Give the Box the Boot
Several years ago we received an unusual love letter in the mail. Standing ugly and incongruous amidst a shoreline vista, our devotee declared plaintively, “I miss your longing gaze...”
“My Dearest,” he continued, “I can’t help but notice you’ve been a little distant lately.” Incidentally, we haven’t invited him to our house for more than twelve years. He closed his epistle affectionately nonetheless: “Yours Forever, your TV.”
Lest you believe that I fabricated this caricature, we actually did get such a note-card. It was a promotional for a TV service our old box wistfully hoped would help us “remember why we fell in love in the first place.”
That crush has long passed. Yes, my family has been without a television for more than twelve years, and, like Wendell Berry, congratulate ourselves on our deprivation.
The goal is not so much to get rid of the television as it is to pursue a life that is wholesome and productive. If deliberate steps aren’t taken, the television may only leave a gap easily filled by equally useless and destructive activities. When our parents decided to give the box the boot, they supplied us young children with new books and board games. These helped tide us over the first weeks of transition—after which we discovered long afternoon games.
This brings me to my next point. Do not be anxious about “filling” the day with “activities,” even wholesome and productive ones. Some breathing time—time to lie fallow, time to think—is important, too. A few stretches of boredom soon taught my little siblings and I to play the most marvelous, elaborate games that lasted hours and sometimes days. I have so many fond memories of those games! So there is no need to be very afraid of long stretches of nothing planned to “do.” You might be surprised at the wonderful projects and pursuits to which boredom may drive you—without a television to whittle away uselessly at the vacant hours.
Not ready yet to get rid of the television entirely? I read this good trick some time ago, and thought it sounded effective. Cover the television with a pretty cloth and set books or knickknacks on top. Not only does the television cease to be the glaring focal point of the room, but watching television becomes a more deliberate choice, as you have to remove the items and cloth before you can watch. Turning on the television will now be something of a chore!
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A predictable objection is, “What about educational programs?” What about them? After all, is television—an interpretation of reality based on manipulated images flitting constantly across a screen—an ideal or even appropriate medium of education?
Consider nature programming. Time spent virtually exploring the African plains is time lost from experiencing and appreciating the local nature. (And you may be surprised to find that Africa really isn’t so very exciting—no soaring music, no color enhancement, no dramatic close-ups, no skipping blithely over several months’ time or several hundred miles—just nature doing its thing on God’s own slow time). This touched-up programming is indeed compelling, but it devalues direct, unmediated contact with the real world, and makes slow-paced real-life nature seem boring to many children. There may be more of one kind of value in contemplating a real pebble in one’s own hand than in watching any nature program about the Andes mountains.
Though there were no televisions during the Victorian Era, educator Charlotte Mason made several pertinent remarks. “But pray,” Miss Mason asked parents and teachers, “let [the child] work with things and not with signs—the things of Nature in their own places, meadow and hedgerow, woods and shore.” “Children get all their knowledge second-hand,” she said. “They are so sated with wonders that nothing surprises them; and they are so little used to see for themselves, that nothing interests them.” She maintains, “There is no sort of knowledge to be got in these years so valuable to children as that which they get for themselves of the world they live in.”
Televisions and computers are of limited (limited) benefit to older children and adults whose cognitive abilities have already developed on sounder lines. For young children the emphasis should be on exploring one’s own world first-hand. Content isn’t the only consideration. Pixelation, radiant light, rapid movement sequences—all these aspects of television and computer have disturbing and sustained effects on brain wave patterns. (Read this article.) I recommend Dr. Healy’s informative but accessible book Failure to Connect for those interested in learning more about the effect of educational television and computer programs on the cognitive abilities of children. I likewise highly recommend Neil Postman’s definitive book Amusing Ourselves to Death.
Photograph: Copyright status unknown.
Text © 2011 by Handmaidens of the Shepherd.
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HANDMAIDEN said...
Full disclosure: We do not have a television, but we do have a projector and screen with which we can watch films. The elaborate set-up makes idle viewing a very rare thing, and we average a movie a week. Now and again, we’ll splurge and watch quite a bit at once. As a matter of fact, while sick at home this weekend, we completed a three-days marathon of Wives and Daughters and The Barchester Chronicles.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011 06:59 PM
Tuesday, April 26, 2011