The Love of Television is the Root of all Evil
by
Erik Oosterwal
The love of television is the root of all evil. I say this because our society
spends more time watching television and less time being productive than
any other 1st world country.
A recent study in US News and World Report claimed that on average, by the
time our children graduate from high school they will have spent more time
in front of the television that they do in school.
That means that each year, kids spend over 1190 hours in front of the TV.
The typical work year for adults is 2000 hours, or in other words, more than
half of the time you spend in the office, your kids are watching TV.
A few years ago, one of the television news programs had a special dedicated
to showing the 'State of Education in America'. One test that was given to
high school seniors for that show was to mark the location of our nation's
capital on a world map. Fewer then 70% of the of the seniors could properly
locate the capital, and the answers for the location ranged from Los Angeles
and New York to a location somewhere in Africa.
In a 1986 an assessment of 17 year-old juniors, students were asked when
World War I occurred. More than 40% were unable to place the event "some
time between 1900 and 1950."
In June, 1992, the Wall Street Journal published a copy of the entrance exam
for the Jersey City High School dated June, 1885. the exam tested the prospective
student in five areas: Algebra, Arithmetic, Geography, Grammar, and US History.
Each subject contained 10 questions. Here is a sampling:
For Algebra: Write a homogeneous quadrinomial of the third degree. Express
the cube root of 10ax in two ways.
For Arithmetic: The mason work on a building can be finished by 16 men in
24 days, working 10 hours per day. How long will it take 22 men working 8
hours a day?
For Geography: Name the states on the west bank of the Mississippi, and the
capital of each.
For Grammar: Correct [a] It is only me. [b] Who did she invite. [c] Whenever
my husband or son take an umbrella down town, they always leave it.
For US History: What was the remote and the immediate cause of the great
Civil war. Who captured Fort Donelson.
These are only five of the fifty questions.
This past September, on my way home from work, I was thinking about all of
the things that needed be finished around the house before winter, and I
thought about how normally when I get home I turn on the TV, and end up sitting
in the living room the entire evening accomplishing nothing. So I decided
to run a little test in my home.
Get rid of the TV for one week and see what difference it makes.
I was the first one home on that Monday, so I went into the living room and
unplugged the TV leaving the VCR plugged in as a decoy. I then went outside,
and started to mow the lawn.
When my wife came home with the kids, the kids played in the yard while my
wife stayed inside. about half an hour later may wife came out to tell me
that there was something wrong with the television. I told her that I would
take a look at it some time. That evening, I mowed most of the two acre yard,
my wife completed her homework for her class the following Monday, the kids
were fed, bathed, and read to before bed, and my wife and I spent a couple
of hours talking before going to bed.
She was a little disappointed about not being able to watch Northern Exposure,
but was happy that the lawn was mowed. The next night and the rest of the
week were more of the same. By Wednesday, my wife was joking with her sister
that she kind of liked having the TV broken. Saturday evening my wife and
I wanted to watch Star Trek so when no one was looking, I plugged the TV
in.
The results of my test were as I expected. We were more productive, the kids
spent more time outside, and to be totally honest, we didn't miss the TV
all that much. The following week, when the TV was working again, we fell
back into our previous routine with me falling asleep on the couch watching
the local news.
I'm not here to tell you that television is bad, we get alot of benefits
from TV. There are educational shows, news, movies, sports, and lots of sit
coms that can help us relax when we want to forget about a rough day at work.
But remember, in order to maintain a healthy household you need to have some
limitations on what and how much television you watch, and this can be done
in several ways.
You can use television as a reward when all your other work is done, you
can specify which shows you want to watch and only watch those shows, or
you can give yourself a limit to the total time spent watching and when your
quota is used up, turn off the TV.
If you don't have a television in you house, congratulations! you're on the
right track. But if you're like me, and spend as much time in front of the
TV as you do in the office, set up a schedule for yourself to limit the amount
of time you waste and invest that time in something productive.
Copyright Erik Oosterwal 1994 - 2004
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