By Air

A complex, hastily expanded phenomenon, Radio has impinged upon Education quite as powerfully but even more crudely than upon the worlds of Music, Politics, Advertising, Theatre, Sport, Religion. A few of its developments have been definitely educational; others, frankly commercial, have had cultural aspirations (President Merlin Hall Aylesworth of National Broadcasting Co. announced last year in his annual report that Pepsodent Toothpaste's Amos 'n Andy "are working in a new art form").

But last week a mighty hook-up of radio and education was revealed: a National Advisory Council on Radio Education. Organized last year, it is now backed by John Davison Rockefeller Jr. and the Carnegie Corporation, who promise to finance it for the next three years. Its president is Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan of California Institute of Technology; its vice president, President Livingston Farrand of Cornell University; its board chairman, Banker Norman H. Davis. Executive committee and active members include many a famed educator, publicist, business man, scientist. Director is Levering Tyson who has' retired as head of Columbia University's Department of Home Study to take the job.

Educational institutions in the U. S. own and operate 51 of the 614 licensed broadcasting stations in the land. About the same number of institutions broadcast over commercial stations. Year ago an Advisory Committee on Education by Radio, appointed by Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur, reported that 15.2% of all the Nation's broadcasting "appeared" to have an educational purpose. One of the earliest to broadcast was the University of Iowa, which began in 1914, long before radio telephony was perfected. Now many an institution, mostly in the Middle and Far West, gives courses ranging from Low German (University of South Dakota) to Astronomy (Baldwin-Wallace College, Berea, Ohio). Some of the courses may be taken for college credit (generally by payment of a fee). The Ohio State Department of Education, with a grant from the Legislature and time donated by local stations, sponsors the Ohio School of the Air, open to all listeners in. Last year schools in more than 335 Ohio towns were equipped to hear these programs.

Radio stations often donate left-over time to educational projects. National Broadcasting Co.'s Aylesworth promises: "When [educators] are ready we will place our facilities at their disposal without charge."

The National Advisory Council's purpose will be to get the educators ready. First of its committees, a group of 13 engineers and scientists, meets this week.

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