Opinion: In my View - Listening to reason
'One two three four five
Once I caught a fish alive ...'
What we learn through song and rhyme when very young tends to stick. There's plenty of evidence to show that singing and making music from babyhood gives children a head start when they begin school. Yet in one survey more than a quarter of parents and carers admitted they now prefer to sing along to the pop charts with children.
But pop lyrics, if you can decipher them at all, tend to be about adult relationships and teen angst or even knives, guns and whoring - unsuitable and certainly irrelevant for the very young - whereas the rhyme above can help children learn to count and identify right from left, as well as being fun and easy to understand. For three years I ran an experiment in London called abracaDABra! It was pop-free radio for children, offering music and song intertwined with stories, poems, fun and games. Delighted parents and carers told us that daily listening encouraged their toddlers to chatter and communicate and that even the title chimed well with baby babble. Older children loved participating in making radio programmes too.
This month the BBC axed Go4It, the last half- hour of children's radio on its mainstream networks. The cull has been widely condemned.
Professionals in early years confirm that radio brings a necessary balance to the predominant screen and keyboard culture that is frequently linked with increases in childhood obesity, attention disorders and language delay.
A group of prominent educators want an independent evaluation of radio's potential in children's development and language acquisition as part of the government's SLCN Action Plan. The BBC Trust wants practical partnerships with socially conscious organisations to reduce an escalating public sector broadcasting deficit. Children's radio is surely the ideal catalyst.
