TV Turn-Off Reflections from 2002

While our TV was gathering dust on National TV Turn-Off Week our household was peaceful and reflective. Millions of households all over America have participated each April for the past eight years. My fourteen year-old, a Turn-Off veteran, took the News article in which he and I were interviewed on the “Real Turn-Off” going on in our home to English class. Not too often does a kid get to bring to school a newspaper article about himself with color photo for a current events assignment.
For those of you who read the article and wondered if we completed the week – hey, no problem! We have the TV turn-Off thing down. The trick is to start when your children are young by reading to them or playing games.
When your children get to that difficult time known as the teen years, they will be accustomed to applying self-control and hopefully have learned life can be enjoyable without staring into a screen for hours on end.
Our society has become entertainment-oriented instead of one based on the work ethic of past generations. In the process history is filtered through this lens and is being rewritten for the screen at laser speed. Since schools have substituted social studies for history very little actual fact is being transmitted. The founding fathers have been viewed as irrelevant “dead white guys”. When you expunge their memory and the values that motivated them from history books, there isn’t a lot left to talk about except feelings, and not very good ones at that. Some colleges have majored on the mistakes that were made like slavery and displacing Indians without teaching what was done right.
Recent results of testing on history in our public schools showed only 18% proficiency in fourth grade and it goes downhill from there. Last week I substitute taught for that grade level and was reminded that this is the time we learn about the birth of our nation. I enjoyed reading a picture book about George Washington and learned he wasn’t known as a particularly a good speller as a kid. By the time he was 14 he had an assignment to copy and perform an astounding list of 110 European rules for good behavior which I wish I could get my son to adopt. “Undertake not what you cannot perform, but be careful to keep your promise”. Come to think of it, he nailed that one on TV Turn-Off Week!
After we plugged in the television I found myself pressing into the couch instead of my study of the Book of Revelation which I had gotten halfway through along with commentaries by a man who believes in the Rapture, which is the subject of the popular “Left Behind” series.
I caught the final segment of a PBS series “Frontier House”, a documentary about three modern day “families” taking on a challenge to live like pioneers for six months. Coincidentally it validated concerns I expressed about our losing our national edge and becoming soft. They were evaluated by experts and found severely lacking in firewood to get through the long Montana winter. Though the menfolk seemed to be enjoying all the chopping and building, kind of like Tim the Toolman circa 1880’s, the women were not happy with their role of non-stop cook and washer without indoor plumbing. One woman was counting the days until her return to the world of push-button appliances. For this wealthy couple it was only a game because they knew a mansion was being prepared for them in California. For the original settlers they probably hoped for a mansion waiting in heaven.
Their children had adjusted to the one room schoolhouse and one boy was totally lit up with excitement about a hands-on archaeological dig. Weeks later, after returning to the twenty-first century that boy played almost exclusively with video games. The girls who had been at home on the range were shown lazing in their hot tub overlooking Malibu as they reminisced about their pioneer life which didn’t seem so boring after all compared to life in a mansion. They had gained the perspective to perceive their luxury as overkill. “How many times can you go to the Mall?” one sister asked the other.
Locally another experiment supported my statement that statistically youth today would not understand why they should protect the Constitution. Proof came when two “big guns” of democracy visited a class recently at Boston Latin Academy. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has been conducting a “Dialogue on Freedom” program since 9/11 and invited Senator Ted Kennedy along for the ride since he is one of the generals leading the charge for education reform, albeit seated backwards on his horse.
The Boston Latin students credited Socrates and not the Judeo-Christian tradition for inspiring the Founding Fathers. Here in the Athens of America as the two Kennedy’s sifted through the thinking of post-modern teens looking for evidence of the moral infrastructure that under girds our Constitution and The Declaration of Independence, no trace of biblical values was found. Instead they uncovered the fact that truth lies buried in a shallow grave of misinformation.
Kids today have been robbed of the facts and moral guidance they need to carry the banner of freedom into the future. TV shows mock and malign traditional values and serve up heavy doses of cynicism. Jerry Springer-type shows proliferate while decent shows are canceled. The patriots who established our democracy and those who died to maintain it lived by values that are being questioned and silenced today. The war on terrorism seems to have taken a back seat to political correctness as biased politicians and pundits take aim at Judaeo-Christian Values and Tea Party Patriots even using the IRS to silence what not so long ago were voices for American Values.
In the voting booth or while holding the remote control we are free to choose. It is as easy as pushing a button. TV turn-off is about lifting our eyes up to see the big picture.
Chris Noonan Funnell, May 18,2002 updated April 26, 2014