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When children arrive for their first day of kindergarten in our local
schools, they typically have already logged more hours watching TV
than they will spend in all their elementary classrooms combined.
If you add to these staggering statistics the amount of time our young
people spend listening to radio, watching movies, and reading newspapers
and magazines, you begin to understand the impact that the mass media
play in the educational process — whether or not they are trying.
The media have our children’s attention for more time than we
do, as educators and as parents.
What does this mean? Social scientists still don’t completely
agree on what impact the media have on us as individuals and as a society.
Certainly they have changed the ways in which we spend our free time.
Also, evidence shows that while the media don’t tell us what
to think, they tell us what to think ABOUT. They set the agenda for
discussion and thought.
The media can also be a potent tool in education. In fact, the founding
fathers of television envisioned a medium that would bring culture
to the masses — theatre, opera, and concerts. That vision got
clouded when it became clear that fortunes could be made by bringing
to the masses the type of entertainment they already enjoyed. Advertisers
wanted to air their wares on programs that reached the most people,
and those were the programs that pandered to the widest possible tastes.
It’s important that we understand the functionings of the media
so that we can all become more critical viewers — and can teach
our youngsters critical viewing skills as well.
When my office first conducted a survey of media consumption among
the 50,000 public school students in Santa Barbara County some 10 years
ago, we found what we call the “wired bedroom” — youngsters’ bedrooms
filled with televisions, VCRs, radios, stereos, and telephones in striking
numbers. If anything, these figures have most likely moved in the direction
of more wiring. We also found that “A” students were far
less likely to have all this electronic equipment in their bedrooms.
It has always been clear that there is no substitute for parental involvement.
This means taking control of how much television viewing occurs, when
it occurs, and what is actually viewed.
Television and all the mass media can be powerful instruments, firing
the imagination of young people, teaching them about their culture
and their heritage. The important point is that we must all serve as
gatekeepers, making sure our children have access to quality material
and cutting down on the types of messages that seem inappropriate,
upsetting, or false.
As Edward R. Murrow said of television, “This instrument can
teach, it can illuminate, yes, and it can even inspire. But it can
do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those
ends. Otherwise it is merely lights and wires in a box.”
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