Postman Does Penguins

Abstract

IN HIS remarkable 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman examined the appeal and cultural function of Sesame Street. He wrote that parents embraced the program because assuaged their guilt over the fact that they could not or would not restrict their children's access to At the same time, the program relieved them of the responsibility of teaching their preschool children how to read. (1) Because it delivered effortless pleasure, Postman believed that Sesame Street prepared children all too well for full membership in their parents' amusement-obsessed culture. When it was first introduced, many progressive educators praised Sesame Street as an effective means of encouraging early literacy and positive attitudes toward learning and school. Unfortunately, they missed the ways in which the show undermined what it attempted to promote. As Postman observed, Sesame Street encouraged children to love school only if school was like Sesame Street, complete with superior production values and rapid-fire shifts of topics and points of view. It is impossible to read Postman's critique of television without reflecting on the speed of change and on how readily we have set aside the debate over television as a cultural threat. It is equally impossible to miss Postman's prescience and his ability to understand the relationship between media and education, even after several generations of technology have been layered over the television. Network programming has been augmented by other types of screen-mediated content. According to a 2003 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly half of surveyed parents deemed educational videos very important to their babies' development, and 27% of young children own a Einstein video. (2) Consider this testimonial, published on the company website, from a mother who is at least as enthusiastic about Einstein as her mother probably was about Sesame Street, and for all the same reasons: My 9 month old has loved the videos and DVD's since he was 2 months old. Not only have they bought me precious minutes (and hours) of time to do things like take a shower, BUT ALSO I have actually seen his recognition skills develop ... [Now] Einstein is the only thing he will sit still for. Thank God for these products, both for a new mom's sanity and her baby's most advanced intellect, of course!!! Of course. Notice that the Einstein testimonials are provided by parents rather than child development experts, a trend that (depending on one's perspective) reflects the democratizing tendencies of infoglut or the elevation of every opinion to the same level of merit. It is difficult to find disinterested experts in favor of the electronic stimulation of young children's minds. The American Association of Pediatricians has said that babies under the age of 2 shouldn't be put in front of televisions and that preschoolers should watch less than two hours each day. But 26% of children under 2 have televisions located in their bedrooms. Ninety-seven percent of children have toys or clothes based on TV or movie characters. (3) With the advent of the cable channel TV, the diaper demographic has come into its own. Parents are promised that their babies will not be targeted by advertising as they are stimulated, soothed, or channeled by the channel. There are programs for baby chefs, for babies who will watch balls of different shapes [sic], and programs that explore geometry. There even is a segment for the Baby that promises to nurture the inherent spirituality in every child. (4) Inevitably, Spiritual grows up to be Connected Child. Parental attempts to maintain an electronic version of the gated community become far more difficult, and most parents are either unwilling or unable to apply rules that might inhibit their children's access to information, communication, or amusement. …