Classic FM has launched the first poll (probably) to discover Britain’s favourite piece of classical music as voted for by children. Voting closes next week, and the winner will be announced five days later. Will it be Beethoven’s Für Elise or John Williams’s Harry Potter, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Bumblebee or Tchaikovsky’s Sugar-Plum Fairy? Those are four of the 48 suggestions, all of which can be played, that act as a helpful guide on the poll’s special website.

But anything can be nominated and there are no restrictions — unlike a similar listeners’ poll Classic mounted with Radio Times last year, in which the all-time favourite soloist had to be from a shortlist of 10 (which didn’t even include Vladimir Ashkenazy).

All these polls benefit from a dash of scepticism. This one is a tie-up between Classic and Decca and, because you have to enter some details about yourself, will provide a valuable database for both companies and their marketing departments. Entrants might also be motivated by the fact that they are entered into a free draw to win tickets to The Nutcracker at the Coliseum. And there is a hard-headed ratings imperative: Classic, already popular among students, who turn to it for relaxation before exams, is keen to continue building its young audience. Under-18s have risen 70% in a year and now number 573,000, almost a 10th of listeners.

There are wider public purposes as well, though. The encouragement to children to take an interest in great music supports two larger projects — the government’s designation of 2009-10 as the National Year of Music, and Classic FM’s own Arts & Kids Week, taking place next week over the October half-term. Child prodigies, teenage composers and music specially written for children will all be covered in special programmes. Arts & Kids Week, now in its seventh year, stems from Prince Charles’s Foundation for Children & the Arts, which, as he says, “gives thousands of children each year a chance to discover music — and all the arts — for themselves”.

I do not mean to suggest by all this that other stations do nothing for children. Radio 4 broadcast Emil and the Detectives yesterday. The Proms have family concerts every summer and half-price tickets for under-16s. BBC 7 offers four hours of children’s output a day. Fun Kids, which was created by the indomitable children’s radio champion Susan Stranks, is still to be heard on DAB and online. (All this follows a long period of neglect, during which, at one point, British radio abandoned children altogether.) But Classic, in various ways, makes a special effort: its boss, Darren Henley, has just written a rather good book introducing children to classical music, for which Prince Charles has written the foreword.

Having done its bit for music education, could not Classic, or HRH’s charity, or radio, or any combination of these, turn their attentions to its literary equivalent? James Naughtie nearly fell off his chair when told on the Today programme nine days ago that 58% of primary-school teachers in England could not name more than two poets. He had to have it repeated to him. I was similarly dumbfounded. Countless others must have been too. But this is what a literacy survey conducted by academics did indeed find. Radio is the ideal medium for poetry, as for music, and it must come to the rescue.

paul.donovan@sunday-times.co.uk

Editor's choice

• The super cool Vampire Weekend
• Streep and Baldwin get complicated
• Guy Ritchie on Sherlock Holmes