But you know, I noticed, even before hearing you, that after they have watched a morning of video tapes, they come out of the room, sort of floating, spacey, really. They wander aimlessly for awhile. I told their mother that it takes them about one hour to recover from two video tapes. Real education involves a feeling of mastery, ability to respond to situations, to articulate ideas, and respond thoughtfully . Whether we talk about leadership, creativity, responsibility, or motivation , we are describing action.
Television encourages passive responses.
Certainly it encourages absorption, and arguably understanding, but it does not, and cannot, by its very nature, encourage doing, mastery, task completion, creativity, independent thinking - all those things associated with being a functioning and productively busy human being. Schools must, by their nature, focus on doing and task completion. The kids took the parents up on the bet and they won. To the parents amazement, the children asked the parents not to return the TV to the home. The kids had found, over the year, that it was just too much fun to be doing things with their parents and in a self-motivated way.