The Difference between the Past and the Future
Today, it is very hard to find a child who doesn’t watch TV. I know from observation that it is one of the main ways that children learn about what is going on in the world and our society. This can either be a good thing or a bad. In his scholarly article Giroux explains in his to us that the issue with “teaching machines” is that they teach our younger generation things that they shouldn’t know yet (Giroux 567). Teaching them something they aren’t ready for makes them grow up faster. In the text of Robert Scholes, he agrees that we learn through teaching machines. “We are, for instance, offered a kind of power through the enhancement of our vision (Scholes 371). These two are very similar because they both come out and tell the readers how teaching machines can be good and bad and how they have learned from them themselves. I hope to inform all readers of what can be learned from these so called “teaching machines” whether good of bad.
One thing that can come from watching TV is an overview of what is going on in the world. Depending on what is going on it can either be good or bad. A good example is the war in Iraq. I can’t believe it has come to the point where it is bad for children to watch the news. I wouldn’t want my children to be watching us bomb another country or watch the devastating aftermath of a suicide bombing. However, a good thing that TV offers is children’s shows. These shows discuss and teach kids how to act. They show them how to share, care, and socialize with people. These shows such as Bernie or Arthur show you life lessons and how to come about solving them. One of my favorite episodes of Arthur is when he goes to the dentist the first time and is scared but then realizes that he is trying to help me rather than hurt me. Just about every episode of Barney has to do with sharing and treating others as you would like to be treated.
The bad things that can come from TV are much greater than the good things that can. Almost everything that is on TV either has violence or sex in it. According to the Parents Television Council, Children spend more time watching Television than any other activity except sleep. They don’t care what kind of message it sends to its audience as long as they get the ratings. All they care about is the money, with no consequences with the actions of the viewers. I think that these shows send bad examples for children. I definitely wouldn’t want my kids to be watching some of the shows that are on TV now. Even the media puts violence in front of us every night. Just the other night I was watching the news and they were talking about the effects of the war on other countries and body count from IEDs. I don’t remember one time that I watched the news without some kind of violence on it. The movie “Bowling for Columbine” other than its purpose of informing us about gun violence and gun control, hit the nail on the head when it said that the media is one of the strongest and biggest reasons why the crime rate is so high. In the eyes of American’s, violence is an everyday thing. From road rage to killing people, we experience and go through some sort of violence on a daily basis. In this movie, one of the things that it shows the audience is the differences between America’s media and Canada’s media. All that was on our news was war, theft, murder, and drugs. Then they showed us what it looks like to watch the news in Canada. They had stories of local people doing good things with little to no violence. The violence that was shown was on for such a short period of time that you didn’t have much time to think about it.
Another big influence on young children is Walt Disney movies. They try to appeal to the older crowd making their movies somewhat unacceptable for children to watch. They don’t care what kind of message it sends as long as people buy Disney movies. Children might not notice what the movies are about now, but when they get older, the views that were distilled in them from watching movies that might promote racism and non-factual events that happened, will inherently make them, not necessarily racist but think of themselves as being superior to another culture. The reason why children find these animated films so interesting is because “Hollywood films, construct a dreamlike world of security, coherence, and childhood innocence” (Giroux 569).
In the article that Giroux wrote he discusses how in Aladdin they criticize another culture with catch songs and where people live. This is only one of many movies where stereotyping occurs. Pocahontas for example portrays Indians as being hostile, but white people were the ones who came and took their land with no concern for them. This movie is made in the context of white man’s idea of what Native Americans are like. In this movie stereotypical men and women are present, the women are always in the village taking care of the children and cooking while the men are typically found outside the village hunting and fishing. This puts in children’s minds that they are supposed to act like this, Women are supposed to stay at home while the men work. This is not true and as time goes on it is proven false. Women are now a big part of the working world than ever. They too provide for their families. I think that children need to have an open mind about these things instead of being brainwashed into what the stereotype is.
Little things like this stick with children as they grow up, and can affect them in more ways than people realize. Having parents that are involved in their kids life is important for their cognitive thinking. Giroux says “Kids learn from Disney films, so maybe it is time parents and educators paid closer attention to what these films are saying” (Giroux 569). All Giroux and Scholes are trying to do is explain to everyone that it is not alright to just let your children live their lives on their own. Parents need to be more involved in their children.
Works Cited
Greene, Stuart. Lidinsky, April. From Inquiry to Academic Writing: Scholes, Robert. On
Reading a Video Text: 370-375 Print.
Greene, Stuart. Lidinsky, April. From Inquiry to Academic Writing: Giroux, A. Henry.
Children’s Culture and Disney’s Animated Films: 567-591
“Facts and TV Statistics.” Parents Television Council. Parents
Television Council, 2010. Web. 2 May 2011.
Moore, Michael, Dir. Bowling For Columbine. Dir. Michael Moore."
Alliance Atlantis Communications: 2001, Film.
