EDUCATION: Radio Conference

“Radio education” covers a multitude of broadcasting activities, anything from a concert by the Philharmonic Symphony Society to a classroom lecture by a geology professor. Although over 40% of the programs on the major radio networks are labeled “educational,” most schoolmen feel dissatisfied and frustrated over the achievements of radio as an educational medium. Last week as 18 organizations composed of educators and radiomen met for a Conference on Educational Broadcasting, called by the U. S. Office of Education and the Federal Communications Commission at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel, this feeling was fully and freely aired.

Educators yearn to take over a part of the nation’s radio plant and run it to suit themselves. Director Levering Tyson of the Rockefeller-endowed National Advisory Council on Radio in Education had warned the 500 educators invited to the Conference that “any discussion of such controversial subjects as the allocations of wave lengths will be scrupulously avoided.” Two years ago Congress overwhelmingly rejected the Fess and Wagner-Hatfield bills calling for a definite allocation of wave bands for educational purposes. Last week more cold water was thrown on that hope when Chief Engineer T. A. M. Craven of the Federal Communications Commission flatly told an engineers’ sub-committee of the Conference: “In talking with some educational experts, I find that they envision a future requirement of something in the order of 15,000 stations to serve the 127,000 school districts in this country alone. . . . The present radio spectrum from ten to 30,000 kilocycles would be a mere ‘drop in the bucket’ in the solution of the educational radio problem.”

Promptly quashed by Federal engineers was the dream of many a delegate that short-wave reception might offer a solution to their hunger for additional radio time. The short-wave bands open to present day receivers are relatively narrow, and largely assigned to commercial operators. President William Mather Lewis of Lafayette College described the only U. S. short-wave station that is non-commercial and non-profit-making, Boston’s WIXAL. Founded by Engineer Walter S. Lemmon, who shyly refused last week to make a speech, WIXAL since 1934 has broadcast lectures and lessons by Harvard, Radcliffe and Boston university professors, as well as chamber music and the complete public program of this year’s Harvard Tercentenary. Stocky, blond Engineer Lemmon, who was wireless operator on the George Washington when it took Woodrow Wilson to the Peace Conference, made a fortune from his patent on single-dial radio control, is now research chief for International Business Machines Corp. This week the Federal Communications Commission permitted WIXAL to double its power from ten kilowatts to 20, enough to make it clearly audible in Burma.

Since Engineer Lemmon foots all the bills for WIXAL himself, his station is not likely to set a precedent. Educators have to depend almost entirely on commercial radio. Radio education flourishes on the so-called “sustaining programs,” which station owners run on free time either to fill in the broadcasting day or in the hope that they may catch the ear of some advertiser. National Broadcasting Co. last year devoted 4,095 hours, most of them sustaining, to “educational purposes” and this year expects to contribute 4.360 hours, 44% of the network’s total broadcasting time. Sample NBC programs: “Your English.” a diction course called “Magic of Speech.” a weekly half-hour donated to the National Congress of Parents & Teachers, a Music Appreciation Hour conducted by Walter Damrosch. NBC also furnishes an hour a week to “America’s Town Meeting of the Air,” a program of uninhibited discussion on a set topic by luminaries like Raymond Moley and Fannie Hurst.

A further grievance of the Conference was that few radio programs are suitable for the classroom. CBS contributes the only program specifically for schoolhouse radios, the “American School of the Air.” Broadcast on 122 afternoons during the year from 2:15 to 2:45, the school is planned for three age groups: six to nine, nine to twelve, twelve and over. The American history course this year is dramatizing the past of eleven U. S. cities. The Science Club broadcasts simple experiments to be performed by the listener, such as opening and inspecting a dry cell battery or observing goldfish in a pan of deaerated water to prove that fish must breathe. The geography course recounts the travels of an imaginary Hamilton family, conveniently consisting of one child in each age group and Grandmother Hamilton, who provides learned commentary on places from Bogota to Baffin Island where Mr. Hamilton “has business.” Enormously popular, the American School of the Air is regularly heard by pupils in every state.

An obstacle to which radiomen and educators alike devoted much earnest thought last week was the inability of educators to fill free time with interesting programs. President David Sarnoff of Radio Corp. of America bluntly declared: “Radio programs can be created to inform the mind and elevate the spirit, but when one seeks to impose upon them the requirement that they also furnish mental training and discipline, one narrows their appeal and risks the dispersion of the invisible audience. . . .”

First attempt to teach schoolmen radio technique was made by Ohio State Uni-versity which since 1928 has had a workshop for radio broadcasting. Last week the Conference had news of a novel organization called University Broadcasting Council. Set up in Chicago two years ago by the University of Chicago’s Radio Director Allen Miller, the Council helps educators from Chicago, Northwestern and DePaul universities not only to solicit radio time and to split the expenses of broadcasting but also to write good scripts. With a $55,000 budget, Director Miller reported, the Council had provided its members with $300,000 worth of broadcasting service. Most popular Council program is the University of Chicago Round Table, in which chatty professors like Philosopher Thomas Vernor Smith and Political Scientist Jerome Kerwin discuss such topics as “The Elections” or “The Abdication of Edward VIII.”