I recently commented on Rational Jenn's latest post about how she handles her children's screen time. There's been a great discussion in the comments and Jenn asked me to clarify my own. So since I do take requests, here's an expanded version of my view on the matter.
In general, I don't think there is anything wrong with television, movies, and video games. They all have their place and they are Good Things. So let's get the extreme views out of the way.
It is quite obvious that sitting in front of a screen like a zombie for hours and hours a day is just a waste of precious time. Movies and television shows are entertainment (and sometimes art), to be used for relaxation and as a break (and sometimes as spiritual fuel). By definition, this should supplement your usual activities, not take them over. The same goes for video games which are less passive, but still fundamentally recreation. Let's all agree that watching too much TV is bad for kids and adults alike. We'll get more specific later.
On the other hand, some people view all screen time as inherently bad, for all ages. I can't even imagine a reason for this view, it is so absurd. I think the only reason anybody even considers it is because of the horrible morality of renunciation called Christianity. Christianity damns every conceivable human pleasure, including sex, eating for pleasure, using technology to ease physical burdens, and even dancing. We now scoff at some of these sacrifices (see, Footloose) but even those of us who have explicitly rejected religion sometimes succumb to elements of the morality it has infused into our culture. Altruism and sacrifice in general are seen as noble acts, and the mind-body dichotomy is everywhere in our culture. We are suspicious of anything that appeals to our lowly physical needs, because it is the spiritual that we should be focused on. Television is seen as a pleasure of the body, not the mind/spirit, and so it can't be good. But, as always, the evil can't survive without the good. Nobody can act consistently on false ideas, or they would die. Without relaxation, humor, and physical pleasure, life would not be worth living. So, many people start from this premise but moderate it by deciding that TV is ok in small doses, or that television shows are bad but movies are good, or that video games are allowable because they can be educational. Although there are rational reasons for those views, what I'm saying is that much of the time, I suspect people are coming from the irrational premise and just happening to arrive at a reasonable place. I think it is absolutely critical to reject the bad premise from the start and to state emphatically that, fundamentally, television, movies and video games are values. Whew! It felt good to write that because that kind of renunciation makes me very angry.
But just because something is good doesn't mean that it is good for everybody, all the time. Enter: children and television. We've already eliminated the extreme views. Obviously we don't want our kids to be zombies and we don't want to deny them pleasure or teach them that pleasure is bad.
I take the position that some kinds of TV and movies are inappropriate because they are not intelligible at the child's level of development. But I must say that as long as the viewing time is limited, it makes no difference because the majority of the child's environment will be intelligible. What we must avoid is too much sensory data that the child simply can't grasp, or he will start to develop a metaphysical world-view that he is not capable of understanding his environment. In other words, for all you Objectivists out there, you don't want to give him a malevolent-universe-premise: the core belief that the world and/or people are unintelligible and he cannot use his mind and act to achieve values.
This is exactly the Montessori principle of giving the child a challenge, but making it something that is possible to succeed with. You give a one-year-old blocks, but not Lego's. You give a two-year-old a pegboard but not a shoelace to tie. There is a hierarchy of knowledge, and for babies and toddlers who are learning to resolve the chaos into entities and to observe cause and effect, TV is simply inexplicable. It's not that they can't understand how the CRT or the radio signal works. It's not even that TV is "pretend" or displayed on a screen. It's that they can't possibly understand the content of most children's shows.
I really think that it would take quite a bit of chaotic input to harm the child this way. But it would take a whole lot less than 2 hours a day, which you might say is reasonable for an adult. As a baby, it actually probably matters less. Babies don't even perceive entities when they are first born. They must learn to integrate the sensory data they observe into percepts and then entities. While they are in this state, and even some time after, I think there are some great things they can watch on TV. One video I liked to let Sam watch when she was little was a Baby Einstein DVD with classical music and images of movement and color in the form of toys spinning, water flowing, and lights dancing. I wouldn't say that this type of video is going to make your child smarter, but I do think that the rhythmic, isolated movements were exactly what she was able to process. Also, occasionally watching the nightly news with its discussions of violence, or even a wrestling match would be less of a concern for a baby than for an older child, since they couldn't make anything out of it anyway.
I think by 1 or 2 years old, the child can distinguish that there are characters acting on the screen and that it is "pretend" in some vague sense, and also, if they have been read to a lot, that there is a story. I know they can't really understand "pretend," but they can understand that the things they are seeing are on a screen, not in the real environment around them, and that this has some different status.
But what are they showing on the typical shows for that age group? I tried Dora the Explorer and there was a representation of a cursor on the screen moving around and pointing to things and making a clicking noise. WHAT? The things Dora was doing had no relationship to anything my child does. She was traveling and solving mysteries or something. I don't think watching that show occasionally will harm my child, but why bother? I much preferred to let Sam watch another Baby Einstein DVD which had nice music and scenes of airplanes, boats, cars, and trains. She had seen all of those things in real life and was just learning all of their names. Again, I don't think it's "educational" so much as it is simply intelligible.
We also watch Little Bear which has talking animals. That actually bothers me a little, but not enough for me to ban all shows and books with talking animals - there would hardly be anything left! But Little Bear is a show about a child, in the form of a bear, who does things that children do. Little Bear chases a dandelion fluff to make a wish. Little Bear breaks a treasured item and tries to put it back together. Little Bear gets sick and his friends can't come over so he is lonely. Little Bear wants to stay up all night but eventually falls asleep. Once a child can understand stories, I think this is a perfect kind of television show. Also, importantly, each story is about 8 minutes long. Movies, no matter how simple, are just too long for a 2-year-old.
There are probably plenty of other good shows. I like The Backyardigans, but I only let Sam watch it occasionally because I think it's just a bit too advanced. We watch Milo and Otis together sometimes, but she can't last long enough to watch the whole thing, and parts of it are scary. We also watch videos on YouTube: swing dancing, ballet, whales jumping out of the ocean, funny cats and dogs, funny babies, and Schoolhouse Rock (totally inappropriate cognitive content, but fun music and I just couldn't wait to show it to her, which is perfectly consistent with my view that a little bit of the unintelligible is just fine).
As for the computer, we now use it only for the videos, music, and typing. I plan to teach Sam to read, write, and type, pretty much concurrently. She is already interested in all three, so we often sit down at the keyboard and I'll help her use one finger to spell out words. We do the same thing with pen and paper - I guide her hand in making letters and words. We don't plan to introduce any other games for quite a while. If Sam does start reading, we might try something like Starfall, which Rational Jenn recommends. I think there is nothing wrong with using games like that as a supplement to other, real-world activities. Again, the danger lies in the loss of experience in the real world. I think the sandpaper letters are a more important tool than anything you can find on a computer.
Rational Jenn made a point about how there are a million and one things that are unintelligible to a child, and that the whole point is that they need to learn to sort it all out. What is different about TV? Nothing, in small doses. But if a child sits and watches an hour or two of TV every day, it will be one of the biggest parts of his life. What else does a child do for this long of a time period? There is something in the idea that TV sucks you in, even when you are not engaged, and that is the only thing that I would call a "danger."
And so this is where the parenting comes in. Rational Jenn's post was all about how she lets her children monitor their own screen time, and she steps in only if she sees that it is going too far. She also has only a limited selection of programs for them to watch. I'll have to take back the comment I made on her blog that I disagree with her, but only a little. I agree with her in principle, especially after seeing how much she does monitor the content. Sam is too young to turn on a show for herself, but she already walks away sometimes before I want her to, if she gets bored. Our neighbors, who are excellent parents, set a time limit for their 8-year-old, but he sets the timer and uses it to remind himself to stop. I think the amount of screen time a child has does not have to be a huge battle or a big deal, if the rest of the parenting is going well. I don't think most kids would want to sit in front of a TV all day if they hadn't already been trained into it when they were much too young, and if there are enough opportunities made available to them for more interesting pursuits. Based on Jenn's post, I'll be less likely to step in and set a limit on Sam before she has a chance to regulate herself.
There's one other issue that is nagging at me now: the issue of appropriate content in books. We've always read Sam anything and everything, but I'm wondering if that isn't the same mistake as letting a child watch any kind of TV show. We'll have to rethink that next time around.
Yes, next time. We hope.
Amy, good post. I liked your ground-clearing elimination of the two wrong ("extreme") views, though I probably wouldn't have described them as "extreme". Wasn't your point really just that watching TV is neither an intrinsic value, nor an intrinsic dis-value? It's, like all genuine values, objective -- with everything that that implies.
ReplyDeleteI think one of your other important points, if I may test my understanding by trying to reformulate it, was that you can't properly justify letting a kid watch something that is (hierarchically) over his head, on the grounds that, at worst, it's just a waste of time (because he won't be able to understand it). Wasting time is not value-neutral; it's negative, because the wasted time is at the expense of something positive you could have been doing instead. (Of course, the only reason it makes sense to make that point, is that kids will, in fact, waste time watching incomprehensible -- or worse -- TV if they are permitted to do so. I'm not saying they'll always do that -- my 2 year old doesn't. But they/he will frequently get into a mesmerized state where it doesn't occur to them to consider alternatives.)
Anyway, I think your post helps put the focus of the discussion where it should be: in what ways can watching TV be an overall positive in a child's life? And I think you explain clearly and convincingly what some of those ways are. And also why too much of that good thing can be bad.
The question at the end about books is an interesting one, too. I've often had the sense that certain books are really dumb or unhierarchical or fantastic to the point of possibly doing cognitive damage. On rare occasion, I've tossed a book that I thought was especially bad in whatever way. But for the most part I'm a lot more lenient about books than I am about TV. I gather the same has been true for you, and you're questioning it. As I said, it's a good question! I think probably the answer is that it's reasonable to be more lenient about books, and that the reason will be that books just aren't "mesmerizing" in the way that TV can be. But I think to really flesh that out I'd have to understand better exactly what I mean when I say that TV is mesmerizing, and why it (seemingly uniquely) has that effect. Maybe somebody will have some thoughts on that.
Oh, one other random thing, based on your mention of planning to teach Sam to read, write, and type all at the same time -- and your mention of "next time." Our older boy has known the names of all the letters for some time now, and has learned most of their sounds a little more recently. (He'll probably be reading soon, because all the pre-requisites seem to be in place.) But something I learned recently that's apparently a part of the Montessori curriculum is skipping the "names of the letters" step. Instead, just teach the kids to verbalize the sound of the letter from the beginning -- they'll be able to start sounding out words (i.e., reading) before they ever need to know the letters' names. Anyway, I thought that was a cool idea that others might enjoy hearing about. I'm planning to try it out on the younger boy when he's ready.
ReplyDeleteAlso, more relevantly to what you actually wrote about reading/writing/typing, I think Montessori's sense of the proper hierarchy was that reading should precede writing, basically on the ground that producing the symbols requires a fine motor control that kids simply don't possess until well after the time when they're cognitively able to start reading. Actually I'm not entirely sure I've got that right, but I definitely remember reading that (or maybe its opposite!) in some Montessori-ish book at some point. Maybe I'll try to dig up whatever I'm remembering, since I'd like to review it now, too.
Finally, while of course Montessori herself would have had no position on the proper sequence for learning to type (and might plausibly have been against letting toddlers use computers!), it does seem like (assuming I had it right in the previous paragraph) typing might be a good substitute for writing that kids could genuinely learn at the same time they are learning to read: it's easier to poke a key and see the letter appear on the screen, than to make it with pencil on paper. But being able to produce words out of letters, rather than just consuming them, seems like it would make the whole reading thing more interactive, and so in principle more in line with overall Montessori principles -- learning through the hands, etc. So, teaching kids to type as they are learning to recognize letters and read, is an intriguing idea.
I agree completely with your disdain for those who espouse the inherent badness of television. It's almost always accompanied by self-righteous condescension, as if you're one step above negligence on the parenting scale.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm not sure if I buy the "hierarchy of knowledge" argument and I definitely disagree with the slippery slope of your "malevolent universe" notion.
As I understand it, your point in saying that television often violates the hierarchy of knowledge is that its dialogue and situations often are beyond the child's context and that it is consequently unintelligible. But that is generally the case that a child finds himself in in real life, decreasingly so as he ages and his context expands. I think children quickly learn that the things on the TV aren't the same as the things in their house, especially with animated shows. And I also think they pick up things that they do understand from otherwise advanced shows and enjoy those things, or they just walk away bored. I have seen the latter quite often when my wife and I watch an adult show, say Friends, that they don't get at all: they'll laugh at the funny hat or the simpler jokes and they'll gradually lose interest. I have also observed it with my one-year-old when his big sisters are watching their more-advanced shows.
As the children grow older, they will ask adults (or older siblings) pointed questions to try and understand what is going on on the TV. And they do the same thing in real life also. (As an aside: brushing against contexts more advanced and somewhat incomprehensible is an ongoing part of life right up until the end. I think it's an essential part of the spiral theory of knowledge: each subsequent time you encounter a particular piece, you come at it with an expanded context and can learn new details.)
Regarding the malevolent-universe-premise danger of watching TV beyond your understanding, I just can't see how that follows. If the child were immersed, Matrix-like, in a constantly-channel-changing TV World, then I would agree completely. If his real life is stable and comprehensible and television is properly understood as distinct from that, then I think the danger is no more imminent than reading books. (For example, I recently read a book to my kids about a child waking up striped then spotted then turning into a room. My older girls understood it as a lesson in appreciating what you have but my younger girl just thought it was silly pictures. No one was worried that they were going to wake up in the various crazy states the book-child found herself in.)
Finally, in my experience, books are about the same. I'll read longer books with less pictures to my older children and the younger ones will initially come over only to leave after awhile. As they've gotten older, they've each gotten better at filling in mental pictures where there are gaps of pictures.
Travis, We did the "sounds of letters" thing when our son was little and he's a super great reader. (The only place we slipped up there was not teaching him the "standard" pronunciation for one letter; but it was not a big deal. )
ReplyDeleteOn TV, when our son was young (under 3) there were some shows where he actually did not want to watch certain segments. For instance, there was one show that had cartoon segments interleaved with segments with real kids. He would protest when the real kids showed up. Then, a few months older those parts were his favorites, and he wanted to skip over the cartoon stuff.
Travis: I don't think that watching shows that are beyond the child's understanding is at worst a waste of time. I think that watching too many of these shows could be damaging. And to answer Bill's point, I only think that is true if the child watches a lot of that type of thing, and is allowed to go into that mezmerized state again and again without really being able to process anything. I don't think it's a big deal at all in small doses. And I think the difference between the unintelligible in real life and in TV is precisely that mezmerizing effect that TV can have. Like I said, I think it takes quite a bit of this bad input to harm a child, though. Still, there is content that is more appropriate for the various age groups, and I suspect the kids tend to like the stuff that is better for them to watch, so it is somewhat self-correcting.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I don't think the TV issue is that big of a deal. The more experience with Sam that I have, the less uptight I am about it.
As for reading and writing - I thought that Montessori said that both should be worked on at the same time. I need to go back and check that too. Travis and oD: I have definitely never heard of learning only the sounds of letters, and I've read 3 books by and about Maria Montessori. Where did you learn that? I like the idea. And oD, what do you mean by teaching the standard pronunciation for one letter? Do you mean teaching only one sound instead of the multiple sounds that some letters make?
Amy, I know you didn't think "that watching shows that are beyond the child’s understanding is at worst a waste of time". This was something I was picking up in Jenn's comments, and I meant to be agreeing with you that it's not right.
ReplyDeleteAs to the letter sounds thing, I don't remember where I picked that up. It's probably either from "How to Raise an Amazing Child the Montessori Way" by Tim Seldin, or "Montessori: the science behind the genius", both of which I read roughly a year or two ago, which is about when I think I must have learned about this. If you're interested I can take a few minutes and see if I can dig up the reference. Or maybe ODad remembers.
I think kids will tend to be less interested in things that are beyond their grasp, and therefore, they will "self-correct" away from shows (or books) that don't make sense to them. They need to have integrated enough "building block" concepts to have the ability to grasp something new that might just be out of reach for them conceptually. If the kid (or anyone) does not have enough of a foundation of the right kinds of concepts--whatever they are observing in reality will just not make sense.
ReplyDeleteThe trick about finding a line of appropriateness is when the kid has enough knowledge to make *some* kind of sense out of the show, but not mature enough to handle some of the implications (my thinking on this isn't too clear just yet).
For example, we haven't been able to watch any kind of news around Ryan for many years, because there was no predicting just when some kind of battle scene from the Iraq war or discussion of a local murder would come up and then suddenly, we're dealing with a child who understands the main idea--that someone has been killed--but can't understand that it's not going to happen here, that he is not in danger, etc. Nightmare city.
Ryan in particular will question and question us (think CIA-style interrogation) if he is trying to figure something out and needs to kind of work backward from the New Thing until he can relate it to something he knows and properly abstract to understand the New Thing. Does that even make sense? He can see that there's something New he wants to learn, understands just enough to know he's interested (brushing up against, as Bill says--I like that), but has holes in his knowledge. Then he uses me and his dad to help himself fill in those holes. I often have to backtrack until I can sort of figure out where he does have some good solid knowledge, and then we'll discuss it, moving forward from there.
Televisions shows--or anything--that depict such New Things--are areas where parental guidance is necessary--in our case, our job is answer zillions of questions--to help them make sense of what they're watching.
This has turned into quite the interesting topic and I'm glad you responded to it over here, Amy.
As an aside on the writing/reading thing--Ryan learned to write before he learned to read, just like Montessori wrote about. What I mean is that he knew how to form the letters with a pencil before he understood their sounds and how they combined together to represent the sounds of words. He got that they DID represent words, but didn't understand how that worked until later--about a year later. It was so interesting to me. Morgan learned reading first. Because she was so very young when she began to figure it out, she simply didn't have the motor skills to create letters on paper or even trace out the sandpaper letters (which we have at home). She would scream in frustration that she couldn't write an "M"--yet could sound out simple words like "cat." I do remember reading some books--maybe Montessori Preschool at Home?--where the author recommended calling the letters by their sounds instead of their names. I never really did that--the kids do have a magnet game where you stick the letter in and it plays a little song that sings "B says buh, B says buh, every letter makes a sound, B says buh." and that really helped them.
This has been the most interrupted comment ever, but I'm going to just submit it before I get interrupted again. I will attempt to proofread soon and find out how much sense (or not) I made.....Anyway, very interesting discussion.
I also had a question about television being mesmerizing. The only time I ever see my kids zone out as if mesmerized by tv is when they are tired. Morgan in particular seems to want to look at something as she's falling asleep (or she will often choose to listen to music). Instead of being mesmerized by the show, it's kind of playing in the background as she's drifting off to sleep. She'll look at it, but I know her focus (if you can call it that?) is actually on the process of falling asleep rather than the movie.
ReplyDeleteWhen they watch television during the day, they are focused on it, paying attention, but I'm not sure I'd call that "mesmerized" in a negative way. If their minds are focused and they are thinking about what they are watching, is that being mesmerized? Now if they get bored by what they're watching, they'll go get something else and focus their attention on that (a book or a game or a drawing, for example). The tv may be on, but at that point it's merely background noise (and a clue for me to turn it off since nobody's paying any attention).
So I guess my question is: what is mesmerization and is it necessarily negative?
Excellent points, Jenn. That has been exactly my experience also.
ReplyDeleteI can speak about mesmerization firsthand. When I am engrossed in a show, I can tune out my environment nearly entirely. It annoys my wife a lot when she's talking to me and I literally cannot hear her. My five-year-old daughter is the exact same way—maybe worse because she hasn't had the years of trying to break that spell that I have. I don't know that she's experiencing the same mental state I am, but all indications suggest that.
But I'm not sure that's what Amy and Travis are referring to because I've always taken it as a heightened state of engagement with the content. I can do the same with books, video games, programming, or what have you. It might be "flow" of a more passive nature, but I wouldn't argue that.
I think what they're talking about is the couch potato sort, where you "veg out" and are just awash in the content to the point where it's like a stupor. I have seen young cousins get into that state and I know that I experienced it in my childhood when I would watch six or more hours of television at a clip.
But maybe there's another state with which I'm unaware, so I'll leave it to Travis or Amy to explain what they meant.
I just have a second, so this will be unusually brief. But I wanted to try to elaborate about "mesmerization" since I would like to see this discussion continue as long as possible rather than burn out! So, what I mean by "mesmerization" is a state of complete concentration that is nevertheless out of focus. The child (or adult!) is fixated on the TV, and has something like "tunnel vision" in the sense that he/she is relatively unaware of what else is going on around them, and even unaware of what he/she is doing. (That last is what makes it out-of-focus.) I don't know how to distinguish this state from other states (like in-focus concentration), except to give some examples. Our older boy often plays with cars and trucks and blocks, for example building elaborate garages, networks of roads, and then the cars and trucks drive around having conversations with each other. He's usually on his knees, and constantly moving around to get another car, make a new road over there, etc. When he's doing this, he is totally concentrating on what he's doing, but he's also aware of what's going on around him and what he's doing -- as evidenced, for example, by the fact that if you quietly walk into the room he'll notice right away, or by the fact that he'll periodically take a quick break just to check-in and see what's going on in the rest of the house (as if to make a decision about whether to continue with what he's doing, or choose something else instead). There's also a state of in-focus relaxation, in which you aren't really doing anything except vegging out and watching what's happening in your surroundings, but you're in principle ready to ramp up your alertness if the need arises. Anyway, by contrast to both of these kinds of states, the "mesmerized" state (which is really just a particular example of being out of focus) is characterized by unawareness of surroundings and alternative action/play/work possibilities, and non-readiness to raise the alertness level.
ReplyDeleteNow basically I want to claim that TV, for some reason I don't really understand fully, is particularly good at lulling kids (and adults) into this kind of state. That's just a factual judgment on my part, and it's based on very limited data, so I could be wrong -- e.g., there could be something unusual about my family or the shows we watch that is really to blame (as opposed to TV as such). Or maybe there are lots of other things that tend to produce this state, and I just haven't encountered them. But it does seem to me like TV produces this undesirable state particularly well, and in some ways that makes sense -- TV gives you a high level of sensory input with very little active input from the viewer. So in watching TV you're actually in a very mentally passive state, but in some ways your subconscious is being fooled about this, because it "feels" like you are being very active and interactive (because you're getting the kind of intense sensory input that, without TV, you'd only be able to get from some kind of intense, mentally and physically integrated activity).
There's probably a lot more to say and understand about all this. Hopefully others will chime (back) in with other observations, criticisms of what I've said, etc.
Jenn and Bill: I agree with Bill that the "focused" state is 100% good. I WANT Sam to be that engaged. That means she is using her mind. What I mean by being mesmerized is when your eyeballs are on the screen, you are hearing the sounds, but you are not actively using your mind in any way. I know the state from introspection. It happens when I'm sick or very tired and watching TV. It's a state of drift, and occasionally, it's not a problem. I think Sam has gone into that state when we've left the TV on too long. She'll start doing something else, but her eyes will go back to the TV, and then to the new activity, and back and forth. She is not focused, and the TV is drawing her back in, even though she isn't really that interested. I suspect that she is then "mesmerized." That's the best I can explain it.
ReplyDeleteI also wanted to address my use of the word "extreme." Travis caught me! I actually noted that I had used that term improperly when I went back to edit, but I had been writing for over 2 hours and didn't have the mind power to fix it. Lazy, I guess. Anyway, the two views are not the extreme views, but the intrinsic views, Travis is exactly correct. TV is not all bad or all good, but it can be an objective value when used the right way.
Travis, don't look up the reference yet. I'm about to do some Googling. Jenn seems to remember it the way I did, but either way, I think her approach of letting the individual child develop in his own way, is the right thing to do.
Jenn, I can't wait until Sam starts interrogating me. I hope she is just like Ryan that way. Am I crazy? :) Anyway, I think your description of Ryan in relation to the TV issue is interesting because it shows that, when children are older, the hierarchy issue might not be relevant. Once a child knows that he does not know, and if he has a good thinking methodology, then there isn't too much content you'd need to worry about. Also, I don't think I'll ever encourage Sam to watch TV news. At some point, it will be her choice, but it is just so anti-conceptual. Well, there you go. Maybe that is indeed an example of exactly the kind of restriction I suggest, but for an older child. When they are still working on the process of conceptualization, don't introduce TV (or books or anything else) that is blatantly anti-conceptual as a regular experience. But that, of course, is not limited to TV. Arg! This is interesting and difficult.
Maybe the problem with TV is that it is a medium which easily lends itself to the sensational and anti-conceptual. Any thoughts from anybody on that?
Interesting thought on the anti-conceptional. I remember a critique by Ayn Rand of a picture not being worth a 1000 words - when the picture reaches you emotionally, and you then don't process the actual concepts behind it (like a suffering child in Africa pleading for aid - vs. understanding that the horrible conditions there are a result of statism...)
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to put that in perspective for a very young child, though: most of there learning is at or very close to the perceptual stage - at most 2-3 steps removed from percepts, I would think, when they are 2 1/2 (observation of my daughter.)
They learn about things, direct actions of things, and basic relationships and emotions that are visible. They are interested in stories that expand upon but closely relate to their experiences - what other kids do, what adults do, how people relate, how things work. So a show like 'Little Bear' (thanks for introducing us to it!) that focuses on that level can be very relevant and hierarchically correct for a young pre-schooler. And the shows I like also don't do a lot of the jerky, out-of-focus directing either - even as cartoons, they are more 'real' in the sense of normal speed, and longer frames than much of adult TV.
So at that 2-4 (? or even later) year old stage, deliberately chosen TV and picture-based communications may not be as destructive to children's thinking as they would be later on, when their learning focus should be on conceptual integrations (and I agree that TV news lack that - I never ever watch them, much rather read my newspaper.)
As a side note - I do think one other benefit from good TV and shows is that they enable a lot of repetition, more than I am excited to provide. For example, my daughter loves watching 'The Letter Factory' by Leapfrog, and has learned most of her letters through it. She probably watches it a half dozen times a month, sometimes 3-4 nights in a row - and I'd be bored out of my mind repeating this stuff over and over, but she enjoys it and has a renewed interest in letters afterwards.
I think I understand what Amy means by the "mesmerized" state when watching TV, and I definitely catch myself drifting in front of the TV at times, which I agree is not necessarily always bad - or maybe it's slightly worse than some other form of relaxation but I think it can have its place at the end of a long day. But I also get into a very different kind of completely absorbed state, closer to what Travis described, I think, when reading. As a child, when I was absorbed in a book and someone called my name or talked to me, I literally wouldn't notice and would go on reading as though nothing had happened. My mom thought I was doing it on purpose, but it really was as though I hadn't heard anything. It would take people coming up to me and tapping me on the shoulder or getting into my field of vision to get my attention. Maybe that has to do with my mental language processor being too busy to process any verbal input when I'm reading or something. That kind of complete absorption also happens when I'm intently watching TV, but to a lesser extent and less frequently. It's also definitely different from the passive mesmerized/drifting state.
ReplyDeleteMy theory is that the difference in content between a good book and your average TV show explains the reason this happens less often with TV than with books, since it does seem to be qualitatively the same process of becoming absorbed in what you're doing and it happens to me only with good TV shows or books. But the reason TV "mesmerizes" us whereas books do not is that reading generally requires mental effort (always unless one slips out of focus), whereas watching TV can be active or passive. Of course, why that is, requires its own explanation, but that's as much as I've thought it through.
I also remember around age 7-9 being highly annoyed by shows that had talking puppets that weren't accurate representations of humans or even animals - I couldn't understand why they didn't have live action or at least make the puppets more realistic. It seemed intentional, but I couldn't understand why it was done that way. It bothered me to no end!
Anyway, I think the comparison between TV and books in this post is fascinating, and I've enjoyed reading all the comments.
I think Heike is right about repetition. What at first might be bewildering and incomprehensible becomes understandable after repeated viewings. I'll second the value of the Letter Factory series--my children pretty much got the sounds of letters from that show plus our referring to it during instruction.
ReplyDeleteOne other thought that is a restatement of books vs. TV: reading requires self-generating action to process it-- if you drop out of focus, no big deal, just go back and read what you missed. TV, unless you have a recording of it, keeps going regardless of your focus, and even when you zone back in you will have missed the previous context of the material and trying to play catch-up from there. I still don't think it is much of a problem for kids growing up in a pro-thinking environment, but I can see where a child without such guidance in a context-dropping mindset could easily slip into the "learn by osmosis" mode and cause all sorts of cognitive problems.
ReplyDeleteOne problem I see with television is that our minds really weren't evolved to cope with the kind of stimulation they present. I recently read a doctor's description of why children, especially young children, seem so "interested" by the TV -- its because it presents them with constant change in visual and auditory stimulation, which actually *forces* them to "pay attention". You know the way a young child will be easily distracted by a moving bird or a brightly colored book? It's the same idea -- it's reflexive, not voluntary, and television can exploit that.
ReplyDeleteA piece of evidence that might support this idea is that studies have shown that kids who watch foreign language videos show no ability to recognize foreign language sounds and words, but those who watch *real people* speaking a foreign language do. And other studies show that Baby Einstein videos negatively affect word acquisition (ironically). There's something more complex going on in our brains when we interact with other human beings -- I'm not sure what it is, but from all the scientific research I've seen, television isn't a substitute at all.
Another thing I've heard is that children are less creative when exposed to television. According to Harvard Medical School child psychologist Susan Linn, in the book "The Case for Make Believe," kids who watch TV spend less time in creative and self-motivated play than kids who don't, and they tend to mimic the characters they see on TV rather than creating their own characters (who are a way of exploring their own identities and emotions, and developing a self).
I see all three of these as evidence to my mind that "screen time" is just not a good idea, especially for children. I've personally had very bad experiences with both TV and the internet, and I don't know if that's just me or if I'm more attuned to my reaction to it than most people or what, but I don't like what "screens" do to me and other people. Not that I'm a technophobe by any means, but all my experiences tell me that there's something just unhealthy about the way these things affect my ability to think creatively, to sustain attention, to delay gratification, and to reason effectively.
Amy, I'm pretty skeptical about most of these studies. I think most of us are aware of a lot of them, but it's hard to sort out the wheat from the chaff in any scientific study these days. The one about a foreign language on TV versus real humans is interesting. It seems delimited enough so that there might be something to it. But then, the results would only relate to learning a foreign language. Unwarranted extrapolation of the results of these studies seems to be a common problem.
ReplyDeleteIn the end, I think common sense is probably a better guide than a lot of these studies. Common sense includes the knowledge that kids can't learn anything about cause and effect from TV (in the concrete way that they get from their own actions in the world), nor do they get any sensory input in the form of smell, taste, or touch. It also includes what we can deduce from introspection about our own experiences from TV. I trust all of that much more than any study I've seen thus far.
[...] got into the make-believe issue a little bit in the comments on my TV post and at Rational Jenn’s post that inspired it. I haven’t yet sensed any danger in [...]
ReplyDeleteCommon sense includes the knowledge that kids can’t learn anything about cause and effect from TV…
ReplyDeleteThis statement illustrates the wooziness inherent in all of these discussions. I think your statement is entirely true for, say, my 18-month old. He needs to see inductively the results of his actions in order to divine the reason behind them. But my older daughters (age 5) learn *a lot* from television. They've already acquired a decent causal foundation on which to understand the new causal connections.
For older children, I submit, television can be an excellent introduction to subject matter and a way to discover interests quickly. Proper delimiting of generalizations would be helpful to understand people's points.
Bill, good point! I should have clarified that I was only talking about babies and toddlers in that statement, as I did in the post when I spoke of cause and effect:
ReplyDelete"There is a hierarchy of knowledge, and for babies and toddlers who are learning to resolve the chaos into entities and to observe cause and effect, TV is simply inexplicable."
It's nice to hear that older kids can learn things from TV. I certainly can, so why not them? I've been thinking about this more since the thread petered out, and one thing I think I'm going to try to maintain with Sam is not getting into a routine of watching TV every day just for something to do. I hope to do this by encouragement and by providing lots of good other things to do, instead of by making rules. We'll see. It's really, really hard to predict what concrete things you will do as a parent until the time comes.
That's for sure. I know that at nearly every stage of our children's lives we've made predictions (or assumptions) about what we'd do and we've nearly always had to course correct based on expanded context. I'm not sure that aspect ever subsides.
ReplyDelete[...] Mossoff presents TV posted at The Little Things, saying, “Inspired by Rational Jenn’s “On Children, [...]
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