Television and Reading: Refocusing the Debate
By: James Flood and Diane Lapp
From: The Reading Teacher, October, 1995
J. Geffen
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1.
The debate over the issue of whether television has a role in schools has raged
since television’s inception more than a half century ago. The debate has never been
clearly focused, and support for either side can be best described as anecdotal.
Somehow the debate always becomes simplified to a single basic question; Is
television harmful to children’s development of reading ability and academic success?
2.
Prior to the 1980s, the dominant conclusion was a simple, straightforward
“Yes!” During the past decade, however, educators have begun to refocus the debate
by addressing some of the complex issues involved in understanding the relationships
between television and reading. To begin with, some educators (Desmond, in press;
Neuman, 1991) have wondered whether a comparison of reading and television
(setting them up as competitors and opposites) is useful. To suggest that one will win
the contest and the other will be vanquished (and disappear) is absurd.
3.
These educators contend that television is here to stay and that an understanding
of the role it can play in children’s academic life is critical. They argue that banishing
television from schools and attempting to divorce it from the curriculum is foolhardy.
They further suggest that television might have potential to aid academic
advancement.
4.
Television permeates almost every aspect of students’ lives. It has been
conservatively estimated that children spend more than 30 hours per week watching
television and additional time each day playing electronic games on television
screens. Lemish (1987) reports that television viewing begins in infancy when
children respond to the visual and sonic stimulation of television messages. As early
as 16 months, children show sensitivity to their parents’ attention to television, often
looking at the screen when their parents do. The lure of television lasts through the
childhood years and seems to abate slightly at about age 13.
5.
Few educators today hold the animosity toward television that was prominent in
the 1950s, when many teachers believed that television was their natural nemesis.
Attitudes have changed so dramatically that many educators today are using mass
media “texts” to enhance their own teaching and their children’s learning,
comfortably moving from textbook to trade book to film, to newspaper, to video, to
computer as they attempt to bring rich ideas and primary source materials into their
classrooms. Kinder (1990) makes a strong argument for this interdependence among
texts in her study of the influence of intertextual relationships among books,
television, video games, and film on the construction of narratives.
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6.
In particular, there has been increasing momentum among language arts and
social studies teachers to include analysis of media and media production activities as
part of the curriculum. Some educators have become so impatient about the lack of
investigation into the role of visual media in schools that they have asserted that the
visual media have been deliberately neglected for a host of reasons ranging from an
elitist notion of great literature existing only in print form to fears about the social
effect of media. Hobbs (in press) points to the inherent irony in this situation,
maintaining that we live “in a society where media is the central leisure activity for
most of its citizens and the dominant source of information about the world.” She
urges investigation into television because she fears that we sometimes mistakenly
think that we are expanding our students’ concept of literacy when we teach with
television, but she argues that a real expansion of literacy will require teaching about
television as well.
7.
The problem seems clear: Students are growing up in a world where they are
constantly bombarded with television ads for candidates, products, and ways of
thinking. This bombardment may increase in schools as cable programming expands
through public broadcasting and a host of independent cable companies. Very soon
many programs will be available to provide educational experiences that will expand
and enrich students’ lives. Others are certain to be disappointing and counterproductive to educational advancement. In order to determine which are useful,
teachers and students will need to be able to interpret a variety of messages in verbal
and visual forms.
8.
To date there has been insufficient training in selecting educationally significant
television programs because, in general, television has been perceived as harmful. But
much of what we think about the relationships between television and reading are
really myths that have been passed along as true.
Myths about television and language development.
9.
Myth 1: Television displaces reading. In order to unravel the relationships
between television and reading, several theories have been proposed and hypotheses
have been generated. Among these is the displacement theory, which suggests that
television displaces reading and that this, in turn, erodes reading ability. However,
there is little evidence in support of the displacement theory and some indirect
evidence against it. Neuman (1988) studied 2 million school children from eight U.S.
states and found no impact of TV watching on school-related or leisure reading,
except in cases where students watched 4 or more hours per day. In these cases, she
found a steady decline in reading and vocabulary. She postulated that television
viewing is tied to a different set of gratifications than leisure reading.
10. Similarly, in the only published meta-analysis of television viewing on reading,
Williams, Haertel, Haertel, & Walberg (1982) concluded that there is no overall effect
of television viewing on academic achievement, although heavy viewing (more than
40 hours per week) increased the chance for negative effects. Reinking and Wu
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(1990) concluded that more than 3 hours per day may be the critical point that begins
the decline of reading ability.
11. Myth 2: Television viewing negatively affects young readers. It has been argued
that young children between the ages of 5 and 8 are particularly vulnerable to any
negative effects of television. The argument suggests that television viewing may
cause “concentration deprivation”, which may result in children’s failure to acquire
important early reading behaviors (Singer, 1976; Singer, Singer, Desmond, Hirsch, &
Nicol, 1988). Although there is some evidence that heavy viewers in this age group
are less able readers than their lighter viewing counterparts through second grade
(Singer et al., 1988), most studies addressing this issue fail to examine a variety of
factors that may contribute to reading delay. Desmond (in press) maintains that
evidence for the concentration deprivation” theory to explain poor reading
performance is limited because almost no studies have looked directly at the relationships between television and reading during this period of children’s lives.
12. New studies will need to take into consideration contemporary notions of
emergent literacy, which suggest that reading acquisition is an ongoing process that
begins at birth (and not at age 5 as some of the previous studies seem to have
presumed). Studies will also need to be longitudinal to examine the effects of
television on reading through the early years of a child’s life (0-8 years). To date there
are ample data to suggest that some forms of television programming are quite helpful
to young children, e.g., the beneficial effects of Sesame Street have been well
documented (White, 1980; Willmorth, in press).
13. Myth 3: Television inhibits language development. Many researchers have
suggested that television viewing is negatively associated with language learning
(Nelson, 1973; Winn, 1985) because television is a passive medium and children need
to be interactive users to learn language. In addition, they argue that television
language occurs so “fast” that it is often incomprehensible to potential learners (Clark
& Clark, 1977). However, several studies have reported that young children as well as
their older counterparts and adults often interact extensively with and through
television (Greenfield, 1984; Selnow & Bettinghaus, 1982). For example, young
children often talk to the television characters, and older viewers often engage in
situation-related discussions with others watching the same program.
14. As for the second issue – television is too “fast” to be linguistically
comprehensible for language learners – the counterargument is that television
provides redundancy in picture form that actually enhances viewers’ ability to process
linguistic messages (Huston & Wright, 1983). Many researchers argue that television
expands children’s sociolinguistic experiences and understandings of a range of
speech forms, including dialect differences, status indicators, conversational rules, and
styles of formal and informal language (Rice, 184; Willmorth, in press).
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Television as an instructional tool
15. Almost no one in contemporary society would take the position “Ignore it and it
will go away.” Rather, teachers are becoming increasingly willing to accept the fact
that television will always be a very important part of children’s lives. The question
no longer seems to be “Is television harmful to reading?” but instead “How can I use
television to help my children learn?” Some of the initial answers to this question are
easy and almost obvious. A task force of the American Psychological Association
(1993) reported that there is extensive evidence for the effectiveness of children’s
watching television with others and talking to clarify misunderstandings, balance
overgeneralizations, and stimulate higher order critical-thinking skills. There is also
evidence that children remember and understand information better when it is
presented through television than when it is presented in print (Willmorth, in press).
The American Psychological Association task force concluded: “Our failure to realize
the potential benefits of television is perhaps more significant than our inability to
control some of its harmful effects (p. 145). The following are several ways that
television can enhance literacy curricula.
16. Expanding notions of “acceptable texts” to include television. As our notions of
literacy expand, we need to reconsider our ideas about appropriate “texts” for literacy
instruction. Television programs are potentially rich sources of texts for classrooms
both as literacy pieces (originals and visual/dramatic interpretations of primary works)
and information pieces. As literacy pieces, videos and live programs can be used
directly in classrooms in ways that are similar to the ways we use printed text
materials.
17. We can use videotapes of televised programs to offer alternative interpretations/
presentations of literary classics from Winnie-the-Pooh (Milne, 1926) to Sarah, Plain
and Tall (MacLachlan, 1985) to Molly’s Pilgrim (Cohen, 1983). Because these productions are interpretations of texts that were first created in written form, students
might compare the written and visual texts. Other shows that are created directly for
television may also be used in classrooms as part of our literacy curriculum.
18. Televised information “texts” also present opportunities for teachers to provide
rich background information about specific topics from science to art to social studies.
Regularly televised shows like Beakman’s World and The Magic School Bus as well
as nature specials provide rich and scientifically accurate information about a variety
of topics in science. The Public Broadcasting System in the U.S. regularly presents
shows on history and the arts that are particularly relevant and comprehensible for
children.
19. Television programming can be used to foster reader-response approaches to
understanding and interpreting literature. Early research on television and reading
reported that television messages were unambiguous. Recent research, however, has
uncovered a great deal of variety in the ways children interpret different shows, even
those that appear to be relatively unambiguous like news shows and situation
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comedies (Willmorth, in press). Instruction that includes ample opportunities for
discussion, response-based writing, and re-viewing (seeing parts of the show over and
over) in ways that are similar to classroom literature discussion group approaches will
enhance interpretation of these texts as well as stimulate comparisons across texts.
Students will have new opportunities to gain from intertextual comparisons that
include visual and print-based texts.
20. Television viewing can help develop contemporary communication skills. As
part of every child’s literacy development, students need to know how to interpret and
create visual messages. Students can benefit enormously from instruction in creating
scripts for video production. They will realize that the ability to communicate includes
traditional notions of understanding audience, the effective use of symbols, and the
ability to organize and sequence ideas. But communication also involves new notions
about media that include three sets of production skills: (a) learning how to make
effective choices about point of view and style; (b) learning how to use visual and
auditory symbolism; and (c) learning how to manipulate time and space through
editing.
21. Television viewing can enhance second language instruction. Many second
language teachers argue that since language cannot be separated from culture,
television can provide a dramatized, cultural context for language instruction. In many
parts of the U.S., foreign language television stations and services provide news
reports, commercials, and dramatic entertainment programming that can be used for
in-class exercises (Willmorth, in press). News reports have timely and relevant
content and a predictable format, and they offer opportunities for practice with rapidly
spoken numbers in sports and weather reports. News reports often repeat a limited
number of vocabulary words that can help children acquire important general cultural
knowledge about the language and the people who speak it. Television commercials
contain intelligible native speech with idiomatic constructions and, like news stories,
can reflect cultural assumptions. As teaching materials, commercials often have the
virtues of short duration and humorous tone. Willmorth (in press) stresses that using
authentic materials increases student motivation, provides sustained exposure to a
limited set of topics, improves retention of vocabulary items, and builds an awareness
of cultural concepts.
A final word
22. The “television is harmful/television is helpful” debate seems to be over
because it oversimplifies a very serious set of questions about the role of television in
children’s reading and academic development. Instead, a new debate must ensue that
centers on how television can help students learn. To answer this question, we first
need to ask: Who are our students? What do they need to learn? What can television
offer? What programs offer specific learning possibilities?
23. Right now the future seems bright – the cable television is expanding and more
programs than ever before will soon be available to students. However, some of these
Television and Reading / 6
programs are certain to be disappointing, and some will be counterproductive to our
children’s academic and social development. In order to determine which programs
will be useful, we will all need to learn a great deal more about television as a text and
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as an instructional tool that will enhance our development of critical consumers and
literate people.
References
American Psychological Association (1993). Report on television viewing of the APA
task force. Washington, DC: Author.
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Clark, H., & Clark, E. (1977). Psychology and language. New York: Harcourt, Brace
& Jovanovich.
Cohen, B. (1983). Molly’s pilgrim. New York: Lothrop, Lee &Shepard.
Desmond, R. (in press). TV viewing, reading and media literacy. In J. Flood, S.B.
Heath, & D. Lapp (Eds.), A handbook for literacy educators: Research on
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teaching the communicative and visual arts. New York: Macmillan.
Greenfield, P.M. (1984). Mind and media: The effects of television, videogames, and
computers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hobbs, R. (in press). Literacy in the information age. In J. Flood, S.B. Heath, & D.
Lapp (Eds.), A handbook for literacy educators: Research on teaching the
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communicative and visual arts. New York: Macmillan.
Huston, A.C. & Wright, J.C. (1983). Children’s processing of television: The
informative functions of formal features. In J. Bryand & D.R. Anderson (Eds.),
Children’s understanding of television.
Television and Reading / 7
Answer in your own words in English, unless otherwise indicated.
1.
Answer the question below in English.
What does the title itself suggest?
Answer : ____________________________________________________________
Answer the question below in Hebrew.
2.
Provide and discuss the evidence – paragraphs 2-8 – suggesting that a good
many educators have experienced a change of heart on the issue of television
and the school, and account for this change of heart. Acceptance or resignation?
Answer : ____________________________________________________________
3.
Analyze the contradictions in paragraphs 9-11.
Answer : ____________________________________________________________
Answer the question below in Hebrew.
4.
In what sense is the statement young children often talk to the television
characters – paragraph 13 – rather nonsensical in the context of language
learning?
Answer : ____________________________________________________________
Television and Reading / 8
5.
Answer the question below in English.
In what sense is the debate whether television is harmful or television is helpful
rather meaningless?
Answer : ____________________________________________________________