There's a frighteningly bad article in the printed Salem.MomsLikeMe (SMLM) magazine for February 2009 --- can't find it posted online.
The premise and title of the article is "Is TV Good for Kids?" and the subhead says "The latest research may surprise you." The big "surprise" lead is that two
economists from the
U. of Chicago School of Business (are you starting to get the picture here?) claim to find "strong evidence against the view that childhood television viewing harms the cognitive or educational development of preschoolers."
The authors of the study, said to have been published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2008, supposedly "analyzed the test scores of nearly 300,000 kids in grades 6, 9, and 12 in 1965." The story in SMLM says that "Contrary to popular belief there wasn't any difference in the test scores of kids who watched more TV---or kids who watched less." The story claims that "
In fact, the kids who watched more TV did better on standardized tests than those who didn't."
Ask a stupid question . . .So this is what's being sold as evidence that TV isn't as bad as you think: if you park your kid in front of the box for 28 hours a week (the story's reported average child viewing figure) you can expect the kid to perform better on tests that are themselves of dubious validity and that are subject to
withering criticisms from people who actually have a greater knowledge of child development than, oh, say two economists.
This same shoddy story (later on, the writer goes on to suggest that watching a certain PBS show made kids better able to "identify lower and upper case numbers [sic] than the control group") goes on to conclude with the completely unsourced, passive-voice assertion that "the PBS shows are considered so educationally sound that many teachers and home-school parents use them as teaching tools."
It's hard to know how a story like this gets planted into a publication like SMLM. Is it a press release that wound up in an editor's hands, who farmed it to a stringer, saying "Here's a peg for a story, why don't you write that up?" Or does the Gannett media empire truly think that this single study rebuts the mountains of evidence that
TV is terribly destructive,
changing the very structure of young peoples' minds?
This is taken from the website for Marie Winn's outstanding book, "
The Plug-In Drug:"
The Plug-In Drug
25th Anniversary Edition
Synopsis
How does the passive act of watching television and other electronic media -- regardless of their content -- affect a developing child's relationship to the real world? Focusing on this crucial question, Marie Winn takes a compelling look at television's impact on children and the family. Winn's classic study has been extensively updated to address the new media landscape, including new sections on: computers, video games, the VCR, the V-Chip and other control devices, TV for babies, television and physical health. Winn shows examples of how parents lose control of their children's TV watching. The book's major purpose is to help families regain control of this powerful medium.
Two excerpts from the 25th Anniversary Edition
Mystery of the Declining SATs
There is an old, unsolved mystery involving scores on the SATs, those tests of verbal and mathematical abilities that high school students must take to be accepted into most colleges. In the mid 1960’s the average scores on the verbal part of the SATs began an almost 20 year decline. In a range from 200 to 800 points, the average scores went from 478 in 1964 to 424 in 1980– a drop of 54 points. At the beginning of the 1980’s the scores began to level off, and have stayed within five points of 424 to this day.
What brought about this troubling decline? Why did it begin just when it did? People have been trying to find the answer to these questions for years. Yet no one seems to have pursued a related question that may offer a clue to the mystery: What caused the decline to end around 1980, with no significant decreases or increases after that? Juxtaposing the SAT scores of high school students during the last 40 or so years with some statistics about TV ownership and viewing times during those years, may help to answer all three of these questions.
In 1977, when the scores had almost reached their nadir, a panel commissioned by the College Board concluded that a major factor for the lower scores was the greater diversity of students taking the test – more minority students, some of them not native speakers of English, were now striving to get into college.] Yet the great increase in minority test-takers cannot be the explanation: the verbal scores of white, middle-class, native-speaking students had declined along with everyone else’s scores.
Various other explanations have been offered for the decline. A Cornell sociologist blamed it on the dumbing down of text books. He showed that latter-day sixth-grade texts are on the same level of difficulty as 4th grade McGuffey readers were in 1896 and pointed out that the decline began when the first wave of Baby Boomers, who had used those simplified text books, sat down at the SAT test tables. But he didn’t explain why the decline suddenly ended around 1980, though the same texts remained in the classrooms.
Others have suggested less effective teaching in the schools. Yet that wouldn’t explain why the decline has been greater in verbal skills than in math skills. And even if it turned out that only reading and language arts teaching had fallen off, while good teaching, for some reason, had managed to prevail for math, it still would not explain why the decline leveled out after a number of years.
How about television’s arrival in American homes as a primary cause? The timing is right. The first generation of children who had watched television during a significant part of their childhood, sat down to take its first college boards during the mid-1960’s, just as the decline began.
The fact that the verbal scores went down far more than the math scores lends support to the theory that TV was a causal factor. As Chapter 7 argues, extensive television viewing effects young children’s verbal development more than the development of their visual or spatial abilities. And as the previous section indicates, numerous studies have shown a strong negative association between television viewing and school performance. Reading achievement seems especially vulnerable to the effects of excessive television viewing and reading, it is universally acknowledged, is the key to academic success.
If indeed television viewing adversely affects children’s verbal abilities, then one may begin to explain the steady decline of verbal SAT scores starting in the mid-sixties by the steady increase in television ownership year after year from 1950 on. In 1950 fewer than 8% of American families owned TV sets. By 1954 more than half had televisions. By 1957, 78% of families were set owners, and by 1964, almost everyone -- 92%. of families had become TV viewers. The saturation point had just about been reached, though set ownership would slowly inch up another 4% during the next 20 years.
The mid-sixties, when the decline in scores began, was when the first children who had spent their formative years watching TV–those who were about three in 1950—turned 16 or 17 and took the test. Every year through the sixties and seventies, thanks to the increase in set ownership, a larger cohort of TV watchers took their SATs, and every year, the scores went down, down, down: from 478 in 1964 to 471 in 1966 to 460 in 1970 to 445 in 1973 to 434 in 1975 to 429 in 1978 and finally to 424 in 1980. That’s when the scores stopped going down. Why? At least partly because the saturation point had been reached around 1964. So sixteen years later the scores bottomed out. They have stayed at about the same level ever since.
Set ownership is not the only factor. More important is the amount of time spent watching. Another explanation for the steady, two-decade-long decline lies in the steady increase in children’s viewing time from 1950 through the 1970’s. The students who scored 478 in 1964 had watched 0 hours during their formative years, having been born in ‘47 or ’48, before TV became a mass medium. They probably didn’t acquire a time-consuming TV habit, until they were in high school, with a lot of reading and other verbal experience under their belts by the time they took their SATs.
After 1950 children’s average weekly television-viewing time began to rise, year after year. One study indicates that first- and sixth-graders (the two groups chosen for that particular study) were watching about an hour more television daily in 1970 than in 1959, and that Sunday viewing had increased by more than two and a half hours for the sixth-graders.8 The rise in viewing time eventually leveled off – after all there wasn’t that much more time left in the day, after school work, chores, sports and a few other activities that continued to compete with television for children's time. And the decline leveled off as well.
Another suggestive pattern emerges when noting the decrease is characterized by changes in the two extremes—fewer high scores and more low scores—rather than an across-the-board slippage.
Why the decrease in high scores? In 1959 the brightest sixth-graders were found to be among the heaviest users of television while the brightest high school students were found to be lighter viewers and heavier readers than their less gifted classmates. Anxious parents were reassured that television would have little effect on their children’s destinies, since by tenth grade the bright students turned to books just as they had always done.
But by 1970 this comforting trend had been reversed. The Surgeon General’s report showed that now more of the brighter students in tenth grade were heavy users of television than heavy users of books.10Television now reigned supreme in the lives of the group that had once contained the most avid readers—the most gifted students. As these brightest students watched more TV, their college board scores began to decline. Year after year the number of students scoring in the 600 to 800 range on the Verbal SATs dropped steadily, going from 112,000 in 1972, to fewer than 72,000 in 1990, a decrease of more than a third.
Why had the scores of those best and brightest test-takers taken a dive? It seems likely that before they succumbed to television, their verbal and analytic abilities had been sharpened and deepened by extensive reading. As more of these students replaced books with TV viewing, their scores decreased dramatically.
[Note: A long footnote clarifying changes in the way SAT scores are published today, as well as others giving sources of all statistics in this section are given on pp. 321-322 of the new edition]
The Good-Enough Family
[a new preface spelling out the book's purpose]
All families are not created equal. Some seem to be spectacularly successful. Others are a total mess. And then somewhere between the heights and depths are most of the rest of us.
The Spectaculars are so comfortably in charge of their children’s lives that they don’t need to establish rules about television watching. Their family life is rich and satisfying. Television never seems to take precedence over human activities—conversations, games, leisurely meals, reading aloud—in this somewhat unreal family.
The troubled families at the other extreme are all too real: parents who don’t get along or who’ve split up, who are abusive, addicted to alcohol or drugs, who don’t understand the first thing about children and their needs, who are too immature, too disturbed, too self-absorbed to place any great value on family life, and whose children, consequently, are likely to have more than the usual share of difficulties. Though excessive television watching is a common symptom of family pathology, these families are not likely to find that watching less TV is going to make much difference in their lives. They have too many other basic problems to deal with first.
The British psychiatrist D. W. Winnicott once coined the phrase “good-enough mother” to describe a parent who may have considerable problems raising her children but still does a good enough job to avoid causing any serious psychological damage.
Similarly one might define a “good-enough family” as one neither so perfect as to be invulnerable to normal human weaknesses nor so precariously balanced as to be swamped by its troubles. Most American families, I believe, fall into this category. The good-enough family may have its shortcomings; nevertheless the parents care deeply about their children’s well-being and strive to make their family life as good as possible. They are the ones for whom television control may make a crucial difference.
In the wide range of good-enough families some might be called “better-than-good-enough,” indeed, approaching the borders of “spectacular” territory. Others are “barely-getting-by,” rapidly heading for deep trouble. For many families, how they control television may decisively influence whether they go in one direction or another.
The idea prevails, perhaps because of this book’s negative title, that my answer to parents’ problems with television is to promote its elimination altogether. But that has never been my purpose. I know that my most persuasive arguments will never make television go away, nor would I want it to. I am not an enemy of the medium nor do I believe it is devoid of value.
My aim, instead, is to promote a new way of thinking about TV. I believe that if parents understand the medium’s power and look squarely at the ways it affects their children and their family life, they can begin to take the necessary steps to deal with television successfully. To help parents and families with this task is the purpose of this book.
From Library Journal:
"After 25 years, Winn (Children Without Childhood) has completely revised and updated her landmark study of the influence of television on children and family life by incorporating findings based on recent research and investigating the impact of the home computer, the VCR, and the video game terminal. She has also shifted the focus from the TV programs children watch to the negative effects of television on children's play, imagination, and school achievement. Although Winn pinpoints many key shortcomings of television, this study is not argumentative; Winn instead aims to stress the quality of family life without television, to show educators and parents how to control the medium, and to offer practical suggestions on how to improve family life not dependent on television. This refreshingly candid and inviting study is highly recommended for both public and academic libraries."
From Jim Trelease, author of The Read-Aloud Handbook:
"No one has captured the devastating effects of television the way Marie Winn has. The latest research coupled with candid and inspiring correspondence from actual families make this the best edition yet."
From The Christian Science Monitor:
"If you have children who watch television, you owe it to yourself -- and them -- to read this book."
The worst part of this story is that it appears to be aimed at encouraging Moms to feel good about having their kids watch TV by pointing to performance on standardized tests --- using one destructive habit to justify another. If the story's figures are accurate -- if the average child really is watching TV 28 hours a week, then do we really have to wonder why so many kids today are being drugged and diagnosed with psychological ailments like ADHD, learning disabilities, and oppositional disorders?
28 hours a week is a serious part-time job load for a high-school senior. Given that high school seniors are probably not the heaviest viewers, that means that kids much younger are consuming frightening amounts of TV, essentially being raised by corporations.
If this is true in Salem---and we have no reason to think we're exempt from this trend--then it not only explains much, but it's also terrifying. As our economy struggles and times get much harder in the years to come, there are going to be some seriously pissed-off young people, because they're going to be "unemployed," just like so many adults. These kids will lose the one job they've ever had---watching televised nonsense---and suddenly they will have to contribute something to their own keep, despite having no skills other than snark and anticipating the plot lines of recycled TV formulas.
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