We’ve previously written about the School Time program on WLS Chicago, which started in 1937. Every day at 1:00 PM, the station carried a program especially for school children, which was played in many schools in the region.

Eighty years ago, the station boasts in this ad on the cover of Broadcasting magazine, November 20, 1944, about how successful it was. The station reports that a single announcement offering a color map of the Brookfield Zoo. 5,629 letters flooded the station asking for a copy of the map. While the ad noted that the School Time program wasn’t for sale, they had plenty of programs that were, and an ad on the station promised to deliver results.

Radio has been used over the years to provide instruction in many different disciplines. But for some reason, this one never caught on. A hundred years ago today, the August 16, 1924, issue of Radio World carried this photo showing radio being used to give swimming lessons.

The photo shows one Mary Gustin, and the swimming instructor is one E.C. Dalton, who is behind the microphone of New York station WEAF.  She is about to plunge into the water, where she will listen in to her instructions.

The New York city high school students shown above are presenting Macbeth over the airwaves of WNYC. They are featured in an article in the September 1938 issue of Radio Craft, which notes that a new “R” has found its way into education. In addition to Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmetic, the schools now included Radio.

The station presented two educational programs per day–one for elementary students, and one for the high schools. The fifth graders at P.S.92, Bronx, shown here are listening to one such program, which was picked up by an ordinary receiver in the room. Not all schools were yet equipped with radio, but the plan was for every classroom in the school system to have its very own radio in the near future.

The students appearing in the programs were selected by audition, and the magazine noted that there was no shortage of volunteers.

The same issue of the magazine also carried an editorial by Hugo Gernsback, who opined that schoolroom broadcasting would afford deserving young boys and girls and opportunity for self-expression never before available. He also reminded his readers that there was a very decent profit to be made by the enterprising radio man who goes after the business in education.

Distance learning is nothing new, as shown by these New York high school students 100 years ago, pictured in the July 1923 issue of Popular Science. While the magazine identifies the school as “Haarken High School” in New York, this is almost certainly a typo, and it should read Haaren High School, as confirmed by this site and others reporting the same accomplishment.

This is the accountancy class at Haaren, and the students are listening to a series of accountancy problems broadcast by WJZ in Newark, NJ (now WABC New York). A receiver and loudspeaker had been installed, and the students are seated at their adding machines. Problems were read slowly and distinctly, and the correct answers were read a few minutes later. “The general correctness of the classroom work was testimony of the clearness with which radio waves carried.”

Witnessing the successful demonstration are officials of the city Board of Education, as well as more than 25 principals of city high schools.

The students shown here are now almost 100 years old, but 85 years ago, they were learning about the atmosphere in science class. These students, Marian Oakley, Henry Kehrer, Hannah Esterman, and Bruce Kunkel, were receiving instruction in person from science specialist Harry A. Carpenter, but hundreds of other students were taking part in the same class by radio, on station WHAM.

For several years, the Rochester, NY, schools had been conducting this sort of distance learning via radio. Afternoons, radios would be switched on in classrooms both in and outside of Rochester, and students would get their lectures by radio. Lessons could include well known guest speakers, music programs featuring the Rochester Civic Orchestra, and programs on books presented by the Rochester Public Library. The photo shown here appeared in the February 1938 issue of Rural Radio, and the students shown here attended Frank Fowler Dow School No. 52.