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Toonami Infolink :: View topic - Children + TV = Psychologists - Parenting
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Impossibles Max Fleisher's Superman (a.k.a. Roulette) The Real Adventures of Johnny Quest Robotech Sailor Moon DragonBall Z Filmation Superman Batman Superfriends
ReBoot
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O8th
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Armada
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circle
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Post subject: Children + TV = Psychologists - Parenting
I found this article I'm going to post below quite interesting as it talks about how you can no longer enjoy cartoons soley for entertainment. They all teach a lesson, or at the very least have to try to.
Take a read, it's fairly long.
The Kids Are All Right
How did kids survive prior to the introduction of educators into children's programming? Martin “Dr. Toon” Goodman takes a look at the impact of their presence.
February 11, 2003
By Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman
Who's educating our children? Parents or the TV?
“But increasingly...parents are looking to TV to help them do a better job of raising kids...Inside those (TV) networks, a growing number of Ph.Ds are injecting the latest in child-development theory into new programs.”
— Newsweek, November 11, 2002
“How to say this firmly: raising kids is an impossibility that usually works out anyway.”
— Tom Tiede, Self Help Nation
This month’s column, dear readers, is brought to you by a scarred and grizzled survivor. My parents, ever mindful of their monumental ignorance of what Moms and Dads do after the umbilical cord is sliced, attempted the daunting task of raising me anyway. Somehow, despite the mistakes, child development magically happened. The entire process was accomplished with nary an educational cartoon to help them along or a single script supervised by a doctoral-level professional. Yet all was not well; I was fated to suffer severe educational deprivation. I was forced to rely on the public school system for my formative learning, bereft of even the merest shred of animated tutelage. It’s true; I was never a beneficiary of modern psychology’s blessings. No Blue’s Clues. No Dora the Explorer. No Rolie Polie Olie. When I entered the school system Sesame Street was still eight years from its debut on PBS. It should be considered a miracle worthy of Lourdes that I am able to write this column at all, save for one thing: as I look around at those who grew up with me, it was much the same story for all of them. And the kids are all right.
Still going strong, Sesame Street started the educational trend in children's programming 33 years ago. Courtesy of Sesame Workshop.
Enter the Ph.Ds
Don’t ask me how. Back then, coyotes went flailing off cliffsides, felines had nutcrackers applied to their tails by mice, and Dishonest John might halt walloping Cecil in order to ask the audience: "Do you think there’s too much violence on TV?” Those are just a few examples, of course. We also had Popeye pummeling, Mighty Mouse mauling, and the Fantastic Four’s fracas-fraught festivities. Bugs Bunny could certainly be dynamite, and little was learned about cooperation in the adventures of Sylvester and Tweety, or Foghorn Leghorn and a certain barnyard dog. I can’t even begin to recount the lessons that Goofy taught us regarding safe behavior. The only counting lesson to be learned was when one character presented another a cup of tea and asked, “One lump or two?” before the mallet did the math. This however, is the 2000s, and the new mood is best summed up in the November 11, 2002, Newsweek article, “Why TV Is Good For Kids.” In this article we learn that an army of Ph.Ds are now heavy contributors to the scripts for animated shows. The cartoons are scrutinized, analyzed, test-marketed at daycare centers, and are guaranteed to be educational lessons in cooperation, self-esteem and overall healthy development as estimated by, well, an army of Ph.Ds.
The article, by Daniel McGinn, details a happy afternoon at the Yale psychology department wherein we find five undergrads dissecting an episode of Barney and announcing: “I’ve got 9 vocabulary, 6 numbers...11 sharing,” and then turning the numbers over to a data analyst who compares them with past shows. Animated fare is subjected to much the same elaborate analysis. Details are provided on how a team led by Dr. Christine Ricci from the University of Massachusetts break down an episode of Dora the Explorer by observing audience behavior minute by minute, charting it on bar graphs and analyzing the results. We also visit with Dr. Daniel Anderson (also from UMass) as he winces through an episode of Dora the Explorer. It seems that the heroine and her friend Boots paddle a canoe in the direction of a waterfall, modeling unsafe behavior. “If I’d read the script I’d have completely blocked this,” states Dr. Anderson. Later in the episode he agonizes as Dora paddles her canoe under some fallen tree limbs: “Oh, God, another dangerous thing...The education is a little thinner than I would wish and it’s a little dubious sending them on such a dumb journey.” _________________ "Veni. Vedi. Spooki." - Julius Caesar
I came. I saw. I spooked.
Oh, rather. It is reassuring to know that these intrepid researchers are on the job. “Wait a minute,” you say, “aren’t you one of them too, Dr. Toon?” Yes, and a UMass graduate at that (1987). Still, the state of children’s programming today makes me wonder what sort of role schools, parents and families have during these oh-so-enlightened days. Are these institutions now so archaic and incompetent that psychologists must now pick up the slack and review everything that passes under our children’s eyes? Can’t cartoons simply be entertaining trivialities that let the action rip for seven to eleven silly minutes and teach nothing but what a good laugh feels like? Not any more.
Blue's Clues took educational television to a new level by introducing an interactive component. Children were asked to actively participate in the lessons being taught. Credit: Nickelodeon.
Why?
No single factor alone accounts for the tendency to make children’s cartoons the vehicles for learning and self-exploration that they are today. The best starting point in this examination might be the Children’s Television Act, passed by Congress in 1990. This piece of legislature mandated children’s shows to display an educational component in every episode. Many programmers balked, and there are hilarious stories of how TV stations passed off The Flintstones as genuine teaching about prehistoric life, or The Jetsons as a scientific program. As surely as men actually quarried rock astride dinosaurs, the Federal Communications Commission sternly laid down the law on such shenanigans and the educational edict was enforced in full. From that point on, children’s shows stepped up the hiring of psychologists and other like-minded consultants to make sure that learning happened.
The psychological community brought with it another agenda, one that met with considerable approval from both broadcasters and parents. During the late 1980s there was a trend in school psychology that paralleled the prevailing educational beliefs: self-esteem became the watchword of the schools, along with a preponderant focus on “feelings.” School counselors, armed with tools such as “Mr. Aardvark’s Game of Self-Esteem” or “The Feelings Journey” made sure that if kids learned nothing else, they could identify anger, shame and “being OK!” This trend occasionally produced dubious results; American children scored lower in many academic areas than their European or Asian counterparts, but when asked to rate themselves, put their performances at the top of the heap. Nevertheless, the trend seeped into children’s broadcasting and messages stressing cooperation, tolerance, self-esteem and the healthy expression of emotions were soon augmenting educative material on TV.
Would TV stations have tried to sell this rare meeting between the Flintstones and the Jetsons as a lesson in time travel? Courtesy of Cartoon Network.
Early educational efforts (notably Sesame Street) appropriated the codes of commercial television including its advertising, and educational shows dovetailed perfectly with the new proscriptions against violence since the characters were too busy cooperating and respecting one another’s diversity to conk each other on the noggin. The third and final component of modern children’s television was added in 1992 when a large purple dinosaur brought the dimensions of caring, sharing, accepting and self-esteem to children via a personal relationship that had every child believing they had a close friend. Barney brought the trilogy of education, nonviolence and feelings to its present conclusion; though many irritated adults plotted dire fates for the simpering saurian, Barney and friends were works of genius, the templates for everything to follow. Barney also showed that through ratings and licensing and merchandising, children’s programming could make dinosaur-sized profits.
Who were parents to disagree? Televisions fill every household, and children spend more time in front of them in the course of a week than they do in front of chalkboards. Soon, psychologists and educators were defining children’s television and stringently evaluating its contents. This is accepted as being for the best, and on some terms it may be. If children are learning new material, concepts, self-love, and love for others, so much the better, right? If educators are getting a louder voice in society, what’s the problem? What about the psychologists, frustrated in their efforts to obtain prescribing privileges, battered by HMOs and watching private practices shrivel as insurance companies cut their number of reimbursable codes? If they are finding cool jobs in a hot new field, why begrudge them? _________________ "Veni. Vedi. Spooki." - Julius Caesar
I came. I saw. I spooked.
But…Wait A Minute…
I certainly don’t. Yet, a faint miasma hangs over the whole enterprise that I have difficulty in dispelling. Exactly why parents need so much help in teaching these same lessons has never been clear, but since the 1950s there seems to have been an increasing tendency for parents to defer to “the experts:” physicians, professional educators and my colleagues in the psychological community. As economic and social conditions across America changed and the two-career household became the norm for increasingly busy parents this was an easy path for many parents to follow. Yet, no one can definitively say that this has resulted in smarter or more cooperative children that sit at the top of the class while showering both themselves and others with the fruits of love and self-esteem.
Standardized test scores have declined since Sesame Street first appeared. Horrifying social anomalies, such as “children killing children” and school shootings, which the “Road Runner” generation never experienced, have materialized. Colleges have been forced to allocate considerable resources to remedial classes, and news stories about how some ungodly percentage of college students can’t identify our allies in WWII, the dates of the Civil War, or find Japan on a map are common. A study conducted in my own city of Anderson, Indiana in 2000 indicated that of 200 black males entering Anderson schools as freshmen, 156 never graduated. Perhaps psychologists, educational experts and their TV shows didn’t cause such things, but neither have they seemed, over the long haul, to prevent them.
Can animated children's fare just entertain instead of acting as a teacher all the time? Psychologists study Dora the Explorer in minute detail to learn what the show is teaching children. Credit: Nickelodeon.
To wit: child-development theories are just that — theories. No matter how much revision or what sort of modernizing spin can be placed on Piaget, Kohlberg and their ilk, predicting the development of any given child is close to impossible; there being too many intervening variables in the mix, factors that muddle the nature-nurture controversy beyond hope of resolution. These theories, as general guidelines, are not useless but they are not all-inclusive either. The greatest paradox surrounding them is that they seem to assume that the child is raised in a supportive environment which encourages the unfolding of a natural developmental process; in other words, we come back to parents and family. Children’s television certainly cannot be discounted as an educational medium, but it can never be a vital tool in doing “a better job of raising kids.”
One of the saddest emails I have received since I began writing commentary on animation came to me in January of 1999. A perturbed mother of two girls, both under the age of three, responded to a column I had done on the old Animation Nerd’s Paradise Website. She complained that her toddlers were being grievously shortchanged by children’s television, and that viable female role models were not adequately represented. Angry that her girls had no role model but Baby Bop, and that children’s television was slanted toward males, she stated: “Tell me it has no effect on the 3-year old girl.” This is clearly a case of asking children’s television to do too damn much of an important job. May I suggest shutting off the TV, telling your little moppets stories about female heroes (no, you don’t need a psychologist to make them up for you), and doing the job of being a strong role model for them in your own right? Give a child attention, a nurturing environment, respect for its innate curiosity and eagerness to explore, and perhaps — just perhaps — a child could survive something like a half-hour of classic, uncut Looney Tunes. You may even hear them laughing. _________________ "Veni. Vedi. Spooki." - Julius Caesar
I came. I saw. I spooked.
Wait . . . shouldn't we wish that they NOT laugh at Looney Tunes? After all, that show is a . . . um . . . showcase of negative vibes and violent tendencies. Any person who can laugh at the mangling of a cat by a malicious and vengeful rodent is obviously quite selfish and mean.
Or, as I like to call it, normal. I very much agree that, while TV is not necessarily a bad thing, and can (if well-done) be somewhat beneficial (like Sesame Street - it worked for me. I would even put up with the last ten of 60 Minutes so I could watch it, and it may have initiated my desire to take up the cello), there is no substitute for parental guidance/participation. Little children have no role models with as much importance as their parents. It is very easy to see children who imitate their parents, and even adults. However, many parents worry more about keeping their children alive/happy/entertained than intellectually stimulated. I can really only think of one sure-fire way to prevent this, and I can't stess it enough: Don't have kids (or open yourself to the possibility) until you can and will effectively and properly care for them. It's more complicated and time-consuming than it looks, so think carefully.
Of course, therein lies the trick. _________________ Krogoth uses Berserk.
Attacks are enhanced but defense weakens.
"Wait, that's not the cure button ... "
Sun Feb 16, 2003 4:55 pm
Spookmonkey
Joined: Nov 07, 2002
Post subject:
I actually would say don't let your kids watch TV until they have at least hit 6. from 0-6 try to instill a love for reading, music, and psychical activities. Television is for entertainment. All the stuff on TV that these shows are "teaching" is exactly what the parents and school should be doing. Now, if your child shows disinterest or struggles with certains parts of their education, a parent should selectivly choose creative ways to try to increase the childs efforts. If this includes part of a television show so beit, but they shouldn't just sit their kid down in front of the set and say watch big bird while mommy goes and shoots up. Mommy/Daddy should sit down in front of the TV with the kid and work with them. Reward them. Record these educational lil kid shows so they can be paused fast fowarded and used to the best possible benefit. Today nobody want to take responsibility for their own faults-- and blame others when their passed off children fail due to the fact sesame street didn't yet get to that subject, it was next weeks episode. Don't watch Television to learn, watch it to be entertained. Same goes for children, watch TV to laugh, nothing can replace laughter... don't have them watch TV to learn the ABC's you should have taught them already.
About looney tunes.... if you are a good parent, you will have already taught your children between what's real and what isn't. _________________ "Veni. Vedi. Spooki." - Julius Caesar
I came. I saw. I spooked.
What is this "positive reinforcement" that you speak of? My parents (probably unwittingly) have instilled in me that my life with them can not get better than a normal relationship. If I did poorly, they would take away. If I did better than average, they didn't take stuff away. It took a lot of grounding to bring their standards for what I can do down to "B"s for a few classes. Yes, Mom, if I spent four times the time (including classwork) I could reach an A, but is it really worth it, or even feasible to attempt that with three classes?
On the other hand, I appear to have turned out okay. In two of my classes, I have been completely self-motivated all school year (with the exception of Robot Time in physics), which is a feat that most high school students couldn't do. This comes from the person who was grounded for most of the first semester of my senior year for not doing homework. _________________ Krogoth uses Berserk.
Attacks are enhanced but defense weakens.
"Wait, that's not the cure button ... "
Mon Feb 17, 2003 8:18 pm
counterparadox
Joined: Nov 07, 2002
Post subject:
We've talked about this in religion class. When you're born, you live off of the info from your Id. It tells you when to eat, sleep, cry, etc. Later in life, it still does that, but it also sends messages like "DUDE! LOOK AT HER! SHE'S HOT!! BANG HER!!!"
Once you hit 2, your Super Ego kicks in. If mommy tells you a few times that "Toasters are the evilest thing in the world" then Junior will walk around saying "Toasters are the evilest thing in the world". He'll continue to say this till he starts to form his Ego at around the age of 13-18 (adolescence)(hence, children are as religious as their parents and then rebel during the teenage years).
Ego takes a lot of work to create. Which is why some people don't make theirs. To make an Ego, you evaluate everything in your SuperEgo, which is everything 'moral' that you've ever recorded.
TV has replaced mommy, however. Thus, TV is the Superego. TV says don't think. Don't think = don't create Ego. No ego = no morals.
In short, it's bad. It means the only morals in america are "SPEND MONEY" and "GET HOT CHICKS" _________________ anime is teh s uck
Play City of Heroes/Villians? Look me up, Pinnacle server, @C Paradox
Mon Feb 17, 2003 10:09 pm
Spookmonkey
Joined: Nov 07, 2002
Post subject:
you forgot "EAT LUCKY CHARMS" _________________ "Veni. Vedi. Spooki." - Julius Caesar
I came. I saw. I spooked.
Excuse me, but somebody please slap me if I get this wrong. Did you just say "No ego=no morals"? I beg to differ (please, please, please, please, PLEASE LET ME DIFFER) but I don't think that's what happens. I think the real formula is "No ego=psyche burnout". The Ego is moderator of sorts, between the primal urges of the Id and the ethics Nazi that is the Superego. A person with no Ego has no means to differentiate between the two polar opposite stimulations of the Id and Superego. The Id tells you, "You're hungry, so eat the apple." The Superego then says, "But you don't own the apple. You'd be stealing, and stealing's wrong." Now the Id smacks the Superego out of your head and says, "But you have to eat to survive, and isn't surviving your top priority." As you reach out for the apple, the Superego tackles and gags the Id and says, "But if you steal, you'll end up in jail and die underneath Bubba. Then you'll go to Hell and get poked by more than a pitchfork." By now your psyche has liquified and you're in the fetal position on the ground, muttering, "Apple, no apple, apple, no apple, apple..." Anyways...where was I...I got lost in all my rambling...Oh, yeah! Watching TV doesn't mean you don't develop an Ego, it means that your Ego is pre-programmed and doesn't develop naturally. It also doesn't mean that you grow up without morals. People mistake the term "morals" and "ethics" far too much. There are as many codes of ethics as there are decimals bewteen 0 and 1. Believe it or not, everyone has a code of ethics. It's just that some aren't as virtuous as we'd like to believe they all are. _________________ Rycel's Death Count on this board: 7
"Great Ironies of Our World": Why is orange juice yellow?
Tue Feb 18, 2003 12:59 am
counterparadox
Joined: Nov 07, 2002
Post subject:
I had a good response in my head when I read that. You're right, but I slightly disagree on a few points. But you're not WRONG. But I can't type it right now. I'll explain what I want to explain later. _________________ anime is teh s uck
Play City of Heroes/Villians? Look me up, Pinnacle server, @C Paradox
Tue Feb 18, 2003 1:21 pm
WhtHawk
Joined: Jan 30, 2003
Post subject:
If your parents tell you that TV is all fictional as you develop, that is instilled into you and makes the difference between TV and life easy to determine. These shows about feelings and all of that other stuff bring TV to life. With out a parental figure to make the line clear, it blurs and kids grow up unable to see the difference clearly. TV is a usefull tool; like drill it is no good with out a bit. So TV is only good if is used in combination with somting else. I love the old loony toons; they were funny. I watch four hours of TV per week. All of it is video taped. I spend my life reading, playing and doing things more important than games and TV. I use TV, especialy anime as fate would have it, as a means of enterainment. That is how my parents raised me, they support my anime collection, watch it with me, and don't mind me not watching much TV at all.
::end rambling::
No matter what anyone says, it all comes back on the parents. If the child gets the support and direction he/she needs, many of the problems we are facing would almost disappear. _________________ To do two things at once is to do neither. —Publilius Syrus, Roman slave, first century B.C.
Tue Feb 18, 2003 11:53 pm
counterparadox
Joined: Nov 07, 2002
Post subject:
WhtHawk wrote:
If your parents tell you that TV is all fictional as you develop, that is instilled into you and makes the difference between TV and life easy to determine.
Um, no.
Whether you wnat to believe it or not, the media is constantly blasting you with messages of "BUY THIS AND THIS AND THIS". The funny thing is, as I've developed morally, I want less and less material things. Odd, no? You're parents can constantly tell you that you can't have something, but the TV is telling you that you need it to live. Until YOU confront the message of consumerism, you'll keep desiring. You want more anime, no? You feel the need to get more so you can watch it, no? That's consumerism. You'd probably buy it, watch it maybe three times, and hten pretty much forget about it. America has free speech. But we also use up most of the worlds resources. It's a real tiffy we've gotten ourselves into.
What's wrong is that parents attack anime and video games, even though people mimick wrestleing and not Link or Cloud Strife. It's plain old stupidity right there. But that's a tangent for another day.
As for not developing an Ego, Rycel, you're right. Everyone has an Ego. But many people don't put in the work to make an effective ego. Thus they are without the ability to make the right descisions. There are people who never get past level 2 of Kolberg's 6 levels of moral reasoning. Few people reach level 6. But there are too many that never get past level two, that is, your motivation is that of personal reward. "I'll do it, but only if I get something out of it."
Gandhi was level 6, "It must be done for the good of all. I can't sit by idly while people suffer."
TV does affect you when you're young. It replaces hte parents. But hte shows aren't the problem. It's more the messages of greed and lust in commercials. _________________ anime is teh s uck
Play City of Heroes/Villians? Look me up, Pinnacle server, @C Paradox
Wed Feb 19, 2003 1:56 pm
Spookmonkey
Joined: Nov 07, 2002
Post subject:
ok, I know there are things wrong with that argument, the overall idea is ok, but the arguments aren't very sound. I just can't articulate the proper arguments right now... no sleep = bad. waking up early to win a damn auction for new uber-3d modeling video card to help make 5+ minute renders faster = good. trying to argue with no sleep = very bad... I'm so screwed when my debate comes up in ethics (it's in the early morning)
oh yeah, I will leave you with this.
Part of your problem was that you oversimplified the stages, became too specific while disregarding the rest of what could of been used. _________________ "Veni. Vedi. Spooki." - Julius Caesar
I came. I saw. I spooked.
People tend to only scim over long discourses. So I try to condense. I'm aware I left a lot out. I had a semester course in morality. I tried to touch on the essentials, making it easy to comprehend, but not being the end all and be all of moral knowledge. Sometimes I fail at making my thoughts short, easy to understand, and interesting. But that's why I like this board. I get practice. Albeit less since the absense of Night, but still, it helps. _________________ anime is teh s uck
Play City of Heroes/Villians? Look me up, Pinnacle server, @C Paradox
Wed Feb 19, 2003 2:27 pm
Spookmonkey
Joined: Nov 07, 2002
Post subject:
but you know what though, look at the story post of this thread, I have the feeling a longer arguement post is quite ok. anyone who didn't read the story post doesn't deserve to understand what you're saying. go into the detail you wanted to. do it, so hath spoken the monkey. _________________ "Veni. Vedi. Spooki." - Julius Caesar
I came. I saw. I spooked.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
Can animated children's fare just entertain instead of acting as a teacher all the time? Psychologists study Dora the Explorer in minute detail to learn what the show is teaching children. Credit: Nickelodeon.
::end rambling::
