The beeb, with characteristic false self-deprecation, seems to be quite happy to promulgate the oldest urban myth around...ie: that TV viewing screws up your child. The version of this rubbish is updated to fit the zeitgeist. Seeing as bullying is the issue of the moment, the current theme is run out as "TV viewing will turn your child into a bully".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4408709.stm
Spiked seems to have the measure of this issue.
http://www.spiked-online.com/Sections/Central/Panic/Index.htm
Yep...this sort of research is rubbish. It is entirely pseudo-scientific. Not one of the so-called facts is falsifiable. Every single possible explanation cannot be tested against the data, since all other possible explanations could also fit. ie: children who watch more telly may bully more, (if that is indeed the case), because they watch telly, or because they eat more junk, or because they don't get the moral information that they need, or because dad tries to get them off the telly all the time and they build up a lurking resentment which they then let loose on some unsuspecting victim or because they are being bullied so badly at school that TV and bullying provide them with the only forms of escape and retribution, etc, etc.
These studies are a fine example of foul play. What happens is that someone with an entrenched, and therefore beyond rational criticism, idea of the high principle of self-denial, sets out to prove his hypothesis with an investigation that cannot, in principle, be categorised as science, but which will pass for such with quite a few of us saps.
Yes, your penultimate paragraph says it exactly, with both options re effects being highly likely, I think. This is desperately sad, as TV is of course the most excellent source of information.
ReplyDeleteIn weaker moments, I cannot help but wonder if there are some mysterious vested interests in denigrating the educational power and value of TV. I honestly think that a child could sit in front of Sky and learn far more than they would ever learn in the same amount of time in a classroom.
Also, in terms of content which I dunno, perhaps they were implying that this is the element of TV that is responsible for turning children into bullies, but I cannot easily think of many instances of bullying being held up exemplary behaviour on TV.
Also, I quite agree: there is no problem with phrasing theories about human behaviour in philosophical terms.
Disagree though re last para...A significant amount of journalism is of a distinctly deliberately improving nature. Boris Johnson's debacle in Liverpool springs to mind, for some reason. His intent was to alert people to the existence and dangers of the victim mentality, which I think he did rather admirably by demonstrating how to cope with being a genuine victim...ie: when sent to Liverpool to apologise and be vilified...Sorry...won't have a word spoken against Boris. I deludedly see myself as being indirectly formative in his upbringing!
>Yes; my last paragraph was tongue in cheek
ReplyDeletePhew...I thought you might have been reading a little too much of the New Statesman or the Mail for your own good :)
Yeah, Boris is OK, I think. He says: "People tend to tie themselves in knots these days trying to explain what Conservatism is. Are we libertairan, authoritarian, vegetarian or rotarian? Should we be a little bit Rastafarian now and then? Here is how I think we should be: free-market, tolerant, broadly libertarian (though not, perhaps, ultra-libertarian), inclined to see the merit of tradition, anti-regulation, pro-immigrant, pro-standing on your own two feet, pro-alcohol, pro-hunting, pro-motorist and ready to defend to the death the right of Glenn Hoddle to believe in reincarnation."
He needs working on with regards to education/discipline/children's issues though. I suspect this is where his non-libertarian credentials make themselves most apparent, insofar as his almost total lack of interest in this type of subject suggests that he is quite happy with the status quo.