Teaching as an Amusing Activity
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The Entertainment in Education
In Neil Postmans book Amusing Ourselves to Death, he discusses the
impact that television has on the American culture. Postman talks about how much the American culture hands itself over to the television and he show the ways that it is being done He shows the impact that television has on the written word, education, and the youth in America. Postman explains how the way teaching has changed to make it easier for our youth to understand and how they arent bettering the curriculum but making it more entertaining.
Somehow the television has crept into the school systems of America
and is now becoming, sadly, a vital part of the education of our youth. I consider it
a huge problem because we are putting the thing that causes our minds to shut
down in front of us in school! In what way does it cause our minds to shut down
you might ask? At a very young age we are taught that the television is supposed
to be used for fun and entertainment, so the first time that something does not
catch our interests we change the channel. Postman talks about this and makes
mention of the effects a show like “Sesame Street” has on us by saying that there
are many things about these kinds of shows that catch our eyes and please us and
serve as preparation for entry into a fun-loving culture (142). But in reality it turns
out that not all learning is fun and that sometimes effort is required to learn. Postman also says this “Mainly, they will have learned that learning is a form of entertainment or, more precisely, that anything worth learning is a form of entertainment, and out to” (154) .
Postman says, “You will find it is said by some that children will learn
the best when they are interested in what they are learning” (146). Okay sure, by
this point our children are convinced form their experiences when they were
growing up that television is entertainment. So if the only things we are interested
in are the things that catch our attention then what is it that is being taught if we
are learning things that only catch our interest? Things like “The Voyage of the
Mimi” are being used to teach our youth. The television series just mentioned is an
educational drama used in many of the schools across America and it teaches kids
how to track down whales or to live on an uninhabitable island. The American
culture today tends to confuse entertainment with education and it is helping to
stupefy our next generation.
In his chapter “Teaching as an Amusing Activity” Postman states that
television is becoming more and more apart of the a curriculum in education and
that classroom curriculum seems to be moving further and further away from the
written word. I fully agree with what he says about this. It happens far to often for
that our culture will take the easy way out of learning. Our culture has made a
conscious decision to incorporate every type of media into education except the
written word. The further away culture gets from the written word the further it
gets from thinking. Postman states in his book “One is entirely justified in saying
that the major educational enterprise now being undertaken in the United States in
not happening in its classrooms but in the home in front of the television set”
(145).This