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Jewish World Review March 14, 2001 / 19 Adar, 5761
Michael Ledeen
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
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
03/09/00: Time for a good, old-fashioned purge
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