@William,
Jeepers.
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
-- attributed to Socrates, by Plato.
The idea that society is going to hell in a handbasket is, in short, nothing new. As for TV teaching us what families should look like, etc. etc. uh, what? Have you not seen widow/ers or divorced persons with children? These families do not look like 2 parents and 2.3 children yet society has not, so far as I am aware, crumbled due to same.
Nor has it crumbled due to -- shock, shock, horror, horror -- mothers going out to work. My mother worked for decades to help support our family and, incredibly enough, my brother and I are actually productive members of society. We both have bachelors' degrees (I've also got a doctorate; he's a certified Project Manager). She did this even though -- amazingly enough -- my father also worked. And even though they weren't always home during the day. And even though -- hold onto your hat -- my brother and I actually watched television on occasion. And that television sometimes involved, ooh, a blended family. Like on, you know,
The Brady Bunch.
I'm sorry if this is overly flip but really, you're painting with such an exceptionally broad brush that it's hard to find any way to respond that
isn't flip.
Want to rail against something that might actually be, truly, hurting youth? How about, I dunno, the lack of proper nutrition in schools (didja know that, for a lot of kids, the one decent meal(s) they get are in school -- perhaps those should be better than chicken nuggets, eh?), or the lack of recess (my cousins are schoolteachers, and they inform me that their kids aren't allowed to have recess unless there have been 2 previous days in a row of
perfect attendance in their classes -- an impossibility during swine flu season), or, I dunno, NCLB making it so that kids are taught to the test rather than the way that many of them would, perhaps, learn better?
Rail if you must, but kindly get your target better sighted. There's plenty out there to rail against. But television? Sure it often stinks. I find reality TV to be a bore and there's far too many choices that just amount to just so much Gilligan's Island reruns. But there's also more. There are science shows on Discovery and Animal Planet that truly educate. There are artistic shows on public television, AMC, A & E, etc. that can uplift and inspire. Have you watched The History Channel lately? Sure there's a lot of chaff. But there's a lot of wheat out there as well.
Let's distinguish the two.
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