Advantages and Disadvantages of TV
...ues on with his idea on how children should learn. It is not what they are learning, since television shows can all be educational, it is how you learn it that is important. By watching television, the children are only expected to play a viewer role, while not realizing the familiarity of their role as a student in a classroom. This is leading American culture in the process of converting their culture from a word-centered to an image-centered society. Television is more and more becoming a curriculum as pointed out by Postman. It influences, warps and manipulates the young minds of children into believing that education is entertainment. Postman(1985) states that there are three basic commandments that educational television provides (pgs.147,148). The first one is “Thou shalt have no prerequisites.” It means that the viewer does not have to watch a previous episode or need to watch it from the start to finish. One can just jump in anytime and still understand it. The second commandment is “Thou shalt induce no perplexity.” If the show becomes confusing and the viewer doesn’t understand, one can simply just change the channel. The final commandment is “Thou shalt avoid exposition like the ten plagues visited upon Egypt.” In this Postman means that it is not the aim of television to try to explain something, which can be done by books, but rather through entertainment in ways like story telling with creative images and sound effects. Neil Postman has made it very clear of what television is doing to the educational system. It is taking away the traditional way of classroom learning, of how to interact with other people and respecting your elders. Television shows such as Sesame Street did not teach one those things, but it did teach children letters, words, numbers, classification and other skills considered to be important for school success. I agree with Postman that television as a teaching device is not all that great, also with its entertainment programs only encourages people to love television more, but it also depends on the viewer. Television is like a drug. It is up to the viewer if he/she wants more of it, how much resistance t...