Educational Radio, Childhood, and Philanthropy: A New Role for the Humanities in Popular Culture, 1924–1941

Abstract

Rockefeller philanthropies' support for educational radio began in the 1920s and increased in the 1930s in response to the Depression. Radio was funded as part of the humanities. Broadcasts were intended to uplift culture and introduce new ideas and practices to schools and families. Educational radio was also seen as a means of social control, to adjust popular culture to changing economic conditions. Rockefeller support for experimental radio in the 1930s significantly advanced the new field of communication studies by the 1940s. The social uses of broadcasting in this period raise questions about the role of media, past and present.