I don't need no stinkin' tv!

My name is Kelly. I've been free of commercial television for 13 years now. Well, that's not true. Every Christmas while staying at the hotel with my wife's family, I can't help but watch a few Star Trek and CSI.

There is a great discussion going on at Crucial Thought about television - with Dan Meyers and Dean Shareski commenting for television and Mrs Durff commenting against. Well, as you can tell, I'm a non-tv person and better for it I think.

My wife and I first emptied our house of a television 13 years ago when my oldest daughter, then 2 years old, wouldn't go to bed because a video she liked wasn't finished. Now after a temper tantrum of 7.5 on the Richter scale, we were able to get her to her room and in bed. Hey, we were young parents then! We went upstairs. A while later I could hear the tv and wondered "Didn't I shut that off?" Off I went to check it out.

There she sat. Tv on, video in and watching. She had turned it on, with the remote because the power button was broken, set the channel and loaded the video and hit play. 2. Maybe I should have been happy or impressed with what she was able to accomplish at that age. Instead I was horrified that she could already do that to get what she wanted. I got rid of the tv the next day.

Well, 13 years later, we do have a tv but no commercial channels. We haven't had any commercial tv in all that time except for a few months here or there when we moved and it was still connected. Now, I've heard everything about how it will rob my children of a normal life (how will they know what the other kids are talking about?) to we'll be out of touch with the world and world events (surprisingly, my children are as well as, if not more, informed because they have to actively pursue the information.) I've heard that it is hypocritical as a teacher who should be open to using all media to teach (I do use specific programs and segments. What I've found, however, is that most teachers break all kinds of copyright laws and, if they needed to follow the laws more closely, they wouldn't use as much television.)

My observations as a teacher and a parent are isolated to my own children - all 7 of them - and their interactions with their friends. Through the years they have had a different level of exposure to television and it has had an effect on their learning, I believe. Also, my wife and I, both teachers, have a very unique family dynamic in that we have 4 girls and 3 boys with a 4 year separation between the youngest girls and oldest boy. We have monitored the effect of television on both groups and seen that, yes, it does have an effect depending on what they watch.

As I have stated, I have heard so many arguements for having tv. I don't try to impose our decision on others. However, I don't buy that by not having television my children or I are somehow missing out on the world and we are not normal or whatever. We choose to use our time differently, that's all. So, instead of watching tv or a movie, we play games with our children. On Friday and Saturdays, especially during the winter, we play games both nights. During the summer, only one night. What's interesting is that we usually have a number of kids over at our house on one of those two nights to play games because they don't at home. I've learned more about my kids friends from those nights than you can imagine. We laugh, joke, eat popcorn and have all kinds of fun. My wife and I have worked hard to keep this time for our children. Much harder than if we had just watched tv.

My children are also very involved in many different activities, as am I and, really, none of us have time to spend sitting on a couch watching shows with all that we have to do. So how do we relax and unwind? Well, we all read. We have access to the internet where, recently, we have accessed a few shows and viewed them. However, they have been viewed in 35 minutes and not an hour and there are no commercials. Very different and we pick and choose. We listen to music and the radio. I have made use of my nano and listened to podcasts from a variety of different educators and thinkers who post on a regular basis. (Doing it now as I write this - Coming of age.) We do a variety of sports and family activities.

Now, Dan has stated:

But in the classroom, I worry about any teacher who just casts off
t.v. as blithely as both Chris and Mrs. Durff do in their personal lives. When Mrs. Durff drops the double exclamation point after “I don’t even own a tv,” I read it exactly the same as:

“I don’t even own a DVD player!!”
“I don’t even own an iPod!!”
“I don’t even own a computer!!”

Each of those spews out horrendous immoral crap.

But one of our most basic charges as teachers is to help kids make sense of the world around them, which includes the media that engages them. The same discerning, wheat-and-chaff-separating stance we take towards blogs in the classroom must be identical to the one we take towards t.v. Anything less is hypocritical, I’m afraid.

Sorry Dan. I'm not hypocritical because I know what good programming is and what isn't just as I haven't visited every website, I can still tell the difference between good information and garbage. I can separate the wheat from the chaff by discussing various television programs and, through having children describe them, explain them, defend them and question them, chaff and wheat are separated. I don't have to have a particular item in my house to do a good job of helping students learn to discern what is and isn't good information.

Personal aside: Question, Dan, do you have a truck? If not, does that mean you don't have a car? Bike? Scooter? Motorbike? All are modes of transportation just as tv is a method of communication. Not having one doesn't preclude not having another and doing so is like concluding that because you don't wear glasses you can see well.

Dean then adds that

Broadcast TV is changing and I think considering Television to be bad is akin to saying the internet is bad just because there’s bad stuff on it.

The biggest difference I see is that I choose where I am going on the internet, I'm not constantly bombarded by advertising (although this is changing) and it is at my time not a prescheduled time. So, you are right, there are good programs on but, alas, most are not on when my family and I want to watch them so we find other things to do.

In the past 13 years, we've had numerous people wonder about us not having tv "What do you do?" (With 7 children one of my uncles has suggested he get us cable so we'll find something else to do ) I've heard so many arguements in relation to tv yet none have proved to be true for myself or any of my children. Are we different? You bet but it's a good different. My children read, are involved in a multitude of sports, can play for hours with a cardboard box and have friends who come over to play games. In time, my wife and I will have to bow out but I'm hoping they'll keep coming back. Dean and Dan, sorry, but I'm with the others who don't have tv and you will really have to work to convince me that the decision my wife and I made 13 years ago was not a good decision. With the many different options for youth today, eliminating one has made it a bit easier for my children - they don't have to try and fit in "their favourite show" or "I can't, my show is on at that time" or all the other things I've heard. Best of all, no fights for the remote and what we'll watch next. That has been worth it all