Education

Hello! I completely disappoint! TV is a mass thought control machine, read literally.

Television is usually used to reproduce stereotypes that keep our society stuck into the shit. You would tell me: "Ok, another media reproduce stereotypes too and you ain't critic with them". That's true. All media reproduce stereotypes, but, instead of being made by four "smart guys" and sent to millions of people, they are much more elaborated and require a major effort to decodify and use them. They are 'intelligent' messages. TV is just too easy, too cheap, too futile, too forgettable. If rock and roll had never existed, we would have never listened to 'stairway to heaven' or 'riders on the storm'. If cinema had never existed we would have never watched 'Casablanca' or 'Citizen Kane'. And what has TV ever given to us? Lost! (excuse me comparison is not fair)

I don't like TV, and I don't respect TV. TV keeps asleep people like you in front of the cruel reality: Our society collapses and you keep being a slave to the money.

Imagine... a world with no TV. Ain't it great?

Best regards from somewhere in the whole world

Anti TV

It occurred to me that although many teachers and others like Michael Medved blanket condemn television viewing, if any of their students or children were hired as writers for television, they'd probably consider them great successes. Is this hypocrisy? If television isn't worthwhile, then anybody dedicating their life to creating TV programs isn't contributing to our society. Or, is it that making one's living as a writer, in any field, is such an impressive feat that it's a great accomplishment regardless of the medium for which they write?

Not only do they NOT contribute to our society, but they actively assist in its demise. While people spend their hours watching garbage on TV, they do not spend their time healing our chronically ill society. There is a documented, factual decline in community service in our nation since the advent of television. Television, and screen time in general, is a serious topic of intellectual and social concern. It displaces healthier and more valuable activities. It influences attitudes, beliefs, knowledge and behavior. It twists our perception of reality and social relationships. It instills questionable values. The purpose of television is to keep people watching so that they will be influenced by the commercials. Raising children bred on television builds materialistic attitudes which ultimately lead to unhappiness. It is an assault on their psyches. It supplies children with pre-established characters and storylines making it less likely for them to create their own imaginative world. More tv equals less reading. It also is an obvious precursor to obesity. The highly commercial culture of tv considers children to be consumers and does not care about their healthy development. Therefore, caring parents have no choice but to take control of the situation by removing the television from their lives. Those individual marketers responsible for "targeting" children should be first: prosecuted for predatory behavior the likes of pedophilia and second: shot for treason against the United States of America. I call it treason because the children are the future of this and any nation, and any attempt to dumb down and mesmerize the children is a direct assault on the future. If parents are unable to unplug their children, there is either some serious denial going on, or pure addiction. To keep doing something over and over again even though you know it is bad for you and your children and your nation is what I call an addiction. Or maybe these people are just too spineless to go against the status quo. So that makes me a snob? Because I choose to live without an electronic mind altering addiction that keeps me from doing productive things with my life and communicating with my family? Or do you just call me a snob because I choose to live differently from you and indeed, from most of the drones that make up my fellow countrymen? As we continue to amuse ourselves to death, the power our nation once wielded goes down the drain. I wish our people would wake up, but they're too busy watching "reality tv" or some other bunch of crap and condescendingly, yes, even snobbishly, looking down and laughing at "extremists" such as myself.

Let me give you a definition of the term, "extreme":
Children viewing 27 hours of tv per week.
In my mind, that is extreme. Look at the statistics, my friend. I wonder how a television viewing lifestyle like that is going to produce creative, thinking individuals that are prepared to work and carry our society on their backs?

Hey, Potato Slug! Hows about pulling that remote out of your butt for a few minutes and giving me a hand? Oh, I forgot!!! You have no skills!!! Not only that, but you might tear an undeveloped muscle in the process!! Oh well, I guess I'll have to do everything myself...hope I don't pull one of my muscles, being that I'm 75 years old and all...Gee...I was always under the impression that 35-year-old ought to be productive...

The stupidity of my countrymen is at an extreme level. Just read:

"A few hours a day is too much TV," says Yale University psychologist Dorothy Singer, codirector of the Yale Family Television Research and Consultation Center. "Use the summer to read, play outdoors, hike, catch up on hobbies, do crafts, visit interesting places, and just spend some time daydreaming."

What the research shows
Unless you've been raising your kids in a cabin without electricity at the back of beyond, you know about the research on children, violence, and TV. It's hard to ignore. It's also hard to ignore the statistics on the number of hours most children spend in front of a television set.

A quick summary:
The average U.S. household has at least one TV set turned on for about seven hours a day.
The average school-aged child spends 27 hours per week watching TV (some preschoolers watch much more).
Over the course of a year, children spend more time watching TV than they spend in school or participating in any other activity except sleep.
Children's TV shows contain about 20 violent acts per hour.
A high percentage of a child's viewing time is spent watching shows intended for adults: 40 percent of a 6-year-old's viewing time, and about 80 percent of a 12-year-old's viewing time.
The average American child will have watched 100,000 acts of televised violence, including 8,000 murders, by the time he or she finishes the sixth grade.
Contrast these numbers with the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendation that a child watch no more than one to two supervised hours of TV a day.

The result? It is generally accepted that all this TV watching has three main effects on children: They become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others, they become more fearful of the world around them, and they are more likely to behave toward others in aggressive or harmful ways.

In addition, all that sitting around makes them fat. American kids are in worse physical shape than they've ever been.

Getting control of the remote
Here are three good strategies for reducing the amount of time your children spend watching TV this summer.

1. Don't have a TV in the house. I've always admired those parents who solved the TV problem by simply not having a TV. You can't watch what you don't have. If that seems too extreme, consider getting rid of the box for the summer. Or for a week. "We weren't exposed to violence on TV," says Jim, a 30-year-old man who grew up without TV, "and we know that if you hit someone, it hurts!"

"We were also very well-read kids, and I learned to play games, work quietly alone, and I developed a vivid imagination. Today, I am not a TV addict. I'm fine without a television--although I'd miss Star Trek!"

Actually, I haven't had a tv for about 16 years and I don't miss Star Trek at all.

Oh yes, those 27 hours of television viewing do not include all the hours of other types of electronic media use. Do you find it EXTREME that our youth spends more time in engaged with commercial media than they do in school? Just who is educating our children, anyway? Well, it doesn't seem to be the parents. By God! It doesn't even seem to be the schools!!

I was once proud to be an American but at this point I'm just embarrassed. C'mon, brothers! Prove me otherwise!! Get up off your assets and DO something!!!!