Learning and Televison: Only One is a Passive Activity

Public school teachers often lament that they are not television shows, video games or movies. That students expect teachers to provide them with more entertainment than possible. This teacher's lounge discussion opens the conversation two ways: 1) Students expect to learn via someone or something entertaining them in a passive way and 2) American public school teachers face unrealistic expectations. Students' television viewing outside of school influences their educational aspects in many ways.

Watching television is a passive activity. It gives children digested information. The argument of television not providing quality programming is for another day. Today, however, the argument is that television trains children to be bored by a school life that they cannot pause, rewind or skip boring episodes. Overall, American students watch too much television. The Department of Education found that by the time they begin kindergarten, children in the United States have watched an average of 4,000 hours of TV. Kaiser Family Foundation found that kids and teens 8 to 18 years spend about 53 hours a week using entertainment media. Not only do these statistics prove that students waste time with television rather than productive activities, it shapes the manner in which they learn. For some children, they primarily learn morals and lessons from media and not human interactions. If processed and edited information is how children learn, they will expect the same methods at school.

Few humans can provide entertaining performances day after day. Teaching is like preparing and giving what would be known in other professions a series of presentations. Teachers research a lesson unit (a lesson unit is a themed and connected group of lessons), align objectives to every day's lesson, create the lesson made up of different activities, prepare the different activities, give the presentations, execute the activities, complete feedback of the activities (grading), record the process and then return the feedback. Each step, if done properly as expected by parents and mandated by national standards, can take an hour or more. Adding an entertainment factor is not feasible.

Students no longer expect teachers to present information in a standard, everyday manner. The public no longer expects teachers to teach simply from the textbook or a workbook. Students expect teachers to engage them in the material and incorporate technology. Teachers should, and most try. The problem? Camera angles do not change in a classroom. A teacher wrote the script, not a professional writer. Teachers work everyday and may have off-days with no chance to reshoot a scene. No one edits the day's work to showcase the best scenes. Most importantly, students are dissatisfied with active, human teachings rather than passive, processed programming. Perhaps teachers cannot solve the complaints coming from the classroom.

Photo Credit: Robert Couse-Baker on Flickr