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Mar 6

SHINE ON LITTLE PONY!

uploaded to youtube by whitemagicofdoom on june 9, 2011


A Very Pony Place- Shine On Part 1, with the subtitle Come Back, Lily Lightly was a Program Length Commerical that aired in 1985. This episode takes place in Unicornia, which is a fantasyland where brightly colored unicorns live and play.  The story begins with a group of unicorns stringing lights throughout the town in preparation for the “Rainbow Lights Party.”  A neon pink pony named Lily is named the “Princess of Lightly.”  Overjoyed with this title, Lily laughs, which causes her horn to light up.  Embarrassed, she runs away.

As the story progresses, the rest of the unicorns sing a song about “getting the giggles” and they show how “work” can be fun.  In the meantime, Lily meets a firefly who tells her that it is ok to be different.  He convinces Lily that it is great fun to “shine” and that everything will turn out ok if she will only be herself. This story is very similar to Rudolph the red-nosed Reindeer, a beloved Christmas tale, which has been told to countless American children for generations.

In Spinning Out of Control, Gary Cross states that, “the toys derived from these stories were abstracted from the real world of family care and future roles.” (281)   I disagree with his opinion. This Little Pony episode dealt with several “real world” issues. Friendship, acceptance, and  laughter are all importance issues in the real world.  “Be yourself and others will like you just the way you are,” and “laughter will enrich your life” are both values that benefit family care and future roles.

The setting and the animated ponies were fantasy, but this did not distract from the lessons present in the script. I feel the “make-believe” aspects of the show are what captivates the young audience and keeps their attention for 30 minutes. As a parent, I feel that this particular episode would teach my children some wisdom in an entertaining way.

 

Mar 6

TV, Video Games May Exacerbate Attention Problems

A recent article from the McClatchy-Tribune News Service suggests that environmental aspects like excessive television and video game exposure may have great influence on the impulsivity and attention abilities of children.  The article describes a study in which researchers observed the gaming habits of 3,000 children from a dozen schools in Singapore, aging from 8 to 17 .  The study revealed that the effects of video games were both positive and negative.  Video games may help with visual memory and attention, but they could diminish a child’s potential to complete goal-oriented tasks that require long term commitments.  This is because, researchers suggest, the excitement of gaming might make other activities seem more mundane than they actually are.  A young boy who has a passion for Mortal Combat or Call of Duty would likely skim through his nightly reading assignments, if he bothers to read them at all, as long as he can lose himself in the wonderful world of gaming at least once before bedtime.  The effects of this indulgence, as revealed by the study, increase the likelihood of impulsiveness and attention disorders.

A drawing used in an article about a video game addiction lawsuit. If children are constantly doing this instead of socializing, they are likely to suffer consequences.

This article is not suggesting that children who play video games are automatically impulsive and require medication if they want to make anything close to the grades their parents expect from them.  Referring to what was mentioned in one of our class discussions, parents should not destroy the intimate connection between electronic media and modern children because of the social consequences.  Sure, too much gaming may be a direct cause of impulsive children, but how would a boy be able to socialize with his friends by discussing the latest Xbox 360 game if his parents stripped gaming from him completely?  Believe me, being the middle child of five, television and video games are a huge topic in daily conversations among kids six and up.  TV and video games are too engrained in our culture to keep children away from them.  Even if a huge portion of the country’s parents succeeded in shutting out their children from electronic media, the social consequences for those children would have drastic effects on their self-esteem and social skills.  Parents should make it a top priority to regulate the amount of gaming and TV watching done by children in their household.  Before they force medication onto their children, parents must be sure they have attempted to deal with the biological and environmental influences on a child’s impulsivity and attention abilities.

 

Mar 6

Fourth Reading Journal Prompt: PLCs and the “Real World”

In “Spinning Out of Control,” Gary Cross argues that the “program-length commercials” on children’s television during the 1980s represented a departure from previous children’s culture in that they created a completely separate world, far from the concerns of adults. With the advent of these PLCs, Cross argues, “the old view that children should learn from the past and prepare for the future is inevitably subverted in a consumer culture where memory and hope get lost in a blur of perpetual change” (packet page 290).

In class, we tried to identify counterarguments to Cross’ theory, but were somewhat stymied by our lack of content knowledge of the PLCs he mentions. To respond to this reading prompt, watch one episode of an 80s-era PLC (lots of them are findable on YouTube), and analyze whether the content of this episode corroborates Cross’ theory. Briefly summarize the content of your episode, and then comment: Do you see any themes or plot elements that would contradict his argument? Or does the narrative of the episode that you watched support his theory that 80s kids’ TV contained no references to, or discussion of, events in the “real world”?

Feb 28

Maybe TV Isn’t So Bad After All

While many parents and child-experts agree that television poses several potentially harmful effects, one economist refuses to buy into the argument. Moreover, this is not just any economist, but rather, it is the highly acclaimed, former economic policy advisor of President Obama, Austan Goolsbee.

In a 2006 article published in Slate Magazine, Goolsbee argues that the studies on the impact of television on children are “seriously flawed”, due to their failure to account for more significant social, economic, and environmental variables. Goolsbee claims that because “kids who watch minimal TV, as a group are from much wealthier families than those who watch hours and hours…the less-TV kids have all sorts of things going for them that have nothing to do with the impact of television.” In defense of this claim, Goolsbee cites the research of his colleagues, Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro, who, upon evaluating the 1966 Coleman Report, were unable to find any correlation between poor test-scores and television viewership. In fact, the research suggests that if anything, there was “a small positive uptick in test scores for kids who got to watch more television when they were young.”

This article comes in stark contrast to the opinions that have been voiced throughout television’s history, which although recognizing the potentially beneficial effects of TV, have been largely negative. As Lynn Spigel states in her book Welcome to the Dreamhouse, one of the greatest concerns regarding television was “its dissemination of debased knowledge and its related encouragement of passive minds and bodies” (147)—an argument Goolsbee would dismiss as entirely subjective.

The increasing debates in society today about the failures of our public educational system, as well as socioeconomic factors such as the dramatic increase in single parent families, have also become a large part of the conversation regarding the intellectual development of children, showing that TV is far from the only talking point concerning the welfare of children. In addition, new technologies which have created much more of a reliance on electronic communication have also broadened the discussion beyond the effects of TV to the overall effects of a media and technologically driven society.

Feb 28

Affects of TV on Kids

 

As a child, I spent a lot of my time watching television.  It was kind of a baby sitter because my mother was really sick when I was growing up.  My twin sister and I used to look forward to shows like Sesame Street or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles .  We used our time watching television as a way to just stay out of trouble, and out of our parents hair, God knows they had more important things to deal with.  In Lynn Spigel’s, Welcome to the Dreamhouse, she quotes one of the first and most influential book-length studies of the affects of television and children, which reported “that by 1961 sixth graders spent almost as much time watching television as they did in school.” These numbers seem staggering, since parents now a days talk about how they used to spend all their time outside, and come down on kids these days because all they want to do is watch television or play video games.  In my opinion, kids now a days spend WAY too much time watching television or on the computer.  Kids are suppose to be outside running around, getting into trouble, and staying active. According to kidshealth.org, kids and teens 8 to 18 years spend nearly 4 hours a day in front of a TV screen and almost 2 additional hours on the computer (outside of schoolwork) and playing video games.  This is most likely contributing to the fact that childhood obesity has tripled in the last 30 years, according to the Center of Disease Control.

The most important thing to remember is that it is the parents responsibility to limit the time kids spend watching television, and to dictate what their child is doing on a day to day basis.  If you’re kid isn’t active enough, take them outside and kick a soccer ball with them, or take them to the park.  When did it become not fun to go to the park?  When I was a kid I always missed out on that kind of stuff.

Feb 27

Smile! You’re on Barbie camera!

Toys, were the staple of childhood. Whether you played with Transformers, Hot Wheels, action figures, Barbie or GI-Joe’s, the toy required that you use your imagination to create a scenario or plot, with a particular goal in mind that you and your toy could achieve. I am purposely using past tense for this description because kids have become so absorbed with today’s technology that toys no longer require the extensive thinking and imagination that they one did.

The New York Times wrote an article on how toys have changed, and once MSNBC.com caught ahold of it, Stephanie Clifford wrote an update version of the article. “Classic toys are becoming much less classic because of upgrades meant to entertain technology-obsessed children.” Stephanie explains that the reason for children growing up with the desire to be more technological is because they see all the gadgets that their parents are playing with and operating. The main attraction that they are writing about is the new Barbie. The new Barbie has become a digital camera, her camera lens in behind her and the picture then appears on her t-shirt. The photo can then be uploaded to a phone or a computer. In my opinion this takes away the whole point of Barbie, all that she will be now is a camera, little girls won’t know how to make up a story and have their dolls act it out.

There are a lot of people, myself being one of them, that feel toys and technology should not mix and that children should still have to utilize their imagination. I feel that this new technological advance could cause something similar, just not as extreme, as the moral panic that our society experienced when children became obsessed with comic books. Perhaps this new technological craze that is taking over the toys could stand to resemble how comic books were seen taking over children’s innocense.

A picture showing how Barbie is now becoming a digital camera.

Feb 27

Arthur

 

Growing up I had a lot of people around me, but not that many people my age to play with. As a result I spent many hours watching television. Looking back on all the hours of television that I watched, there was definitely one show that stood out as my favorite, Arthur.

Arthur tells the story of Arthur Read, an eight-year-old anthropomorphized aardvark, and his family as he grows up in Elwood City. The show is based  off of  the picture books created, written, and illustrated by Marc Brown. Arthur has been on the air since September 1996 and as one of the longest-running shows on PBS Kids (according to Wikipedia), has had the special task of remaining relevant to children during a particularly difficult time. Not only are there technological hurdles to compete with, but there are also other television shows.  I believe that even during my elementary/middle school days that Arthur was trying its best to appeal to children my age with issues that affected us. It had the approval of parents because it presented issues in an intelligent manner and maintained  a strong educational element.

I am happy that Arthur  has been on the air as long as it has, because it has tackled a variety of topics and even though it is a program on television, it even discusses the problems associated with watching television -overconsumption of the medium and desensitization for example. In an episode titled “Attack of the Turbo Tibbles” two friends of D.W., Tommy and Timmy Tibble emulate the violence portrayed in a show. Their emulation reaches a breaking point when their violence leads to D.W. getting injured. Similar to The Veldt, the Tibbles have a hard time separating what is real life and what is the life that they wish they had. Their inability to disassociate the violent cartoon show that they watch and the they real life that they are a part result in someone getting hurt.

The interesting parts (and those pertinent to the post are around 9:00 and 10:30. 

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