Cohousing-L Mailing List: On the Perils of Watching Television

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

Apologies if I have posted this story here before but it is pertinent to the 
fear of television watching and screen time in general. And true.

I have a niece who grew up in the 1990s in less than ideal circumstances, 
including homelessness on occasion, mother a pole dancer (and more), mother's 
boyfriends drug dealers, etc. When Linda (name changed) started school at age 
5, she couldn't learn to read and was a behavior problem because she had never, 
as in _never_, been in a chair for hours with people telling her what to do 
every minute. 

By age six, the school said she was retarded and needed to be placed in special 
education. Knowing Linda was far from retarded, my sister took her for 
professional testing.

What the psychologists discovered first was severe dyslexia. She switched to 
tests that compensated for this and discovered secondly that she was a 
“genius." The psychologists were dumbfounded because children at that IQ level 
are those who read at a very early age, read very specialized books, and read 
them all day. And often have professors for parents. Linda couldn’t read and 
there was no way she even had access to such books.

When they told my sister the results, she laughed and said all Linda does is 
watch TV -- all day and all night. They asked Linda what she liked to watch. 
She went into an excited review of all the programs she had watched the day 
before and the ones she was missing at the moment. Linda talks very fast so 
this was a barrage of information. She watched PBS, Biography Channel, History 
Channel, Discovery Science, etc. and knew the schedules of what was on when and 
where. And if you miss it here you can watch it there, and what was in reruns 
and what was new. Sports. News. Everything.

Unrestricted TV 24/7. Raised in a vacant and some would say abusive 
environment. Genius IQ. Nurtured by TV.

While one can argue about the accuracy or the superficiality of many of the 
programs she was watching, they were all at a much higher level than any normal 
child aged 2-6 would get from reading, from interaction and play, from their 
parents, or from school.

It isn't the medium. And it isn’t sitting still. Maybe sometimes, but not 
necessarily. TV isn’t necessarily mind-numing.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org