way to do that than by actually listening, myself, to contemporaneous broadcasting. I did. Tuned-in and listened carefully for an hour. The first talk the dial twisting brought was a dissertation on stamp collecting. Which at first blush seemed piffling. But as I listened, the realization dawned that I knew absolutely nothing of this particular intellectual pastime. Ah, this then was just what I wanted; I had never read even a pamphlet on the subject. Exactly in the position of the boy who never had a textbook. I made notes; filled up two pages. It was not wholly satisfactory. But I was persistent; I shifted the verniers around until I picked up a talk on flora and fauna of the tropics; repeated the note-taking process. Here again I was somewhat bewildered by utter ignorance of terms and tendencies. It should have been ideal; but something, too, was wrong; and after careful perusal of the notations made my ardor was appreciably dampened. Pinally it was all wet. Three more trys at attempted understanding of subjects on which I was at best but vaguely informed, and I gave it up. The University of the Air idea seems to have a weakness. That weakness is the lack of visual foundation. That will be a bit of a handicap to the student body. RADIO GIVES YOU A RESPECT FOR PHONETICS AIR education advocates must have overlooked a consideration you can discover for yourself in ten minutes — if you have never had it before, radio will give you a wholesome respect for phonetics. The word "intentions" is hard to distinguish from "inventions," for instance; and "conquering" is liable as not to become "conk herring." The ear is a tricky instrument. Clearest reception on a bangup receiver and carefully manicured diction on the part of the speaker are rare in combination; but even with these, you get queer results. To show you how this works out, let's go back to Abe Lincoln. He is chockfull of inspiration for to-day's deserving youths who are log-cabined like he was. Nothing could be finer than to start them off educatively with some of his noble utterances. You know, "That this nation — " and so on. But how would his stuff come over? Figuring they had never seen those same sentiments in print, I'd say from my experience with radio it is wholly possible that they'd be putting down a literal transcription of, say, the consecration of this nation to the Divine Being at the finish of the Gettysburg Address, somewhat after this order: Vaccination, under guard, shall have a new Bertha Freedman, and come and vamp the people, by the people, for the people, shall not Paris fashions the earth! A few similar tests will convince you that the more potent the sentiment the easier it phonetically perishes. Educationally, this is a little disturbing. With Lincoln having always been looked upon as inspirational, it is not wholly comforting to contemplate the risk of having the farm boy or the cattle chaperone appraising him as an utterer of the obvious, because the earphones perhaps gave forth: A horse divided against itself, cannot stand. Or to have the plea for faith in right mak "IN THE GREAT OPEN SPACES, THERE ARE SEEKERS AFTER THE TRUTH — ALONE, NEGLECTED"