Ian Malcolm, a high school drama and English teacher in Kingston, Ont., said that students unconsciously learn and mimic aggressive attitudes from television, even from apparently harmless situation comedies. And they are prickly with each other and with teachers. Besides influencing behaviour, television may also be affecting students' ability to learn. Malcolm said that students raised on television are passive, have short attention spans and become twitchy in class quickly. He added that teachers have to jolt their students frequently with startling information to keep their attention.
Students have no patience for dialogue or subtle humor.
They want action. Although most Canadian parents have been slow to express their discontent with television programming, the 20,000-member Action for Children's Television has scored a significant political victory in the United States. Still, a review by consumer groups of 58 stations in August revealed that none had produced new programming to comply with the law. Instead, they had simply relabeled existing programs, in many cases cartoons, as educational. They were thumbing their nose at the Children's Television Act, and you can't really do that to Congress.