Good Old Days?

Good coffee! I can already feel the effects of it; brain is now in gear and moving in an almost normal manner. Normal for me.

Last night, before I fell asleep, I had a thought or two regarding the effects of television on the minds of children. I’m not making any pronouncements here; just wondering about it. I suppose it’s because I have been thinking about the sad state of education these days. Plus the fact that two of our grandchildren are spending some time with us.

I have a subscription to Reminisce Magazine and I was looking at the back cover of it last night. There was a photo, taken in 1949, of a crowd of children at a Saturday matinee in a theatre. And in my memory, I could see myself at such an event. We didn’t have a television in 1949 and going to the theatre on a Saturday was the highlight of a perfect week for this 9 year old.

I think it was 1950 or 1951 before we had a television and until that time our evening entertainment came from books or radio. Think about it; our minds had to fill in all of the images required to enjoy a book, or listen to the radio. And I remember how thrilling it was to have a television; I mean, exciting! It was an event that changed our lives forever. And so it’s not much of a stretch to believe that how our minds work also changed…forever.

One hundred, or a thousand years ago, our minds filled in the visual information required in a story by using “imagination”. It’s not required anymore. That’s a huge difference in how we experience life and how we are molded by those experiences. Is there any correlation between the Age of Television and the decline in educational standards? What happens to our minds when we go from an “imagination thought” world to a more visual one? Even universities; institutes of higher learning, are now using PowerPoint presentations to deliver information. It’s routine for the professor to be absent from the lecture hall; his or her image resides on a television monitor placed in front of the students.

I wish I knew what the answer was. I only have suspicions that television has dramatically changed the way our minds work, and it’s not necessarily a change for our good. Will cultural anthropologists, a thousand years from now, tell the story of how civilization entered another “Dark Age” in the 21st century?