I was forced to take this really miserable class last year where, for a large portion of the class, we talked about the horrible dangers of television and how dare we show television to our children and Sesame Street is evil because it makes children think their teacher in school will be Big Bird (this is a direct quote from the book) and lots of other just wonderful things like this.
Moriarty is summing up my feelings for me.
I considered burning this book after I was forced to read it. I thought I would never have to deal with such stupidity again.
I was wrong.
I was alerted to attention in a class this morning when a professor spent his entire lecture talking both about this book and the evils of showing television to young children.
I really wanted to just stand up and walk out of class.
I have walked out of a class three times before in my life. Once because a good friend of mine had died the day before and it was too much listening to him being talked about so casually during class. Once because a professor spoke very derogatory towards a film that is very close to my heart and when I said that I felt the film wasn't about what she was saying, but instead about seeing the potential in everyone and choosing to love instead of hate out of fear, she told me in very rude words that I was wrong and that my opinion didn't matter to her. And once because a professor who refused to call us by our names but instead called us by assigned numbers said we were all going to fail his class and he was glad because we were dumb seeing as how we had asked for a study guide.
Back to this class.
The evils of television make no sense to me. And because I had heard this opinion and think it's unintelligent, I had no desire to hear it again. So instead of sitting there and fuming, I just tuned out the professor and wrote out my own opinion. And this is what I said:
Why is a sin to combine entertainment and education? If we combined them, maybe kids wouldn't be able to think of one without the other. And that sounds like a good thing to me.
Maybe if we had children watching "The Magic School Bus" and "Reading Rainbow", we wouldn't have to worry about what our children were putting into their minds so much.
Children aren't as dumb as we make them out to be. They know what's up and how things work. Maybe they'll be disappointed Mrs. Frizzo isn't their school teacher, but at least they'll be more intelligent than the kids watching "Family Guy" and "America's Funniest Home Videos".
More to the point, why are we blaming children for their ignorance? Let's blame the idiotic parents instead who should use protection or get their tubes tied if they don't know how to raise a child appropriately.
Behind every fat child is an obese parent. And beauty is ugly when it's dumb.
If we're going to be dumb enough to blame the media for all of our children's problems, let's just blindfold and close the ears of all children and never let them leave the house. Or better yet, let's just not have kids anymore. There are enough dumb people on the planet - if we're going to just keep producing stupid people, let's just stop breeding.
The most unintelligent thing we could think is that intelligence is something we just deserve. It's something we earn and something we strive to achieve. Intelligence is not something you get when you're born, but hopefully it's something you have when you die.
While she might laugh and deny it, my mother had an unspoken rule that we only watched television shows growing up that were educational.
I might be strange and a little socially awkward, but I like to think I have a descent amount of intelligence now.
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