“All television is educational television. Although television is often used for entertainment, it is always more than mere entertainment. Even when it is not intentionally designed to teach, it carries messages about social interactions and about the nature and values of groups in the society that can influence attitudes, values and actions among its viewers. It serves as a source of information about the world, whether viewers seek entertainment or enlightenment”.

          [ from Big World, Small Screen: The Role of Television in American Society ] 1992

	Since 1995 the number of television channels received in the average American household has more than doubled, increasing from 41 to 104. Despite this growth, we actually watch relatively few channels. In 1995 the norm was 10 channels and in 2006 it was 15 channels.

     Let’s be clear from the start. Television is a teacher. The real questions that we need to consider are those that ask what it teaches, how it teaches and who it teaches?

     From the outset we have to recognize that television is not neutral and it is certainly much more than mere entertainment or escapism. Writing in Television, Myth and the American Mind, Hal Himmelstein tells us: “ Through its use of powerful language comprising images,words, gestures, clothing, settings, music and sounds”, TV has in fact “become one of our society’s principal repositories of ideology”.

     That is to say, “a constructed belief system that explains, economic, political and social reality to people and establishes the collective goals of a class, group .. or the entire society”.

     While TV content with its ideology and value system is obviously an important concern for anyone seeking to understand the somewhat symbiotic relationship between television and society, the nature and needs of the TV audience including the context in which they are exposed to TV’s messages is also a crucial consideration.

     This last element examines the circumstances under which children and teens view TV. Are they supervised or alone? Do they watch with peers or parents? Are they isolated in their bedroom or do they watch in a common family area?

     In addition to the social context in which viewing takes place, it is also possible to consider the broader psychological & developmental context of television consumption.

     Teens and early adolescents for example are in the stage of identity formation. This We Believe is a publication of The National Middle School Association. It notes that this age is group is “socially vulnerable because as they develop their beliefs, values and attitudes, the influence of media..may compromise their ideals and values”.

     Pediatrician, Victor Strasburger, believes that “television gives teenagers scripts about how adults are supposed to act; it teaches them about gender roles, conflict resolution, patterns of courtship and sexual gratification, and methods of coping with stress”.

     Although it is widely assumed that new media, the Internet, videogames and cell phones among them, now divert the attention of young people away from TV, the opposite is in fact true.

     In December 2006, the Kaiser Family Foundation published the report, Media Multitasking Among American Youth: Prevalence, Predictors and Pairings. The study documented “the sheer volume of time devoted to television” and concluded that “television dominates as a primary media activity,” that “more time is devoted to television as a secondary activity than to any other”.

     While the report did trace the emergence of new media and the attraction young people have to such technology, it stated very clearly that “television remains dominant in the lives of young people . . . the importance of television in the lives of young people should be neither underestimated nor downplayed”.

     Tellingly, in a time when government and medical reports raise serious questions about what has been called an epidemic of childhood obesity, young people reported eating 14% of the time that they are watching television.

     While it is not uncommon for adults to dismiss much of television content as trivial and mindless it is also possible to challenge and change those perspectives on a personal level.

     In workshops and graduate classes I frequently call upon teachers to reflect upon television’s impact on their own adolescent years. When they undertake this task many come to realize that they too were attracted to TV and for the most part benefited from it or at least were not harmed by it.

     The same can be said about much contemporary television .In Joan of Arcadia adolescent angst meets faith, family, academic anxiety and peer pressure. In Jack & Bobby 2 fatherless adolescent boys move inexorably toward adulthood as they come to terms with their mother, sexual curiosity , team sports, academics and faith. In 7th Heaven, Simon, Ruthie, Mary, Matt and the other Camden offspring are confronted with the stresses of modern life and the security afforded by their father and mother’s faith.

     Hannah Montana, Drake and Josh, High School Musical and of course American Idol are all popular among teens and tweens, although they are frequently viewed without adult supervision as a result of which most teachers I work with, including those who have children of their own, do not tend to watch TV with their kids.

     What that means for teachers, is that they are often unaware of what their students actually watch and therefore how they might utilize these programs to teach and reach kids. Writing for the National Middle School Association,

     Chris Stevenson has documented what happens when teachers and their students examine television in the classroom: “the process and the results taught us many interesting and provocative things about the place of television in our family lives. The unit raised individual and collective consciousness about the extent to which we were affected by the presence of television”.

     For English Language Arts teachers, TV affords the opportunity to explore genre conventions, narrative structure, dilemma, conflict and resolution whether using Buffy The Vampire Slayer, The Gilmore Girls , or Ugly Betty. Social Studies and History teachers can examine TV and mass media as social institutions that can have profound influence on the way we see each other, ourselves and the wider world.

     In Television Technology & Cultural Form, for example, Raymond Williams said: “television was invented as a result of scientific and technical research. Its power as a medium of news and entertainment was then so great that it altered many of our institutions and forms of social relationships”. Approaching television from this perspective would be completely consistent with many of the major strands of study identified by the National Council for the Social Studies.

     These approaches are of course content or curriculum driven, which is to say they focus on content already validated by the curriculum and then seek to connect that content to television.

     Another approach however is the student- centered model or the client model if you will. This approach argues that if TV and other media are central in the lives of the students we teach, to more successfully reach and teach them, we must understand their relationship with this mediated environment.

     In her book Growing up with Television, adolescent anthropologist JoEllen Fisherkeller puts it this way: “when I talk with young people about television, I do so as an anthropologist who wants to understand how young people learn to live in a world where corporate media systems such as television represent as well as constitute , contemporary existence. How do youths make sense of themselves in a world permeated by corporate media such as TV? How do youths learn how to be successful and powerful members of TV culture”.

     Although some people may see such questions as an attempt to indulge the already over-active egos of the young, resulting in a watering down of the curriculum, Fisherkeller locates the study in the heart of our democratic values.

     Noting the number of studies that have documented the prevalence of stereotypes in television and the dominance of materialism and consumerism, she argues that the media “make it difficult for young people to have an authentic identity or solid sense of self”.

     If our kids are in fact, “growing up to be flakes and fakes:, she argues, then our democracy is in trouble because it needs individuals, “who can think and act for themselves, look critically and reflectively at the world around them and create change , when and where needed”.

	Home Improvement?: Families ON Television, Families & Television. PDF All in the Family: Exploring Media Literacy thru Television Families. PDF No TV: One Family’s Choice. PDF

At left, Family. At right, Eight is Enough. Below, Growing Pains.