Switches for children: Strategies of critical transmission in “Aufklärung für Kinder”

Abstract

This paper focuses on Walter Benjamin’s radio broadcasts for children which comprise Aufklärung für Kinder. The objective is to emphasize the thematic and stylistic idiosyncrasy that these radio programmes transmitted to the young public – a kind of audience which resists and at the same time accepts what radio says, whatever it says. We examine the many strategies of critical transmission which make up these programmes, which lie not only in the topics addressed, but also in the different discursive layers used: from the choice of enunciative voices which break with the unidirectionality of the apparatus, to the many receptions that these broadcasts may open without being dictated. Instead of provoking reactions, these programmes offer critical skills which could help children build their own responses to the world.