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 y mother taught
reading in a public school in a bad neighborhood in Newark, New
Jersey, and she insisted that
she never had a student who failed to learn to read. She was a great
teacher, and when she died, my wife and I received letters from
people we had never met, of the sort "you don't know me, but let
me tell you what a great woman your mother was…" Some of them
came from men and women who had gone on to great success; one had
become mayor of Newark. Others were just normal people, but all
were grateful that she had taught them to read.
This wonderful teacher was deeply shaken by Sesame Street,
which she saw as a threat to the education of American children.
She believed that Sesame Street undercut her efforts to teach
her students, for reasons I believe are crucial to understanding
the mounting wave of violence among our young people. First, she
said, Sesame Street was passive, not active. Kids just sat
in front of the tube and watched, they weren't asked to do anything.
My mother knew that learning was an activity, it required students
to constantly respond to challenges, and they couldn't really learn
much of anything by just sitting there.
Second, Sesame Street conveyed the utterly false message
that learning was "fun," a form of entertainment. From Big Bird
to Oscar the Grouch, the whole thing was like an animated cartoon,
something kids could laugh at, as if it were a flick. But learning
isn't fun, at least in that sense; it's hard work. By entertaining
the kids, Sesame Street failed to teach them how to work
at learning, and indeed undercut the
| “Our
TV-watching children increasingly view life as an entertainment
extravaganza, in which they yearn to play a starring role.” |
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mental discipline required of all students, at whatever level of
education.
Third, Sesame Street presented its material in short segments,
typically four to six minutes each. But real learning involves expanding
the attention span of students, so that they can eventually concentrate
for long periods of time.
All this came to mind last week when I read a BBC article on some
research on Alzheimer's, which suggested that people who spend many
hours watching television when they are young are more likely to
develop dementia than those who read books instead. It seems my
mother was onto something, now confirmed by this research: television
is bad for children. Just as my mother believed, it looks like watching
television is bad, because it gets in the way of the development
of the brain. We've all read about the fascinating discoveries about
the "hard wiring" of the human brain in the first few years of childhood,
and how crucial it is to "normal" development that we be spoken
to and read to by our parents and other loving persons. The hard
wiring takes place as we respond to these stimuli; the more we are
stimulated, the more we react, and thus we learn to speak, and eventually
to read.
Just like our muscles, the brain gets stronger when it is used,
and atrophies when it isn't used. It seems that lack of use also
leaves it vulnerable to degeneration later in life.
It may well be — certainly it's logical enough — that
the negative effects of TV on the brain might include an inability
to distinguish fantasy from reality, and that some of the violence
among our youth might be due to the same failure to develop the
brain in a normal fashion. This combines with the other deadly effect
of television: the presentation of life itself as a spectacle. Our
TV-watching children increasingly view life as an entertainment
extravaganza, in which they yearn to play a starring role, and here
the nasty content of so much modern broadcasting comes into play.
It is hard to watch an evening of TV without encountering unspeakable
violence, whose perpetrators are celebrated.
Put it all together, and you've got a pretty potent brew. The remedy
is as easily stated as it is impossible to administer: less television,
more books, and serious conversation. And, pace Rush Limbaugh, more
radio. Those of us who grew up listening to radio soaps had to use
our imagination all the time, and when our favorite heroes appeared
on the little screen for the first time, it was a terrible disappointment
(my imagined Lone Ranger was much cooler than the skinny guy on
TV, and my Tonto was infinitely more fascinating than Jay Silverheels).
It won't fly, I know. We're going to get more Alzheimer's at one
end of the life cycle, and more whacked-out kids at the other.
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