Mark Mitchell has a superb essay on developing in children a logocentric view of reality:
Are we raising kids who won’t fit in? I have asked this of myself regularly over the past few years. My wife and I are educating our three boys at home. We don’t watch television (only an occasional video). We emphasize books. We read to the kids and make them memorize poetry. We pray together on our knees. In many ways, our kids are culturally ignorant. They don’t know about Disney World. The other day, my five-year-old asked, “Who is Mickey Mouse?”
So I guess the answer to the question has to be yes. But the “yes” is a qualified one, for when one considers the concept of “odd,” one should ask, “compared to what?” This moves us in a helpful direction, for if “normal” is merely what everyone else does, then what is normal changes with the times. What is odd in one time might not be odd in another. On the other hand, if “normal” refers to a proper way of being human, and if human nature is unchanging, then what is odd, in the sense of being opposed to the majority, may in fact be normal.
As we consider exactly what, in our culture, sets the odd kids apart, it seems to me that the clearest and brightest line can be drawn when we ask the following question: Will your kids be raised primarily on books or on television? To put it another way: Will your children be educated in a logocentric environment, where the written and spoken word is the primary conveyer of meaning, or will they ingest most of their information through electronically generated images?
September 17th, 2009 | 1:58 pm
The question about “books vs televion” that the author wants to set up as an attempt to explain why his child knows nothing about Disney is entirely false. We watch very, very little TV. Until the last few months my 5 year old daughter had never seen any of the “Disney Princess” movies. And yet since she was about 2 she has known all of them, their stories, what color dress they wear, etc. This is because she has plenty of socialization with other children who know all of this stuff. The only possible way that Mr. Mitchell’s children can be so ignorant of popular culture (not at all necessarily a bad thing) is if they not only don’t get exposed to it at home, but if they aren’t interacting at all with other children (definitely a bad thing). Now maybe he is giving them lots of interaction with lots of other kids who also have zero home exposure to popular culture, but it’s not at all clear from his essay.
September 17th, 2009 | 3:50 pm
Why does one have to choose books OR television? There’s an intellectual conceit with people who dismiss everything on television as garbage.
Why I was raised on a healthy diet of books AND television and I turned out just fine now, didn’t I? Wait, don’t answer that…
September 18th, 2009 | 1:16 am
My brother and I were raised the same way Mark Mitchell and his wife are raising their children. At 34 and 30, we’re both still “odd,” and happily grateful for it.
One interesting thing, however: the “hypnotic effect” of television on me, who rarely saw a screen before I reached high school, endures. To this day, whenever I am in the same room with a switched-on television, my gaze is magnetically drawn to its screen and I cannot concentrate on conversation or reading, no matter how boring a show is on! There must be some neurological explanation for this.
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