“Tv has the potential for good information and lessons. Until it becomes viewer driven and I don’t have wait for a listing, watch silly commercials or sift through countless channels, I’ll stay away.”

has been around for a year. But, if you don’t have the $’s or the permission at the school level to use the things, it doesn’t matter. Like, dvd’s drives for pc’s have been around for, like, years and yet we NONE in our school – not allowed. So, we have to use a dvd player which we have 3. We’d like to have tv’s in every room but the budget won’t allow it all at one shot. I know, I do the budget!
Now, as for the tv being good for students or bad for students, I think that I clarified that in my post http://tinyurl.com/2nah4z. For the record, I was clarifying that you can discuss something with a person without owning it. I discuss motor bikes, cars, snowmobiles and other motorized vehicles with my students all the time. I own a truck but, because at one time I owned a vehicle, I have a reference point even though cars and many of the components have changed. Likewise, I don’t actually have to watch every program the kids watch in order to have a discussion about what makes good tv or what might “rot their brains” as you state. I use my own children as examples because 1. They are your “digital” natives – very digital in fact. 2. They have lived in 5 different locations from a large city to a small rural town and variations inbetween. 3. They cover a wide span of ages, at one time, in one location. Not too many people have the experiences I have right now. 4. I have a cohort of females – 10 to 15 years old and a cohort of males (2 to 5 years old). 5. The two parents involved are well educated (both with at least 2 degrees – one with a Master’s.)
I have debated, and will continue to debate the merits of tv with anyone. In fact, I still can recall the moment when tv news reporting went from reporting “facts” to sensationalism. It happened when a group of Sough African Nazis were captured and were placed in front of their car – with their hands tied behind their backs. One was wounded, badly and the other was pleading with journalists to help him, to save him as they were going to kill him. Then a soldier walked into view, smiled into the camera and executed, on live television, the one Nazi. It was during a discussion with the students I was teaching at the time when a young man uttered “Cool” to that discussion that I began to challenge the viewing habits of people, teens and tweens, in particular. So, as I stated clearly, I don’t impose my habits on others. I will discuss and debate the merits of programs, viewing habits and other things with you, Dan, or anyone. I will also discuss the health impact of a sedentary lifestyle and the impact that such a lifestyle has upon my taxes and my income. I will also discuss the impact that your eating habits will have upon the ability of our health care system to take care of people and if it is the responsibility of the public to fund for disease and problems that can be directly linked to the lifestyle that you live watching 14 hours a day. We can discuss the passive state of your existence that happens when you have been exposed to tv for particular lengths of time and compare it to other media and the impact each has on you and your lifestyle habits. We can do all this and more without, yes without, me having commercial tv in my house over the past 13 years. Why? Because while you’re watching, I’m reading and looking for information to use when I have these discussions with adolescents and children. So, go ahead and watch the tv – it just allows me to get that much further ahead. Keep telling yourself that you need to watch it to discuss it – that’s what the media has you believing and you’re a very avid spokesman for the viewing television in order to be an “expert”. I’ve also known many a armchair quarterback or coach that, when it came to actually doing it, should have stuck to the chair. At least there, they didn’t make a fool of themselves. But hey, maybe I’m too old to really know what you’re talkin’ about anyway – ;)

If that’s the course this conversation oughtta take and end with then, fine, I agree, but I’ve gotta note that my original point has been thoroughly missed, both here and at Chris’ place, particularly by our contributing parents.

This has nothing to do with how much t.v. you or your genetic offspring personally watch. Nor am I urging my colleagues to watch Magnum P.I. reruns in class – or listen to music, or read books, or do anything.

As teachers (again, not as parents), I’d like to see our latent prejudice towards t.v. exposed and dismissed. The sense from the detractors seems to be, “Oh, I don’t mind if my students watch it, but as for me and my family, we don’t touch the stuff,” and that isn’t the same as encouraging one’s students to differentiate a medium’s failures and successes (t.v., music, book, blog, or otherwise) nor does it encourage them to make their own successes.

Tv has the potential for good information and lessons. Until it becomes viewer driven and I don’t have wait for a listing, watch silly commercials or sift through countless channels, I’ll stay away.

Just for the record, this has been around (legally) for over a year.

Oh, I mean, it’s a valid way to communicate, just as all sorts of slang were and still are. But with it’s extr-ee-me ellipsis, abbreviation, and shorthand, it’s a fundamentally limited language. The languages to which we devote class-hours and teacher-dollars oughtta have a singular long-term benefit to our students’ future livelihood. Which IM-speak does not.

Rebecca summarizes my agreements and disagreements almost a little too perfectly. She’s just right on in that it doesn’t really matter whether we dig TV or not (and I’ve got a lot of love for Chris‘ “it just ain’t worth sorting through the shit to find the truffles” response) it’s a fact of our students’ lives.

As an educator — someone whose job it is to help students make sense of life in general and media in particular — I hope a fella like Chris wouldn’t say something to his students like “y’all shouldn’t watch t.v.” w/o clarifying the part his personal and spiritual convictions play in that decision.

I’m certainly not recommending you integrate t.v. into your practice (though any composition teachers who follow Rebecca’s lead on her extracurricular assignment get extra credit from me). I’m advocating an improved regard for what has long been mistaken for an adversary of education.

It’s simply my hope that when opportunities arise to discuss why a student likes/dislikes a certain show, we engage her as if t.v. were as potentially enriching a medium as blogs, books, or satellite radio. Because it is.

Also, to maintain a consistent ethical code, we’ve gotta recognize the absurdity of a group like Adbusters petitioning the silence of any media on the shaky grounds that people abuse it. ‘Cause it’s one half step from there to rescinding free speech.