Educational benefits of Television on Children - Essay Example

Educational Benefits of Television on Children Abstract There have been many studies on the ill effects of unsupervised and indiscriminate television exposure of young children, particularly on obesity, the tendency towards violence, sex, and substance abuse, and other types of socially deviant attitudes and behaviour. Without discounting these, there have also been alleged beneficial effects of television as a potent medium of education, enhancing the attitudes, behaviours and skills of pre-school children in preparation of formal schooling. These benefits are largely attributed to a narrow segment of television programs which are specifically designed for the very young age group. However, despite this distinction, the American Pediatric Association has nevertheless discouraged television viewing by pre-school children for more than two hours a day, and has recommended no television at all for children below two years of age. This research seeks to determine the beneficial effects of educational television programs for infants, toddlers, and young children of pre-school age, and to understand the factors that positively contribute to these benefits. Introduction Television is the most influential of the popular media (Schneider & Fisch, 2001:29). Television has the power to engage people through its entertaining programming, and has proven a powerful tool to inform, influence, and educate. This had led Boyer (1991:140) to comment: “Television, next to parents, is the child’s most influential teacher.” The problem for many is that this works both ways: considerable data proves that televisions can exert both positive and negative influence on children. There has been tremendous research that has gone to proving that television is capable of programming children to consumerism, violence and sex. Many of the ill effects of TV viewing on children are unintentional offshoots of programs intended to entertain a wider segment of the viewing audience, targeting particularly adults. However, there is a narrower market segment which intentionally focuses on commercial broadcasting for the purpose of educating young children. The most successful of these programs is Sesame Street, begun more than 30 years ago by Joan Ganz Cooney, which had been adopted in many countries worldwide. Numerous research studies have shown that children of preschool age have significantly benefitted from exposure to Sesame Street, and these beneficial effects have endured over several years (Fish & Truglio, 2000, in Schneider & Fisch, 2001). Other successful shows produced by Children’s Television Workshop (CTW), the producers of Sesame Street, are 3-2-1 Contact, Square One TV, and Cro. Other producers have created Bill Nye, the Science Guy; Beakman’s World; and Magic School Bus (Schneider & Fisch, 2001:30). Reservations about the educational benefits for toddlers Most academic studies conducted on children targeted the 3-to-5-year-old age group, thus the educational effect of television on this age group is well documented. Very few studies have been made, however, on the below-3-year-old audience routinely exposed to educational television. Among TV shows dedicated to the 0-to-3-year-old age group are Sesame Street and Teletubbies, and the videos Baby Einstein and Baby Bach. The lack of conclusive data has spawned a debate about whether toddlers are even cognitively prepared to understand and learn from educational programs aired on television (or video recordings). According to Fisch (2004:45), the lack of readiness of toddlers to comprehend TV programs is supported by the recommendation by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) for television shows to be completely avoided for children below 2 years old. Although its official opinion was published in 1997 and in 2001, the AAP maintains its stand to discourage parents from exposing their infant or toddler to programs targeted for them, citing these years as the most crucial for the child’s development. The AAP website (2006) states that: Pediatricians strongly oppose targeted programming especially when it’s used to market toys, games, dolls, unhealthy food and other products to toddlers. Any positive effect of television on infants and toddlers is still open to question, but the benefits of parent-child interactions are proven. Under age two, talking, singing, reading, listening to music or playing are far more important to a child’s development than any TV show. (AAP, 2006) On the other hand, statements that tend to contradict this position have been issued early on by the Canadian Paediatric Society, who asserted that: Evidence shows that children who watch programs with positive social themes are more likely to exhibit behaviour such as thoughtfulness, helpfulness, cooperation and sharing…programs designed to produce positive social attitudes have twice the impact on behaviour than violent ones do, not only increasing viewers’ feelings for others but also lowering their antisocial tendencies. (CPS, 1992) A more careful reading of the above texts shows that in actuality, there is no direct disagreement between them. The APA simply makes a distinction between parent-child interaction and TV viewing; the CPS does not. The APA’s warning is against regular TV programming, while the CPS refers to educational TV programs for children. Correlation between television shows and acquired competencies While educational TV programs for children may be beneficial, they are not all beneficial for the same competencies or to the same degree. Early studies sought to establish the link between Square One TV, a math educational program, and the problem-solving skills, behaviour and attitudes towards mathematics. Based on pre-test and post-test results, children who were made to watch Square One TV found that learning mathematics and having fun were not incompatible activities, and that the program provided a context which engendered both a positive perception of and the willingness to do mathematics. (Hall, et al., 1990; Bennett, et al. 1991). More recently, studies have indicated the presence of transfer effects related particularly to Square One TV, with both pre-schoolers and school age children. One study demonstrated that children who regularly watched the show had been able to transfer problem-solving skills derived from it to new problems. Another study demonstrated that when Square One TV was shown to fifth graders in schools for six weeks, the result was a significant improvement in their performance on math problems which were not shown on the TV program (Schmidt & Vandewater, 2008:68). Another program made the basis of studies on educational TV is Barney and Friends. While academic studies indicated that Square One TV enabled children to acquire a love and competency, the same was determined for Barney and Friends with regard to literacy learning. Wan (2000) examined four dimensions of the show for their content. These are the physical setting, reading activities, writing activities, and the listening and speaking activities. According to the findings, children who watched Barney and Friends were provided “rich literacy learning experiences” through activities that provide opportunities to speak and listen, among which are singing nursery rhymes, dramatization and role playing, imagination games, and story-telling. To illustrate, Wan cited the case of a children in Chinese-speaking homes who had learned to speak English with the help of Barney (“We heard little pig’s story like the one Barney told,” or “We did imagination games like Barney,” – Wan, p. 3). This led Wan to conclude that the program had been effective because “Barney and Friends made children’s learning fun” (p. 19). Figure 1 shows the observed types of literacy activities and their frequency in Barney, which shows a clear and strong leaning towards listening and speaking. Fig. 1: Comparison of different literacy activities and positive physical setting (Wan, 2000:20) Reading =54, Writing=18. Listening & speaking = 313, Physical setting = 114 A similar account was given by Weber (2006) concerning the effect of Barney and Friends on the literacy competency of young children, although the explanation it offered was less on the content of the show, and more on the opportunity the program gave for play and social interaction. Children who watched Barney were found to be joined more often by their parent or parents, who are as much motivated to watch the show (either on broadcast TV or on video) with their children because of the joy they experience watching their children’s reactions to Barney. Often, the children would dance and sing with the video from the very theme song at the start, react to the stories told, and are led to follow the imaginary games. It was found in a survey of parents of infants and toddlers (1-23 months), 47% watch television with their children, and 39% watch videos with them. Only 1% responded that they have never watched either TV or videos with their toddler (Weber & Singer, 2004). During the show, the parents sing and dance with their children, and point to things taking place on the screen. Parents’ actively participating with their very young children while watching the show allows the child to interact with them rather than be detached, and greatly enhancing the learning value obtained from the show (Eastman, 1996). Figures 2 and 3 below show the relative frequency of parents’ interaction with their children while watching the show on video and on television. Fig 2: Activities with video (Mother with Child) (N=127) (Weber, 2006) Fig 3: Activities with television (Mother with Child) (N=127) (Weber, 2006) Long-term effects of educational TV As early as the 1980s, there had already been empirical evidence that supported the effectiveness of educational TV programs among pre-schoolers; what was not certain, however, was whether such auspicious beginnings would last for the long-term. In 1997, Viadero and Portner reported that researchers from the Universities of Kansas and Massachusetts, who conducted an early eighties study on 650 pre-schoolers, were able to follow up on that study by tracking down 570 of them. Their data showed that the greater the amount of educational programming that the children were exposed to at or before age 5, the higher their grades garnered in high school. Statistically, the researchers calculated that every hour of Sesame Street watched each day at 5 years old contributed to an additional 0.25 point in their high-school grade point average, prompting researcher Professor Aletha Huston of the University of Texas to conclude that “This early success creates a cascade of positive academic experiences which are traceable all the way through high school.” (Viadero & Portner, 1997). Another study sought to capture evidence of long-term effects of television viewing among children. Gentzkow and Shapiro (2006) traced backwards through time to the advent of commercial television in the 1940s and 1950s, when there were no known adverse effects yet of television on young minds and children supposedly had free rein to watch all manner of television broadcasts. The study employed heterogeneity and an approach that distinguished the timing of television’s introduction to local markets in finding out exposure to television of pre-schoolers, and then traced both the positive and negative effects thereof through elementary and high school years to entry to the workforce and labor market earnings. The study found that each added year of television exposure during the preschool years has a significant positive effect on average test scores. The same effect is found on reading and general knowledge scores, but the positive consequence is more pronounced for children in households where English is not the first language, for children with mothers whose highest educational attainment is less than a high school degree, and for non-white children. On the other hand, when testing for negative effects (since children were not limited in their television viewing at the time), there were no significant negative effects of television exposure on completion of high school, and on subsequent labor market earnings. Conclusion Concerned with the quality of children’s television, the Federal Communications Commission has issued rules and guidelines to carry out the Children’s Television Act of 1990 (FCC, 2011). There is therefore a clear regulation to protect children from undue television exposure. This aside, there are strong arguments for the educational benefits of TV for very young children, provided that: (1) the content is designed by educational experts; (2) the number of hours of TV a day are limited; and most importantly (3) that parents actively participate with the child during TV viewing. Outside of these, there is real danger posed for children. Within these boundaries, however, television could be the best teaching aid especially for very young minds. References American Academy of Pediatrics (2006) TV and Toddlers. Accessed 10 October 2011 from http://www.aap.org/sections/media/toddlerstv.htm Boyer, E. (1991) Readiness to Learn: A Mandate for the Nation. Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Council for the Advancement of Teaching. Benett, D.T. & Others. (1991) Children and Mathematics: Enjoyment, Motivation and “Square One TV.” Paper presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (Seattle, WA.) Available online at EBSCO Canadian Paediatric Society (1992) Well Beings. Ottawa: Canadian Paediatric Society Eastman, W. (1996) Television Literacy: Making the TV Work for Young Children, Parents, and Early Educators. Paper presented at the National Conference of the Canadian Association for Young Children (Toronto). Available online at EBSCO Federal Communications Commission (FCC) (2011) Children’s Educational Television. FCC Website. Accessed 10 October 2011 from http://www.fcc.gov/guides/childrens-educational-television Fisch, S.M. (2004) Children’s Learning From Educational Television: Sesame Street and Beyond. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Gentzkow, M. & Shapiro, J.M. (2006) Does Television Rot Your Brain? New Evidence from the Coleman Study. University of Chicago. Accessed 10 October 2011 from http://www.dcmp.org/caai/nadh174.pdf Hall, E.R. & Others. (1990) Children’s Problem-Solving Behavior and Their Attitudes Towards Mathematics: A Study of the Effects of Square One TV. Available online at EBSCO Linebarger, D.L. & Piotrowski, J.T. (2010) Structure and Strategies in Children’s Educational Television: The Roles of Program Type and Learning Strategies in Children’s Learning. Child Development, 81(5), 1582-1597 Schmidt, M.E. & Vandewater, E.A. (2008) Media Attention, Cognition, and School Achievement. The Future of Children. Accessed 10 October 2011 from http://futureofchildren.org/futureofchildren/publications/docs/18_01_04.pdf Schneider, J. & Fisch, S.M. (2001) The Power of Television in Informal Education. In Communication Connections for Science Education: History and Theory You Can Use. Katz, P.; Robertson, W.C.; and National Science Teachers Association, eds. Arlington, Virginia: NSTA Press Viadero, D. & Portner, J. (1997) TV’s bright side. Teacher Magazine, 9(1). Available online at EBSCO Wan, G. (2000) “Barney & Friends”: An Evaluation of the Literacy Learning Environment Created by the TV Series for Children. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (Montreal, Quebec, Canada). Available online at EBSCO Weber, D.S., & Singer, D. G. (2004). The media habits of infants and toddlers: Findings from a parent survey. Zero To Three 25(1), 30-36. Weber, D.S. (2006) Media Use by Infants and Toddlers: A Potential for Play. Play=Learning, Sept., pp. 169-192, Oxford Scholarship Online Monographs. Available online at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/ Read More