Leviathan II

Blog Reflection 5

I couldn’t help but think about Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (1651) as I dove into the third and final section of After the Death of Childhood. Thomas Hobbes was a real downer when compared to other more positive thinkers during the age of Enlightenment. While the likes of John Locke and Jean-Jacque Rousseau were talking about natural rights and freedom, Hobbes was railing against such liberal thoughts as threats to social order. As Hobbes put it, the only way to control the mass of monstrously ambitious humans was to install an absolute monarchy where freedoms were kept to a minimum. This is an understandable sentiment considering that the book had been written shortly after the chaos of the English Civil War.

I’m not saying that Buckingham is advocating the Hobbes-like approach to how we handle children and their access to electronic media. But I could see some of the more conservative elements of the educational community thinking that an old “Hobbesian” approach to controlling what materials our children have access to wouldn’t be a bad idea. Buckingham mentions that some feel that today’s children are being irreparably damaged by exposure to violent and sexually-charged material long before they are emotionally ready to handle such themes. The danger here, he says, is that such damage to our children’s psyches could prove to be a threat to the continuation of our social order.

Buckingham brings up a good point in Chapter 7. He mentions that children getting a hold of sexual or violent content is not new, but that the content is more readily obtained since the emergence of new electronic media (i.e. cable TV and the Internet). But I think anyone trying to fight the rising tide electronic media that make any information easier to obtain is going to be fighting a losing battle. Some stalwarts might contend that the battle to protect our children against objectionable material is winnable when one employs the use of the V-chip or other forms of parental control over web content. But as Buckingham points out, if adults move to try to ban access to sexually explicit or violent material, we are really just creating a “forbidden fruit” scenario in which kids would be challenged to find more innovative ways to get such material. They will find ways to find it not just because of the material itself, but because there is the added challenge of thwarting the adult world’s attempt to deny them of such material.

I am not advocating that there should be a free-for-all scenario where anything goes as far as what our children should have access to on their televisions, computers, or hand held devices. As adults (both teachers and parents) we will instinctively try to project our children from exposure to content that they might not yet be emotionally prepared to handle. In actuality, much of that battle is being fought for us as school districts continue to ban access to an ever-increasing amount of alternative media available on the Internet. But I think such efforts on the part of school districts are creating the very same “forbidden fruit” that Buckingham discussed in Chapter 7.

The Changeling

Blog Reflection 4

The emphasis in Part II of After the Death of Childhood: Growing up in the Age of Electronic Media shifts toward an exploration of the perceived changes in people’s definitions of childhood. One interesting trend brought up in Chapter 4 (“Changing Childhoods”) is that children are finding that much of their free time is now spend inside the home, rather than away from the home. Therefore, today’s children are a more captive audience. This puts them in a position where they are made to be easier targets for television programmers and their advertising sponsors. The implication here is that television and the Internet are becoming a secondary education system that may either enhance or detract from the education they receive at school. Whether this helps or hurts the education of today’s kids would largely depend on the programs they watch or the websites they frequent.

I think the most disturbing point brought up by Buckingham in this segment of the book is that since children are spending more time in their own homes their free time is becoming increasingly “curricularized” (Buckingham, p. 67). This paints a picture of a child having much of their waking day structured around time spent at school, watching television, or cruising cyberspace. I would say such a dark scenario could be a reality in the lives of kids who have parents who are perpetually oblivious to their children’s viewing habits for both television and the Internet. But Buckingham does steer this book’s voyage into some more promising waters when he mentions the potential behind much of the new electronic media out there.

Buckingham points out that technology is allowing increasingly younger users to individualize and, in some cases, customize the content they see in electronic media. While the book was printed well before the revolutions of MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube, it seems that Buckingham had his finger on the pulse of an emerging trend just before it broke. As an educator, I am both interested in and repulsed by the potential that such social networking platforms hold. I can’t begin to count the times I’ve heard students discussing how much time they had spent the night before chatting on MySpace instead of studying or doing their homework. But, if given the proper guidance and sense of ethics, today’s students are at the threshold of becoming the next generation of writers, musicians, and cinematographers. The Internet technology of the past 5 years may have as profound an impact on a person’s ability to reach a widespread audience since the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press in the 15^th century. Most, if not all of the social networking sites mentioned here are blocked by school districts across the nation. But if students and educators can find a link between the skills developed on social networking sites and academic or professional success, it might cause districts to reconsider their policy towards some social networking opportunities.

Childhood Lost?

Blog Reflection 3

Part I of David Buckingham’s book After the Death of Childhood: Growing Up in the Age of Electronic Media spends a considerable amount of time exploring notions of the loss of childhood facing today’s kids. According to some in Buckingham’s circle of researchers, the innocence of childhood is being eroded as electronic media make it easier for children to access “adult” content. What I mean by “adult” in this context goes beyond that which would be deemed sexually inappropriate for young viewers. Rather, the book explores more about children gaining access to materials for which they are not yet emotionally mature enough to handle. This includes materials that are either violent in nature or contain explicit language.

As Buckingham points out, during the age of print it was easier for adults to safeguard their children from material that was deemed inappropriate or “adult” in nature. The advent of television required that parents take on the responsibility of screening what their children could and could not see in the home environment. During the formative years of television, this didn’t present a major problem as the range of TV channels was somewhat limited. The evolution of television media from analog to cable, and, finally, digital cable, brought with it added challenges for parents who were wanting to control what their children could see on TV. But as television technology evolved, so did screening mechanisms such as the V-chip and TV ratings system. However, many conrol methods are being rendered mute as Internet and streaming video technologies make it increasingly easy for children to gain access to the proverbial “forbidden fruit.”

Perhaps the most alarming trend that Buckingham’s book addresses is idea that television has eaten away at a child’s ability to develop their own sense of voice and imagination. Buckingham sites Barry Sanders’ A is for Ox in which Sanders postulates that television has torn away time that had traditionally been set aside for family conversation and oral story-telling (Buckingham, p. 30). I agree with Saunders’ theory to a point. Television has certainly carved its niche into the everyday lives of many families in the modern world. But I also feel that television brings with it several positive qualities in acting as a window to the outside world that had been previously unavailable. While television has undoubtedly shoved some elements of oral story-telling aside, it can also provide information (mostly in the form of news) that serve as the impetus of meaningful family discussion.

My initial feelings on the concept that childhood is “dying” are mixed. At this point in Buckingham’s presentation, I agree that some aspects of childhood innocence are being paired away by a buffet of media choices that are proving to be somewhat slippery as adults scramble to find ways to control it. But I would stop short of calling this the “death” of childhood. Rather, I would hypothesize that childhood is evolving, much like the electronic media that is allegedly assaulting childhood innocence.