“Developing Critical Listening”

Abstract

The mid-1930s saw broadcasters, educators, and researchers coalesce around the study and implementation of critical listening for educational radio as a new technology for school instruction. These early media literacy researchers were motivated by ambitions to counter distracted and passive listening caused by commercial radio, advertising, and propaganda; to foreground the aural sense in classrooms dominated by reading and writing; and to promote democratic listening in young people. The following investigation draws from previously unexamined archival materials from research centers and radio schools of the air in Ohio and Wisconsin in addition to the oral history of Dorothy Gordon, progressive host of the Youth Forum educational program on New York Times–owned WQXR-AM. This article provides a critical perspective on the role of listening, sound technologies, and literacies for contemporary concerns about political polarization, tensions between commercial and noncommercial media, and democratic engagement.