Jordan Estey
Kathy Rowley
English 201-16
October 2, 2012
Neil Postman’s “Television as Teacher”
Neil Postman’s article “Television as Teacher” explores how television acts as an
educational tool for children in the United States. Postman emphasizes that television should not
be considered an educational tool. Throughout the article he explains that people, specifically
children, absorb nothing from educational televised programs except for the understanding that
learning ought to take place in the form of entertainment and that from this notion children will
come to believe that everything (politics, religion, news, and commerce) must be presented to
them in a dramatized, entertaining way. Postman questions the effectiveness of television shows
such as Sesame Street, studies the motives of educational television, and analyzes “New
Education” which entails the use of a multimedia schooling curriculum.
Postman introduces the topic of his essay by opening with an example of how children’s
television programs attempt to educate their viewers and that they fail to do so. Sesame Street is
his main model of media’s attempt to teach children. Postman claims that children love Sesame
Street not because they are gaining knowledge but because the program is nothing more than a
series of commercials and children love commercials. (par. 1) He goes on to say that parents love
shows such as this because they relieve them of their parental duties to teach their children and
also because it gives them an excuse to allow their children to watch endless hours of television.
(par. 2) Educators love these shows because they have come to believe that they are “an
imaginative aid in solving the growing problem of teaching Americans how to read.” (par. 3)
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The article states that “As a television show, and a good one, Sesame Street does not encourage
children to love school or anything about school. It encourages them to love television.” (par. 5)
Postman continues to explain his perception of educational television by discussing the
differences of the structured classroom setting and the lax setting of a home living room. He
identifies the motives of media to be only for their own advantage. It is stated that “television has
by its power to control the time, attention, and cognitive habits of our youth gained the power to
control their education.” (par. 8) Postman talks about the three commandments that he believes
form the philosophy of the education which television offers. These commandments are as
follows: “Thou shalt have no prerequisites;” meaning that no previous knowledge is necessary to
learn from a television show. (par. 12) “Thou shalt induce no perplexity;” which expresses how
there cannot be any substance to a show because it is a “superhighway” to low ratings. (par. 13)
And “Thou shalt avoid exposition like the ten plagues visited upon Egypt;” this is referenced to
for the fact that television almost always takes the form of a story supported by impactful
imagery and music and that in the end there is no room left for argument, questioning,
discussion, or reasoning. (par. 14)
Postman then uses The Voyage of Mimi; a math and science based project that
incorporates television, illustrative books, and computer games into a single assignment to
describe how teachers are integrating multimedia into their curriculum because it is considered to
be a “flagship” of “New Education”. (par. 22) Postman points out that this project, and those
similar do not help students learn; they only make students like television more and make them
lose interest in classroom setting education. (par. 23) At the end of his article Postman concludes
that there should be a visible separation between the entertainment purposes of television and the
educational purposes of school.
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Works Cited
Postman, Neil. "Television as Teacher." From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Text and
Reader. (2012): 421-430. Print.