Short essay on Non formal education through television

With the launching of National Literacy Mission, the emphasis was laid on the utilization of television for adult education and the programmes of general interest and social awareness were broadcasted.

The impact studies of these programmes revealed that adults watching television had become better sources of information, males discussed television programmes more and females gained more knowledge in the areas of health and nutrition innovations, family planning and social problems. Television helped adult in developing favourable opinion regarding adults education.

Cherian (1986) studied the impact of the selected Health and hygiene, nutrition and family planning programmes of PI J Television (Under Kheda Communication Project) on the rural people of the Kheda District.

The findings revealed that there was significant gain in knowledge in the experimental groups about the importance of green leafy vegetables, polio vaccination and laproscopy.

Many studies have highlighted the fact that the deprived sections remained unreached by the television medium.

The broad content of rural programmes included areas like agriculture, animal husbandary, employment schemes, agricultural institutions, interviews with progressive farmers, documentaries on villages, cooperation and marketing, social education, healthcare and cultural programmes.

A study to examine the status and role performance of television Vis-a-vis other media in villages threw light on the following points.

• About 30 percent of the villagers remained completely unexposed to television. The non-participation among females was to the extent of 53 percent, while it was about 23 percent among the males.

• Illiteracy had been found to be an important barrier to television exposure and this was contrary to the general presumption that TV can effectively communicate with the illiterate audience.

· These having exposure to other media like print, radio, etc. maintained greater interaction with Television.

· The community TV sets exist only in better-off villages.

· The interior villages mostly depended upon traditional channels like the weekly market, kin groups, friends, local leaders and to a fairly large extent the radio.

To summarise, television has had some influence and undoubtedly on the social, cultural, political environment of the urban and rural masses.

In-depth studies need to be taken up to find out the impact of television in various age groups. Although television has contributed to development of a nation, its potential for development has not been fully tapped.

However, the major satellite and cable television companies in the world view India as one of the top five TV markets in the 21st century.

And now with the supreme court judgement on freeing airwaves from government monopoly, and private broadcasters, TV programme is poised to break new grounds in a big way as never before-

Originally television was a novelty, but now it has become medium- It is diffusing rapidly in India and intensifying the debate about its socio-culture impact on Indian society.