Spartz_Go_Fix_It

Go Fix It! Accessible Educational Children’s Television Programming

Caption: People these days are not as scientifically literate as they should be. My solution is to encourage more questioning about the world by reintroducing old television shows like those shown above (//ZOOM//, //The Magic School Bus//, //Bill Nye the Science Guy//) as well as encouraging networks to produce their own new ones to balance the type of educational shows that are available to kids. The graph seen in the image isn’t as balanced as it appears as only 24.2% of educational shows on large networks are traditionally academic. The seeming balance of the percentages is largely from independent and smaller stations.

Go Fix It!!

Scientific literacy is something that is needed to be corrected or enhanced before we can ask others to start caring about the environment. If they don’t know how to question what they are being presented with, we can’t expect that their decisions will be smart. The best way I see for this to be corrected is to encourage children’s natural curiosity and bring back more educational television shows. The idea is that we have to get them to care before we can try to teach them the specifics. According to Jordan on page 105: “’Educational and informational television programming’ is defined as any television programming that furthers the educational and informational needs of children 16 years of age and under in any respect, including children’s intellectual/cognitive or social/emotional needs.”(p21 FCC’s Report and Order 1996).Whether it be encouraging networks to balance their current education requirements with social/emotional, physical, and historically educational or encouraging teachers to supplement their lesson plans in the classroom with shows like //The Magic School Bus// or //Bill Nye the Science Guy//, giving kids more access to educational television would help their understanding.

Children spend a large number of hours watching television and if the networks have a balance of the types of education it would be more beneficial to everyone. As of 2000, studies found that 45% of network classified educational programs focused on social learning, 40.7% on traditionally academic learning, 4.4% on physical development, and 7.4% had some mixture of the three. The remaining 3% of shows classified as educational didn’t seem to have “discernible lesson[s]” (Jordan 109). The breakdown of this had smaller stations offering more academic lessons (44.4% of educational programs) than larger networks (24.2% of educational programs) that were more likely to air prosocial programs (Jordan 109-110). If we could get the balance of prosocial and traditionally academic programs aired where the justifications for why they are educational did not have to be far reaching like those for the //Jetsons// (the potential of the future) and the //Flintstones// (history) (Kunkel 44) it would benefit those of future generations. If we can add more educational yet entertaining shows like //The Magic School Bus// or shows that actually encourage kids to go try what they see on the show like //ZOOM// to the afternoon lineup on major networks, kids can immerse themselves in science and engineering that will hopefully cause them to question more about the world around them (Dunn). Kunkel describes on page 50 the current system the Federal Communications Commission uses for encouraging networks to air educational programming. “If the three-hour criterion is met, a station’s renewal application can be expedited; if not, the licensee faces the burden of demonstrating ‘a level of commitment to education and informing children that is at least equivalent to airing three hours per week of core programming’”(FCC 1996). Currently the system will expedite the renewal of a networks license if it can prove that it is attempting to teach children something (Kunkel 50). This works since it doesn’t infringe on First Amendment rights but still offers something that networks want that isn’t directly money. It is a good idea and that is why it is the basis for my suggestion to encourage television networks to balance their social and intellectual programming, so those who can prove that they are balancing the educational opportunities have the quickest renewal of their licenses.

My other suggestion would be to incorporate the educational television shows in the classroom. I know that when I was in elementary and secondary school there were some days where teachers were either not willing to teach since they know the kids aren’t likely to pay as much attention to them (like days right before vacations) and some days where they wanted to reward students with a movie day for doing well on a test, for good behavior, or for some competition between classes. Instead of watching movies, I propose schools show educational television shows instead. I know that I would not have cared if it was an episode of //Bill Nye// instead of //The Polar Express//. This way, even at times where kids aren’t explicitly being taught, they are at least watching something that might spark an interest in learning more about the world around them. On top of that, using television programs can present the ideas that students see in the classroom in a different way that may help with a child’s understanding of the material (etv). While there isn’t really any way to regulate this, I have a hard time seeing why teachers won’t at least consider it so the time at school wasn’t a complete waste of a day. Overall, getting children to pay more attention to science through a medium that they spend a great deal of time (on average 7.5 hours per day) with will hopefully get them to question more of the world around them, which will in turn make it easier to promote scientific literacy (Shapley).

References:

Dunn, Jeff. “30 TV Shows That Are Actually Educational.” Edudemic. 20 April 2011. <[]>.

Jordan, Amy B. “The Three-Hour Rule and Educational Television for Children.” Popular Communication. Volume 2 Issue 2. pg 103-118. 2004. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Kunkel, Dale. “Policy Battles over Defining Children’s Educational Television.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 1 May 1998.

Shapley, Dan. “Kids Spend Nearly 55 Hours a Week Watching TV, Texting, Playing Video Games…” The Daily Green. 20 Jan 2010. .

“Using Television in the Classroom.” etv South Carolina. NETA Center for Instructional Communications. October 1997. .

Picture references: Bill Nye: boxofficebuz.com Zoom: wnedblog.blogspot.com Magic school bus: montalvoarts.org Television: flickrhivemind.net

Go Fix It document with Annotations: