Reading vs. TV

I included the above citation and below letter in my Back to School Night class description for parents.

In an important book on education, Neil Postman notes that “word-centered” people think in a completely different mode from “image-centered” people. He explores the differences between the mental processes involved in reading and those involved in television watching. Reading demands sustained concentration, whereas television promotes a very short attention span. Reading involves (and teaches) logical reasoning, whereas television involves (and teaches) purely emotional responses. Reading promotes continuity, the gradual accumulation of knowledge, and sustained exploration of ideas. Television, on the other hand, fosters fragmentation, anti-intellectualism, and immediate gratification.

Postman does not criticize the content of television – the typical worries about “sex and violence” or the need for quality programming. Rather, the problem is in the properties of the form itself. Language is cognitive, appealing to the mind; images are affective, appealing to the emotions.

Postman goes on to connect the newly emerging dominance of electronic images over words to habits of mind that are having monumental social consequences: to the undermining of authority, the loss of sense of history, hostility to science, pleasure-centeredness, and the emergence of new values based on instant gratification and the need to be continually entertained. The new media direct us “to search for time-compressed experience, short-term relationships, present-oriented accomplishment, simple and immediate solutions. Thus, the teaching of the media curriculum must lead inevitably to a disbelief in long-term planning, in deferred gratification, in the relevance of tradition, and in the need for confronting complexity.” The social acceptance of sexual immorality, the soaring divorce rates, and the pathology of drug abuse may well be related to this pursuit of instant pleasure at all costs.
~from Reading Between the Lines by Gene Edward Vieth, Jr.
(Crossway Books, 1990). pg 21

The most grievous event for a teacher to witness is a student’s refusal to think. Believe it or not, this happens quite often because children today are not used to thinking, only spectating. As your child’s Language Arts teacher, and as one who is concerned with his or her welfare as a human being, I plea with you to encourage and model a reading atmosphere in your home. Most children naturally don’t like to read. Most don’t like vegetables or other beneficial things either. Therefore, please take the necessary steps at home to ensure your child’s mental and emotional health, just as you do their physical health, by increasing their time spent with books and decreasing their time spent in front of the TV!