Baby Einstein and the myth of TV as a teacher

Walt Disney is offering refunds on video purchases for past five years.  Photo: USA Today

No one can fault parents for attempting to educate their child from an early age.  However, where parents have failed is in thinking that they may let the television take their place in this education.

Walt Disney corporation announced today that it is offering a refund to anyone who bought a Baby Einstein video in the last five years due to a class action law suit filed by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, because the videos are not educational to any child under the age of 2.  Studies have actually shown that an hour a day of watching Baby Einstein was associated with slower acquisition of new words.   Thus, the old adage of "boob-tube," seems to be accurate.  Television is making society less intelligent.
 

It seems in this new technological age we live in that information is everywhere.  The internet and television stream 24-hours of news and virtually the information of mankind.  Why is it that with so much at our fingertips it appears we are actually becoming less intelligent? 

The most obvious reasons are misinformation, partial information, and society allowing the media to think for them.  Polls show that a majority of people take internet information as sound and reliable, without researching further than a few websites.  This is leading to much misinformation being disseminated into society.  Television programming is designed to entertain more than educate, yet people are spending exuberant amounts of time glued to the television.

TV is used as a babysitter for children, it has replaced family dinner time, and has become a major source of people's information.  This trend is staggering and must end if the U.S. is not to be doomed to fall too far behind the rest of the world.

Here is the data:  99% of Americans own a television and of those, 66% own three or more tv's.  Americans watch an average of 250 billion hours of television annually, with children watching 28 hours of television per week.  66% of Americans watch tv while eating dinner.  The average number of DVD rentals per week is 6 million, double the number of library books checked-out at 3 million.  Perhaps the most staggering figure is that of parents surveyed throughout the U.S., the majority admitted to only engaging their child in 3.5 minutes of meaningful discussion per week!  (http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html)

 What are the results of such habits?  According to a report published in August by the National Center for Education Statistics, in comparing 15-year-old U.S. students with students from other countries in the Organization for Economic Development, the U.S. math scores were not measurably different in 2006 from the previous scores in 2003. But while other countries have improved, the United States has remained stagnant.

Such trends leave the U.S. unable to compete globally with other nations.  For example, students from Canada, Japan and the Czech Republic score higher in science than do those in the U.S.  Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told a room full of science and math experts of the National Science Board  that this will hurt the United States as it competes internationally. "We are lagging the rest of the world, and we are lagging it in pretty substantial ways," he said.  He commented further that the U.S. "...has become complacent. We've sort of lost our way."

Thus, parents it is time to turn off the televisions, video games, and the internet and rather interact with your children.  Have them read books and actually play outside with other kids.  Oh, and while your at it, cut down your own tv time.  Unplug and read, before this country turns into the land of ignorant, rather than the free.