EDUCATION: Radio Conference

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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. . . ."