"Parents were eager to hope that television could teach their children something other than which breakfast cereal has the most crackle. At the same time, ‘Sesame Street’ relieved them of the responsibility of teaching their pre-school children how to read - no small matter in a culture where children are apt to be considered a nuisance. They could also plainly see that in spite of its faults, ‘Sesame Street’ was entirely consonant with the prevailing spirit of America. Its use of cute puppets, celebrities, catchy tunes, and rapid-fire editing was certain to give pleasure to the children and would therefore serve as adequate preparation for their entry into a fun-loving culture." (page 142)

The true results of Sesame Street:

"We now know that ‘Sesame Street’ encourages children to love school only if school is like ‘Sesame Street.’ Which is to say, we now know that ‘Sesame Street’ undermines what the traditional idea of schooling represents. Whereas a classroom is a place of social interaction, the space in front of a television set is a private preserve. Whereas in a classroom, one may ask a teacher questions, one can ask nothing of a television screen. Whereas school is centered on the development of language, television demands attention to images. Whereas attending school is a legal requirement, watching television is an act of choice. Whereas in school, one fails to attend to the teacher at the risk of punishment, no penalties exist for failing to attend to the television screen. Whereas to behave oneself in school means to observe rules of public decorum, television watching requires no such observances, has no concept of public decorum. Whereas in a classroom, fun is never more than a means to an end, on television it is the end in itself." (page 143 [emphasis added])

"If we are to blame ‘Sesame Street’ for anything, it is for the pretense that it is any ally of the classroom. That, after all, has been its chief claim on foundation and public money. As a television show, and a good one, ‘Sesame Street’ does not encourage children to love school or anything about school. It encourages them to love television." (page 144)

Again, Postman’s analysis goes deeper than ranting and raving about the evils of television:

"We may take as our guide here John Dewey’s observation that the content of a lesson is the least important thing about learning. As he wrote in Experience and Education: ‘Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only what he is studying at the time. Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes...may be and often is more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history....For these attitudes are fundamentally what count in the future.’¹ In other words, the most important thing one learns is always something about how one learns." (page 144)

"One is entirely justified in saying that the major educational enterprise now being undertaken in the United States is not happening in its classrooms but in the home, in front of the television set, and under the jurisdiction not of school administrators and teachers but of network executives and entertainers. I don’t mean to imply that the situation is a result of a conspiracy or even that those who control television want this responsibility. I mean only to say that, like the alphabet or the printing press, television has by its power to control the time, attention and cognitive habits of our youth gained the power to control their education." (page 145)

Postman then goes for the jugular: Point number one:

"...I would like to recall two points that I feel I did not express forcefully enough in that book² and that happen to be central to this one. I refer, first, to the fact that television’s principal contribution to educational philosophy is the idea that teaching and entertainment are inseparable. This entirely original conception is to be found nowhere in educational discourses, from Confucius to Plato to Cicero to Locke to John Dewey." (page 146 [emphasis added])

Further analysis that again reveals why television is not education:

"We might say there are three commandments that form the philosophy of the education which television offers. The influence of these commandments is observable in every type of television programming - from ‘Sesame Street’ to the documentaries of ‘Nova’ and ‘The National Geographic’ to Fantasy Island’ to MTV. The commandments are as follows:

Thou shalt have no prerequisites

 Every television program must be a complete package in itself....

Thou shalt induce no perplexity

A perplexed learner is a learner who will turn to another station. This means that there must be nothing that has to be remembered, studied, applied or, worst of all, endured....

Thou shalt avoid exposition like the ten plagues visited upon Egypt

Of all enemies of television-teaching, including continuity and perplexity, none is more formidable than exposition. Arguments, hypotheses, discussions, reasons, refutations or any of the traditional instruments of reasoned discourse turn television into radio or, worse, third-rate printed matter. Thus, television-teaching always takes the form of story-telling, conducted through dynamic images and supported by music....And when one considers that save for sleeping there is no activity that occupies more of an American youth’s time than television-viewing, we cannot avoid the conclusion that a massive reorientation toward learning is now taking place." (page 147-148)

Postman goes for the jugular: Point number two:

"Which leads to the second point I wish to emphasize: The consequences of this reorientation are to be observed not only in the decline of the potency of the classroom but, paradoxically, in the refashioning of the classroom into a place where both teaching and learning are intended to be vastly amusing activities." (page 148 [emphasis added])

The truth will out! What objective studies reveal regarding television and education is truly revealing:

"George Comstock and his associates have reviewed 2,800 studies on the general topic of television’s influence on behavior, including cognitive processing, and are unable to point to persuasive evidence that ‘learning increases when information is presented in a dramatic setting.’ ³ Indeed, in studies conducted by Cohen and Salomon; Meringoff; Jacoby, Hoyer and Sheluga; Stauffer, Frost and Rybolt; Stern; Wilson; Neuman; Katz, Adoni and Parness; and Gunter, quite the opposite conclusion is justified.⁴ Jacoby et al. Found, for example, that only 3.5 percent of viewers were able to answer successfully twelve true/false questions concerning two thirty-second segments of commercial television programs and advertisements. Stauffer et al. Found in studying students’ responses to a news program transmitted via television, radio and print, that print significantly increased correct responses to questions regarding the names of people and numbers contained in the material. Stern reported that 51 percent of viewers could not recall a single item of news a few minutes after viewing a news program on television....In other words, so far as many reputable studies are concerned, television viewing does not significantly increase learning, is inferior to and less likely than print to cultivate higher-order, inferential thinking." (page 151-152 [emphasis added])

And so there you have the indictment: our public education system is not educating our children in what they need to know to survive in life, but they sure feel good about themselves and are having fun in the meantime!

Final chapter coming up, to be concluded by my own thoughts on where to go from here. Stay tuned.

Next installment

Last installment

First installment

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1. Dewey, John. Experience and Education. The Kappa Delta Pi Lectures. London: Collier Books, 1963, p. 48

2. Teaching as a Subversive Activity.

3. G. Comstock, S. Chaffee, N. Katzman, M. McCombs, and D. Roberts, Television and Human Behavior (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978).

4. A. Cohen and G. Salomon, "Children’s Literate Television Viewing: Surprises and Possible Explanations," Journal of Communication 29 (1979): 156-163; L. M. Meringoff, "What Pictures Can and Can’t Do for Children’s Story Comprehension," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April, 1982; J. Jacoby, W. D. Hoyer and D. A. Sheluga, Miscomprehension of Televised Communications (New York: The Educational Foundation of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, 1980); J. Stauffer, R. Frost and W. Rybolt, "Recall and Learning from Broadcast News: Is Print Better?," Journal of Broadcasting (Summer, 1981): 253-262; A. Stern, "A Study for the National Association for Broadcasting," in M. Barret (ed.), The Politics of Broadcasting, 1971-1972 (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1973); C. E. Wilson, "The Effect of a Medium on Loss of Information," Journalism Quarterly 51(Spring, 1974): 111-115; W. R. Neuman, "Patterns of Recall Among Television News Viewers," Public Opinion Quarterly 40 (1976): 118-125; E. Katz, H. Adoni and P. Parness, "Remembering the News: What the Pictures Add to Recall," Journalism Quarterly 54 (1977): 233-242; B. Gunter, "Remembering Television News: Effects of Picture Content," Journal of General Psychology 102 (1980): 127-133.