Site Contents:
Freedom-in-Education Newsletter
July 2006
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Pictures of the Month: Honeysuckle
and bumble bees
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The July Newsletter is about television,
an interesting topic as yet uncovered by Freedom-in-Education. Television is a major
issue in most families: when to watch it, what to watch, how long to watch it
for, or if one should watch it at all.
I do believe that television is slightly
addictive - and this is as true for adults as is it is for children. Once one
has sat oneself down to watch it, even if there is nothing interesting on, it
becomes hard to turn it off again, and I know that I will usually end up
watching things which are not only a terrible waste of time, but also put images
in my head which I could really do without!
It is quite clear that when a child is young television has a huge effect on them. If one stops to talk to a child nearly everything they say is copying an advert they heard, or imitating something they saw on television. The sights and sounds seem to fill their world, and the reason they are running round with toy guns pretending to blow each other up is usually due to something they saw on television. It is no wonder, then, that parents often try to protect their children from this as much as they can, and I think that in general this is a good idea.
When I was young I don't remember there
being a television around, and when I was a little older, we had a television
but I would never watch it without my parent's permission, - it was usually
pretty boring anyway. When I was about ten or eleven I went through a phase of
watching cartoons on television every day, and soon discovered that it never
left me feeling very good. The adverts aimed at children for toys, sweets, junky
drinks, and disgusting cereals were really quite shocking, and the gross noisy
way in which the channel was supposed to appeal to children I found highly
offensive, and not at all suited to my tastes.
Sometimes in other people's houses I would catch glimpses of the news which
would fill me with a dread and horror of television which can't easily be
described. I still remember how deeply appalled I was, when I saw pictures of
people who were dead and wounded being shown, whilst adults were casually eating
their dinner. These shots would instantly reduce me to tears, and make me feel
far too sick to eat, but to them it was considered an appropriate meal-time
accompaniment!
I am still shocked when I see murders being coolly discussed by the news presenters without reducing them to tears, and after having announced the deaths of so many people they put a cheery smile on their faces and say 'now time for the sport'. I don't think anyone is aware of the damage that television must do, putting ideas into people's heads that they would not otherwise have, hardening people in an area where they should not be hardened, and turning terrible tragedy into idle entertainment.
So I really don't think that television is the main culprit, but rather what is shown on it. If television showed things which were as good as things they now show are bad, then television could become a wonderful thing which inspired people and left them feeling better. One does occasionally see a good programme which shows one that this is the case. But even then to watch it in moderation is probably still a good idea, especially as regards children. After all, as Dad says in the article below, television only stimulates a child's brain, whereas ideally children should be able to learn whilst feeling and touching and moving and interacting at the same time.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the article, and also the pictures to the right - I took them just a couple of hours ago, and the bumble bee is so cute!
Best wishes
Wendy
Television: Junk Food for the Mind
This is an article that I wrote about fifteen years ago, but never had published. I often come across it from time to time when tidying up my office, and thought perhaps that it deserved a wider audience. The title, in particular, is popular with members of my family. I hope that it does not come across as a rant against television, but rather as a reminder that, like other aspects of modern technology, one has to be careful about how one introduces children to television.
A few years ago parents who gave their children healthy food were often considered to be kill-joys and cranks. Now, everyone, from the medical profession to people working in the food industry recognises that a diet of crisps and fizzy drinks is bad for children’s health and increases the risk of contracting life-threatening ailments in later life: everyone now agrees that the body is designed in such a way that it requires a constant supply of nutritious food over the first eighteen or so years of life if it is to grow and develop properly, and that a junk food diet does not supply those needs.
What is true for the body is even more true for the mind. A human being is one of the most complex things in Nature, taking longer to reach maturity than just about any other animal. This long period of development is required principally not by the body, but by the mind, which starts off blank and proceeds to acquire vast amounts of information and knowledge as a child grows up.
In order to acquire this knowledge the mind needs constant sensory stimulation, and this stimulation needs to be constantly maintained over a long period of time. The natural world provides a child with ever-changing, dynamic stimulation, of almost infinite variety, compared to which the experience of watching television is sadly lacking. Instead of having a multi-dimensional experience of sight, sound, taste, smell, touch and an interaction with another responsive human being, a child sitting in front of a television screen is largely inactive, is having only the senses of sight and sound stimulated, and is being given no chance to respond.
To the developing mind this is equivalent to sensory deprivation, and whilst the odd hour of watching television can be accommodated in the midst of an otherwise full life, a child who spends a significant proportion of their time watching television is inevitably missing out on the stimulation and input that they require in order to develop normally.
The problem is compounded by the fact that the input that children receive from television is not equally deficient in all aspects: children receive intense visual and audio input – which fills their heads with sights and sounds – whilst other senses are not stimulated at all. This seems to have a detrimental effect on children’s power of imagination.
The nature of the programmes watched gives further cause for concern. It is often said that even though there are some programmes that are not very good, this is compensated for to a certain extent by the fact that there are thoughtful documentaries, drama programmes, and educational programmes available for children to watch, which represent a more acceptable face of television. Interestingly, in the early days of television there do appear to have been more of these sorts of programmes, but television has become a victim of its own shortcomings: children brought up on television do not have the attention span, the language skills, or the level of understanding required to appreciate thought-provoking or subtle broadcasting, and therefore producers of children’s television have had to make their programmes ever more inane, garish, and banal in order to maintain their audience figures.
Further problems are caused by television advertisements which essentially seek to sell children products before they are old enough to be able to realise that one should not believe everything that one sees on a television screen.
One argument put forward in favour of television is the social education that children can get from watching contemporary dramas such as soap operas. However, these programmes may, in fact, do even more harm than those which more obviously bear no relationship to everyday life. A young teenager immersed in a world of television soap operas may imagine that they know everything that there is to be known about things such as bereavement, drug addiction, relationships, and childbirth, but watching actors talking about these things in the two-dimensional world of television is far removed from real-life experience, and when young people find themselves caught up in these situations, they find that they have nothing substantial to fall back on if their view of life has been formed by television.
Of course, television is a factor of modern life and young people have to be introduced to it at some time or other: but not necessarily when they are very young. Children had enough to keep them fully occupied before the advent of modern technology. Things such as acquiring language skills, learning social skills, and developing an understanding of the natural world are just as important now as they ever were and still require as much time to pick up as in the past. Television does not help in this process: it distracts children from more fruitful activities, it stultifies their imaginations, it over-stimulates one area of the mind to the detriment of others, and above all it is a waste of precious time.
The comparison of television with junk food is appropriate because just as junk food is designed to look like real food, but fails to provide the body with the nourishment that it requires, so television appears to be interesting and informative, but in reality fails to provide children with the level of stimulation that they require.Gareth Lewis
Your letters and comments are welcome. You can send them to Gareth
Lewis at the following address, or to me at the address beneath:
gareth.lewis@freedom-in-education.co.uk
wendy@freedom-in-education.co.uk