Anastasia Utke
Professor Kathy Rowley
English 201-12
4 October 2012
Television as Teacher summary
Television as Teacher is an essay written by Neil Postman who has written many books
on the effects of aspects of popular culture on children. In his essay he asserts that television is
not a tool in education, and it actually causing the “third great crisis in Western education”
(Postman paragraph 7.)
Postman uses Sesame Street as his major example of educational television that he
believes to be the problem with modern education. However, he does believe that all education is
masquerading as something that it is not, educational. Sesame Street and other educational
television shows are not teaching children to love learning, but are teaching them to “…love
television” (Postman paragraph 5.) This means that television is actually the worst tool in
learning, because children are not focused on learning, they are focused on the continual flash of
colors, images, and lights. The author ascertains that television is competing and winning against
the classroom.
Postman claims that there are 3 elements of television that are present in all shows from
Sesame Street to MTV, No prerequisites, no perplexing of the audience, and no exposition. This
means that no one needs to actively try to understand what it going on. While some studies claim
that learning is better retained when the information is presented in a dramatic setting, only “3.5
percent of viewers were able to answer successfully twelve true/false questions” (Postman
paragraph 19). The last issue that Postman finds with educational television is that educational
shows are often not made for their value, but for television, which implies that only televisable
material would be created. Only the lessons that can be easily translated to the screen will be
created, and all other lessons will be taught if we move to all television education.