🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <56slm1$is9@fcnews.fc.hp.com>, warrenb@fc.hp.com (Warren Brill) wrote:
>Bradley Richards (bradley@ai-lab.fh-furtwangen.de) wrote:
>: In my view--granted I left the States 5 years ago--the biggest problem with
> US 
>: public schools is a societal/parental problem. There are too many parents 
>: who don't care enough about the education and discipline of their children. 
>: Their children are disruptive, and become the "lowest common denominators" 
>: to which classes are paced. Other problems with bureaucracy, low funding,
> etc. 
>: are important, but very much secondary.
>
>: The sad thing is that this problem cannot be legislated or regulated away. It
>: is a societal attitude problem, and--like all societal problems--it can only
>: be changed over the course of many years, through the careful application of 
>: campaigns like those that have been used to discourage smoking and drug use.
>
>
>There is one point I would like to question, however, and that is the one
>where you blame disruptive children on their parents. I am sure, given the
>level tone of the post, that your intent was not to blame the entire 
>situation on parents, but I would like to add one thing: I believe that
>a part, not a small one, of the problem which causes children to be out of
>control in classrooms (as well as at home, in public, etc) is the effect 
>of 1) television, which lowers that lowest common denominator to action-
>action-action (where the slightest moment to reflect on whether what the
>child is seeing is right or wrong is a chance to change the channel to
>another one of MTV-style bites) and 2) the loss of respect for public
>officials in general, beginning with Nixon in the end of the 'sixties, 
>and ending with the current attempt by the plurality party in the US
>Congress to find _something, anything_ to pin on our President, in order
>to embarass him, not to help the country.


Thanks--glad you liked my post. And no, I don't entirely blame the parents--I 
think what we have is a societal problem, where many parents have simply been 
carried along. Don't-care parenting, too much television, discipline 
problems--I think these are all different effects of the same causes; causes 
that are complex and have been developing at least since the end of WW2.

Having a small child (18 months), I am beginning to see how easy it is to give 
in. Not too long ago, our son accidentally discovered the TV-remote. It was 
probably the first time the TV had been on in a couple of months... In any 
case, he was so fascinated that he just flipped channels and stared for hours 
on end. And, as it happened, my wife and I had lots to do at the time, so we 
let him. I don't suppose any harm came of it--but it was suddenly easy to see 
giving in the next day, and the next, and the next... The TV would make a an 
easy baby-sitter.

The last statistic I saw for the US said that the average child watched 
television 45 hours per week! And I rather doubt that much of that is PBS.

So I do agree with you: it cannot be healthy for children to watch hours and 
hours of television. And the parents are not solely to blame for their 
children's problems--there is lousy programming on TV, there are lousy 
role-models for children (Nixon or Clinton or both, according to one's 
political persuasions), the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting 
poorer, and on and on.

But parents *are* the people who can effect positive changes in the lives of 
their children. In this sense, parents do stand center-stage--not as the 
problem, but as the potential solution to the problem.

Cheers,

Bradley

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bradley L. Richards, AI Lab, Fachhochschule Furtwangen, D-78120 Germany
http://www.ai-lab.fh-furtwangen.de:80/~bradley/
bradley@ai-lab.fh-furtwangen.de