tracting the number of wrong answers from the number of right answers, the results being the pupil's score. There are objections to this method, however, and there is some tendency toward giving credit for the total of correct answers, ignoring wrong answers entirely. 2. The testing is exclusively of factual knowledge. There is apparently a weakness in this direction, but no doubt more extensive use will gradually eliminate this fault. Readers are referred to Ruch, The Improvement of the Written Examination. 3. Pupils do not "do something" with their knowledge. There is no reason for believing that because pupils have not given written form to their thoughts they have not been thinking. We are admitting more and more other forms of response than that of language into the school. Witness, for example, the activity responses of primary children in silent reading. And the rich variety of construction work carried on by children is not in terms of language. In thinking of tests we are inclined to the belief that they should fol low the traditional form. We need to think of the objective tests as a radical departure from the traditional essay type. 4. The objective types are difficult to prepare. It is true that greater care must be used in preparing this type of test. More time is needed and careful revision is necessary. Quite possibly this objection is partially due to lack of familiarity with the preparation and use of such tests. In any case, more carefully prepared tests than are now used in many school rooms are much to be desired, whatever form they may take. A SURVEY OF RADIO INSTRUCTION IN By R. R. SMITH, English Department, Chicago Normal College N my article last month I tried to develop the thesis that radio will become the real university of American democracy, distributing worth while world culture in wholesale quantities to a hundred million people. That article was rather one of prevision based upon certain fundamental tendencies now found in the social structure of the country. It will be my purpose in this article to call attention to just a few of these tendencies. My information is based upon thousands of letters sent out under my direction, as chairman of the radio committee of the National League of Teachers' Association, to station managers and to educational leaders. What is being done is being done in the true American fashion-by experiment of isolated individual groups, one group paying little attention to the experiment of the other group. When the reader studies the record of these experiments he must keep in mind that radio, as we are accustomed to think of it, is now only four years old. The whole movement is in an experimental stage. Back of the experiment is this one question: What do people want? The listeners-in are the dictators of what shall be given from any radio station. Use of radio for educational purposes is a by-product of the major experi ment; or we might say that the whole experiment is one in education of a new type in which for the first time people are really being given a chance to feel and think in reaction to constant stimulus. First in our examination we find that radio station managers themselves are teachers and they are becoming supersensitive to what their students wishmuch more so than we teachers in schools where the students are in class for a given number of weeks or months. We study else. The radio station manager not onl our subject-matter, and many of us little must study subject-matter that he already knows, but must constantly become famil iar with new subject-matter, and more than that, he must study the invisible student to see what his reaction is. Not so long ago opera, for example, was something to joke about. Women with too much leisure dragged tired husbands to the opera house, where they promptly began to snore. Or, according to the old joke, opera was merely an excuse for showing off new clothes and jewels. Opera as a social affair was of major importance; its musical side was a minor matter. Like other jokes based on misunderstanding, this one is rapidly dying out. There are reasons to believe that America is becoming more appreciative of opera than any other nation in the world. When the history of this changing attitude toward opera is written, radio station managers will be given credit for having made possible the wider appreciation. I do not now have in mind so much the broadcasting of whole programs, such as that of the Metropolitan in New York and the Civic opera in Chicago, as the use of an increasingly large number of opera airs by most of the stations of the country. If night after night one is "exposed" to excerpts from all the great operas of the world, one soon begins to look forward to that as a part of his nightly enjoyment. I do not mean that station managers have given over jazz or that there is not other music than that from Wagner and Verdi. I do mean, however, that night after night a hundred million people and most of them have radio sets-listen in on the best music which has become the heritage of the world. They absorb it; they become saturated with it; they have an added enjoyment in life. Jazz is not taken away; opera is merely made a part of heir repertoire. Nor is this all that the radio station managers are doing on their own initiative. For a long time we have read much of adult education and carried on little experiments in evening schools and in libraries. Radio men are carrying on this adult education on a nation-wide scale. Much of it is commercial; that is true. But what is the difference? If we learn valuable facts about gardening from a radio station which is interested in selling us seeds, is the information any the less valuable? Radio men are giving information on almost every informational and cultural subject, and they are giving this in such a way that it sticks. Thus far we have considered that culture which has come from the radio station to adults during leisure hours. Many stations have gone much farther than that. In Chicago, WLS took the initiative in 1924 and developed service in elementary school subjects. As I write this article I have before me letters from the directors of WGN, WMAQ, and WLS, in which they offer the use of their stations to the National League or to the Illinois State Teachers' Association for six months or a year for an experiment in radio instruction for schools during the day. Even before the experiment of WLS came that of WJZ in New York City in co-operation with the Board of Education. In Massachusetts WBZ has taken the lead, and in Cincinnati WTIC. In Ohio WLW has been carrying on systematic instruction in school subjects for a long time. This is being duplicated in all sections of the country. Radio men are not only educating America's adult democracy during evening hours; they are taking the initiative in experimenting with supplementary school programs. They are leading the way. We school people have only to work out our lessons in such a way that they can be adapted to radio instruction, and if we do not soon, it looks as if there will be worked out a technique of air instruction independent of the traditional school men, much as the modern trade and correspondence school worked out the unit problem method. But there are others in the field and they are keeping very quiet about it. Scattered over the land are more than thirty colleges. and universities all a part of one big radio combination. Almost a dozen of these are big state universities and some of them are schools which have closed their doors to all but the "leaders" of democracy. Just now they seem very questioning. What shall they feed the "non-leaders" in democracy-those that are not worthy to sit within the walls of the university? In this case interest lies not in what they are doing, but what they are prepared to do. Then, too, many alert school superintendents and principals have already seized upon radio as a means of supplementing the instruction being given in the classrooms. In Cleveland, under the leadership of Superintendent Jones, Miss Alice Keith, director of music appreciation, has used radio in an organized manner during the whole school year, and is making elaborate plans for next year. In Minneapolis, Superintendent Webster is making plans to continue its use. In Chicago, Superintendent McAndrew has given his approval to plans for working out radio instruction in the schools. Pos sibly the most complete experiment in high school and elementary school use is that of Dr. Virgil Dickson of Oakland, California. What are my conclusions? Just these: Radio, which is only about four years old, is forcing itself upon the attention of the school world. Under the leadership of the radio men themselves America's millions have begun cultural appreciation in their leisure hours. They are being given a chance to make the course of study themselves-by means of letters, telephone calls, and telegrams. What they like is repeated many times; what no one likes is discontinued. Under the leadership of these men, too, supplemental instruction for school hours is being organized. Universities and colleges are organized, but do not seem to know what to do first. Radio managers have extended to high school and elementary administrators invitations to use their stations. |