These television celebrities have more temporal power than the teachings of Aristotle and Plato have built up over the centuries. Television, in fact, has greater power over the lives of most Americans than any educational system or government or church.
Children are particularly susceptible.
TV One of the most disturbing truths about TV is that it eats books. Once out of school, nearly 60 percent of all adult Americans have never read a single book, and most of the rest read only one book a year. He also points out that bachelor's degrees in English literature have declined by 33 percent in the last twenty years and that in many universities the courses are largely reduced to remedial reading. American libraries, he adds, are in crisis, with few patrons to support them. Thousands of teachers at the elementary, secondary and college levels can testify that their students' writing exhibits a tendency towards superficiality that wasn't seen, say, ten or fifteen years ago.