Radio

In the 1930s and 1940s, when radio still was regarded as a new medium, special children’s programs were broadcast in order to attract young listeners. As such programs became popular, production increased. Children and teenagers took pleasure in listening to programs specifically aimed at children as well as other programs. By this time, American children aged nine to twelve listened to radio approximately two to three hours a day, especially during the evening. Girls preferred romantic and historical dramatizations and boys listened more to popular and novelty programs, but one study came to the conclusion that the differences mattered less than the similarities. With some variations, comedy and mystery radio plays were preferred above others by both boys and girls of all ages. Thus children enjoyed a variety of programs, including those produced for adults.

As with other electronic media, radio was met with worries from the adult world. In Sweden, as in other countries, it was a common anxiety that too much listening could make children passive and less eager to play. In the 1940s, Swedish teachers expressed worries about being regarded as mere “loudspeakers” by children accustomed to passively listening to radio. However, compared with reactions to other electronic media, radio seems to have incited relatively few “moral panic” attacks. Partly this can be explained by radio’s supposed usefulness in education (discussed below).

In the 1950s, when TELEVISION was introduced, researchers in Britain came to the conclusion that television reduced radio listening more than it reduced any other activity. In spite of this, one in three children said that if they had to do without radio they would miss it quite a lot. The study also noticed that children who had been watching television for several years listened a little more often to the radio. This was described as a revival in line with reports of adults’ media behavior. While radio plays could not compete with television plays, other types of programs held listeners’ interest, including panel games, discussions, music, and sports commentaries.

Other studies have arrived at the similar conclusion that, with increasing age, children spent more time with radio than with television. TEENAGERS in particular have been found to be regular radio listeners. Researchers have attributed this to the socialization effects of radio, although explanations of what those effects are have varied over time. In the 1970s socialization to political virtues was considered to be an important factor, while in the 1980s, radio was seen as a source for identity formation in a peer group. This change can be related to the shift of content in programs addressed to teenagers. In the 1980s and 1990s teenagers listened more to music than to anything else on radio.

Radio in Education

From the start, in both Europe and America radio was greeted with hopes for its pedagogical value. Radio had the power to bring the world to the classroom, and programs could be presented as textbooks of the air.

In America, commercial and educational stations received licenses starting in the 1920s to produce classroom broadcasting, and eventually national networks also provided educational programs. Even though most programs were in line with traditional school subjects, some attempted to connect this content with progressive ideas about education and democracy. Radio allowed children and teachers to engage in the production of programs, preparing talks on, for example, automobiles, farming, and science. Together with the fact that parents supplied schools with radio receivers, this reflected a certain degree of local engagement in the implementation of radio in schools. However, this is not a perspective that has been emphasized in research. On the contrary, the organization of radio in education in America has been described as top down implementation. One example of this was the fact that superintendents, not teachers, were supposed to answer questionnaires, indicating that teachers were not included in the implementation process.

In contrast to America, broadcast systems in Europe were organized as nationwide networks that could be used for the inculcation of national values and virtues. Issues regarding educational as well as social and cultural policy were included in the broadcast organizations–in other words, they became part of welfare policy. In this context, children became a special interest.

In Scandinavian countries and Britain, special departments for educational programs were organized in the late 1920s or early 1930s. In general these programs were in line with the overall curriculum. However, a study on the use of radio in classrooms in Sweden reveals that there were contrasts between the content of ordinary schoolbooks and the content of radio programs. Radio programs emphasized contemporary progressive ideas on education and progressive political notions that were not represented in schoolbooks at that time. Citizenship, a new subject, was also given a particularly radical formulation in the school programs. This meant that children who listened to educational programs on the radio, discussed the programs, and did assignments on them, encountered views of society that differed from prevailing traditional middle-class representations. Reoccurring subjects included the everyday lives of the working or lower-middle classes as well as the need for health reform and an expanded welfare system.

In Sweden, educational broadcasts addressed children not only as future citizens but also as active contemporary citizens. Children were included in the actual broadcasts, where they were displayed, with references to famous scientific explorers like Sven Hedin, as competent explorers of their own society. Further, these children were enlisted to represent various parts of society in accordance with notions of society proposed by progressive policymakers. Each pupil was supposed to have his or her own program sheet where each program was presented in texts and pictures. The notion was that the material should help children to create “listening pictures” (hörbilder) when listening to programs. This practice was implemented out of a strong belief that a will to change the way people thought had to start with strategies that changed the way they talked.

In contrast to America, and in spite of the centralized organization, in Sweden teachers were included in the implementation of radio in education. They participated continually in surveys where they reported their own and the pupils’ responses to programs. Active teachers were invited to annual conferences about the use of radio in classrooms. It was argued by teachers and by the organizers of school broadcasts that elementary schoolteachers were more competent than academics and experts in communicating with pupils and therefore were invited to produce programs.

In Britain, educational radio programs were regarded as an important way to influence individual children and adolescents when they had problems or needed guidance in societal matters. Radio was also used to inculcate new notions of citizenship.

Further Research

Studies of children’s radio programs, particularly educational programs, offers an area of research that brings new perspectives to social, cultural, and political history. Such research also expands investigations of children’s increased visibility and status as a special group in society, for instance as reflected in the UN CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD (1989). Children’s programs provide material for inquiries into children’s place in society as well as representations of childhood from a historical perspective, particularly during the period from 1920 to 1960, when radio was regarded as the major electronic medium in society. It is also a field well attuned to further developments of theoretical and methodological issues. In addition to actual programs, manuscripts, program sheets, and other documents concerning children’s broadcasts, a number of studies measure children’s reading and comprehension skills in relation to radio. Such materials could be used to investigate the systems of knowledge and meaning that have affected the child in different decades of the twentieth century.

Radio for distance education

Despite rapid developments in communication technologies in the last few decades, radio broadcasting remains the cheapest mode of mass communication in India that can benefit rural and deprived communities with low literacy rates and little excess to education.

At a recent conference on Digital Learning in Delhi [18-19 October 2005], the participants sat bemused as Dr. Sugata Mitra of NIIT gave a very engaging account of his ‘Hole in the Wall’ project. Dr. Mitra explained how Delhi slum children with no education and no knowledge of English quickly picked up different computer functions, when given unsupervised access to a computer and the internet through a kiosk.

This project in ‘minimally invasive education’ was later extended to rural India, prompting a rather disbelieving audience to ask how the Hole in the Wall computers could function in remote and rural India, with erratic electricity supply, negligible telecom penetration and next to no maintenance.

Dr. Mitra gamely reeled off a catalogue of solar-powered UPS, self-rebooting, maintenance-free PCs, VSATs and other marvels of digital technology that could presumably keep computers running forever in the boondocks, but it sounded more like a Heath Robinson whimsy than a recipe for ICT in education.

Not surprisingly, the recommendations that emerged from the discussions emphasized “the need to think of ICT in education beyond computer aided learning and incorporate other technologies like community radio and other media. These mediums would not only be cost effective but also have a greater outreach potential.” [Digital Learning, Vol 1 Issue1, Nov-Dec 2005]

Classrooms and radio have always gone together, and radio has been used to teach everything from mathematics in Thailand (Galda, 1984) to civics education in Botswana (Byram, Kaute & Matenge, 1980). The first School Broadcast project in India was commissioned as early as 1937. Over the years, various educational radio projects have been carried out in the country, with mixed results.

Educational programmes on AIR
All the Primary channels of All India Radio (AIR) broadcast educational programmes on a regular basis on fixed time slots. AIR’s educational programmes are aimed at students as well as teachers of primary, middle, secondary and senior secondary schools, and are generally produced in collaboration with national educational agencies like NCERT (National Council for Educational Research & Training) and CIET (Central Institute of Educational Technology).

The Language Learning programme, popularly known as the ‘Radio Pilot project’, was started in 1979-80 jointly by AIR and the Department of Education (Rajasthan). Its aim was to teach Hindi to school children as their first language in 500 primary schools of Jaipur and Ajmer districts, on an experimental basis. The broadcasts were found to be useful in improving the children’s vocabulary, and a similar project was initiated in the Hoshangabad district of Madhya Pradesh.

Apart from AIR’s in-house educational programmes, the Indira Gandhi Open University (IGNOU) also broadcasts its educational programmes from AIR studios.

IGNOU-AIR Interactive Radio Counseling (IRC) was launched in May 1998 for students of Open / Conventional Universities. AIR Bhopal and IGNOU ran this as an experimental programme for a year, to provide academic counseling in various subjects and to instantly respond to students’ queries; but with its success, it was extended to other AIR stations. Presently, Interactive Radio Counseling is being provided every Sunday for one hour from 186 radio stations of All India Radio.

Gyan Vani

IGNOU’s own Gyan-Vani (Educational FM radio channel) was launched was in November 2001 to extend mass media support for education, suited to local needs. Gyan Vani channels are operating at present in 17 cities, and are scheduled to expand to a total of 40 cities by 2007. Gyan Vani stations operate as media cooperatives, with programmes contributed by different educational institutions, NGOs and institutions like IGNOU, NCERT, UGC, IIT, etc.

Each Gyan Vani station has a range of about 60 KM radius, covering an entire city or town and its surrounding area. Gyan Vani is meant for both conventional and non-conventional education, addressing local educational, developmental and socio-cultural needs. The stations broadcast in English, Hindi and the language or dialect of the region, for 4 to 12 hours daily.

During the current phase of private FM expansion in India, which is expected to cover 91 cities, it is reported that the government plans to offer 87 FM channels to be used exclusively for education. Of these, 36 would be used by IGNOU, while the other channels would be open to private players.

Community radio initiatives in India
In the absence of true community radio in India, a number of NGOs are using innovative methods for non-formal education through audio. School Audio through cable has been in operation in Budhikote village, Karnataka, since January 2002. The School Audio project is a spin-off of the ‘Namma Dhwani’ cable audio service being run in Budhikote by VOICES, a development communication NGO. Twice a week, educational programmes are ‘cable-cast’ to the local government school.

In the Kutch region of Gujarat, the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan (KMVS), an independent organization of rural women, focuses on adolescent girls’ education, basic functional literacy within sangathan members and development of context specific educational curricula on different issues for literates and neo-literates.

In 1999, KMVS launched a weekly radio programme ‘Kunjal Panchchi KutchJi’ for expansion of literacy as well as to build an information network. The 30-minute serial is broadcast in the local Kutchi dialect, over All India Radio’s local stations in this region of vast distances and poor communications. constantly hampered by the lack of radio sets in classrooms, the difficulty of coordinating school broadcasts with class-room timings and more significantly, by the lack of good broadcasters who have a passion for education and conversely, of teachers who are also good broadcasters. Using car hire Fort Lauderdale Airport gives perfect service after the visit from India.