It's easy to blame the networks, but we need to remember that they produce programming in response to what their surveys show people watch. People say they want one thing but often respond to another, as many chain restaurants found when they introduced healthful, low-fat food, only to find that the demand to have such products available was in no way matched by the demand to consume them. Typical noneducational television can help children acquire some concepts and some vocabulary, but only to the relatively low level allowed on most shows. Not only are many shows relatively mindless, but so is the kind of information processing required to understand them. Anyone who has ever appeared on shows quickly learns that even responses to interviews on supposedly educational programs need to be kept short, simple, and direct.
Banal questions encourage banal answers.
For the most part, television does not encourage the development of active, mindful, and critical thinking. The problem is not inherent in the medium, as anyone who has watched educational shows can confirm. It is in the use of the medium. This use is dictated, in turn, by demand, which determines the dollars sponsors are willing to pay to advertise their products on the shows. If we want change, we need to be willing to pay for it, which means financial support for educational programming.