Educational Radio in India
In the contemporary world, we can
undoubtedly say that radio is the
most popular as well as powerful tools
of dissemination of information and
education. Radio has its unique value
in the society. It provides a platform
where members of a society can discuss
their problems, issues and
exchange views. It develops a sense
of belonging among the members of a
society. Therefore, Matt Mollgaard has
rightly commented in his book Radio
and Society: New Thinking for an Old
Medium.
The MacBride Commission Report
‘Many Voices One World’ says, ‘in
developing countries, radio is the only
medium that can really be labelled
‘mass’, where a large portion of the
population can be reached by radio
broadcasts and possess the means to
receive them. No other medium now
has the potential to reach so many
people so efficiently for information,
educational, cultural and entertainment
purposes. Radio can be used easily
and economically to reach outlying
regions and for communication in the many vernacular- often unwritten- languages
existing in developing countries.’
Though this report was published
in 1980 by the UNESCO, after
long three decades, it may be claimed
that still radio stands in its original
position as the most vibrant communication
tool globally. Especially for
knowledge proliferation, radio is considered
as the most effective weapon.
Radio has the power to bring the world
to the classroom, and programs could
be presented as textbooks of the air.
Radio is used as an effective and
interesting tool in education both for
formal and informal education. Where
conditions have permitted, it has
become well established and wide
spread; yet, it seems to us that insufficient
educational use is made of this
virtually universal method of distribution.
Radio programs emphasized contemporary
progressive ideas on education
and progressive political notions that
were not represented in schoolbooks
at that time.
Educational radio programs
is 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.In Europe
the French state broadcasting service
devotes more than one-half of its radio
output to educational and cultural
broadcasts in the arts, letters, and sciences
educational programming
accounts for about 4 percent of radio
time in Australia.
Radio has been extensively used as an
educational medium in developing
countries like India, Sri Lanka,
Thailand, South Korea, Mali,
Guatemala, Botswana, South Africa,
Zambia, Uganda, Mexico, Philippines
and also proved its impact and efficiency
in health, agriculture and other
development issues.
In India, the All India Radio is the pioneer
in the field of educational broadcasting.
Radio came to India through
amateurs with educational purpose first
in1923 in a small way and after four
years it could find its root here. Since
its inception, AIR has been serving the
nation with its array of programmes and
services.
The contribution of AIR in
popularizing classical and folk music,
news services, extension educational
programmes like rural broadcasting,
educational programmes, programmes
for the youth and the family planning
programmes, external services directed
to foreign countries are the most
worth mentioning. Educational programmes
of AIR cover a wide spectrum
of primary, secondary, tertiary and university
levels. Enrichment programmes
are also broadcast for teachers.
Education was first taken up by Radio
in January, 1929 in Bombay on an
occasional and informal way to be followed
at Madras next year in April,
school broadcast was started with a
view to educate the unprivileged pupils.
But in November, 1937 All India Radio,
Calcutta took up educational broadcast
in a systematic and regular manner
on getting requests from University
of Calcutta and Education Department
of Bengal Government.
If we discuss on the growth and development
of the educational radio in
India, a few landmark projects may be
remembered. The first such project
was the School Broadcast Project of
1937. It was experimented in four
metro cities of the country. The Audult
Education and Community
Development Project was commenced
in 1956. With the UNESCO, this project
was tried out in 144 villages of
Maharashtra. It was the first most successful
educational programme broadcast
by All India Radio. The Farm and
Home Broadcast project was administered
in 1966 to provide all necessary
information on agriculture and allied
topics.
The first higher education programme
was aired under the University
Broadcast Project, which was initiated
in 1965, with an aim to expand higher
education as widely as possible among
the different strata of society. The programmes
were prepared by the School
of Correspondence Studies of the
University of Delhi and the CIEFL,
Hyderabad for the All India radio.
The
another project ‘Language Learning
Project’ was commenced in 1979-80. It
was a joint venture of the AIR and the
Education department of the Rajasthan
Government to teach Hindi to the
school going children as first language
in 500 primary schools.
In Asia, the 44 radio and TV universities
in China (including the China
Central Radio and Television
University), Universities Terbuka in
Indonesia, and Indira Ghandi National
Open University have made extensive
use of radio and television, both for direct class teaching and for school broadcasting, to reach more of their
respective large populations. For these
institutions, broadcasts are often
accompanied by printed materials and
audio cassettes.For the distant learners
of the country, the landmark initaiative
was taken by the Indira Gandhi
National Open University in 1992 after
the University Broadcast Project of
University of Delhi. The Mumbai,
Hyderabad and Shillong stations of the
All India Radio were started broadcasting
of the IGNOU programmes.
The
first interactive radio counselling was
started in 1998 by the AIR with the initiative
of IGNOU. It was a grand success
in the educational broadcasting
history in India. Likewise, K K Handiqui
State Open University, Assam started
an interactive radio phone in programme,
once in a month from the
beginning of the academic activities of
the university in 2008.
Gyan Vani is the first and only dedicated
educational radio in India.
After the
success of the Gyandarshan programme
on Doordarshan, the Indira
Gandhi National Open University was
planning to introduce independent FM
bands in 40 stations under the programme
named Gyan Vani. It is an
educational FM Radio network providing
programmes covering different
aspects and levels of education including
Primary and Secondary Education,
Adult Education, Technical and vocational
Education, Higher Education and
Extension Education. Gyan Vani,
launched in November 2001 is an educational
FM Radio channel operated
through FM stations from various
places in the country. With 10 FM stations
at Allahabad, Bangalore,
Coimbatore, Visakhapatnam, Mumbai,
Lucknow, Bhopal, Kolkata, Chennai
and Delhi already on air, the network is
slated to expand to a total of 40 stations.
Gyan Vani stations operate as
media cooperatives, with the day-today
programmes contributed by various
educational institutions, institutes,
NGOs, government and semi-government
organisations, UN agencies,
Ministries such as Agriculture,
Environment, Health, Women and
Child Welfare and Science and
Technology, etc.
In Assam, the regular broadcasting of
educational programme was first aired
by Akashvani, Guwahati on April 18,
1960 at 1.10 pm with the name of the
programme was ‘Vidyarthi Anusthan’
(programme for students).
There are three general approaches to
the use of radio in education. First of all
broadcast may be the substitute of
teacher in class room. Secondly, providing
teaching-learning materials
through broadcast system; and thirdly,
general educational programming over
community, national and international
stations which provide general and
informal educational opportunities. IRI
can be the best example in this context.
Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI)
consists of “ready-made 20-30 minute
direct teaching and learning exercises
to the classroom on a daily basis. The
radio lessons, developed around specific
learning objectives at particular
levels of maths, science, health and
languages in national curricula, are
intended to improve the quality of
classroom teaching and to act as a
regular, structured aid to poorly trained
classroom teachers in underresourced
schools.” IRI projects have
been implemented in Latin America
and Africa.
In Asia, IRI was first implemented
in Thailand in 1980; Indonesia,
Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal rolled
out their own IRI projects in the 1990s.
Farm school on air as a method of
communicating distant education on
farming has been adopted by many
AIR stations in its early period of broadcasting.
Besides imparting technical
and other information, the thrust of the
broadcasts are dissemination of information
relating to ways and means for
increased production of vegetables
and fruits etc; diversification of agriculture,
social forestry, preservation of
environment and farm forestry; poverty
alleviation schemes, health and sanitation
etc.; adult education programmes
and role of panchayats in rural development.
Interactive broadcasts like the
Phone-in-Programme, Radio Bridge
and Voice Mail, apart from people's
forum programmes, are recent innovations
in AIR broadcasting. In the
Phone-in-Programme on education,
people call to the station on a given
telephone number at the time of broadcast
and ask questions regarding their
queries on education and the experts
at the broadcasting stations reply to
their queries immediately.
Using radio in educational system can
promote the confidence level of the
learners, which can raise the academic
standard as whole. On the other
hand it enables the teachers to share
their views and ideas related to
increasing academic performance. It
opens the way to enable the teachers
to asses their teaching qualities. It not
only encourages the competition
among the learners but also motivate
the teachers for constructive competition.
It offers the exposer to learners to
an educational environment beyond
the classroom which was strongly
emphasised by Gurudev Rabindranath
Tagore ‘Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high; where
knowledge is free; where the world has
not been broken up into fragments by
narrow domestic walls’.
(Dr. Ankuran Dutta is the Deputy
Director (Multimedia) at K K
Handiqui State Open University,
Guwahati. Dr. Anamika Ray is an
Assistant Professor in the
Department of Communication and
Journalism, Gauhati University.
Email : ankurandutta@gmail.com)
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