I'm going to go out on a limb here and be the de facto leper.
I don't think a moderate amount of television -- particularly children's educational television (say, Dora the Explorer) is bad for kids.
Everything in moderation, right? If my kids come home and my wife is at work, I have no qualms in sitting the kids (aged three and two, but they've started this much earlier) in front of Dora the Explorer for an hour while I cook dinner. My kids are constantly demonstrating Spanish phrases and other things they've learned from watching that show (or Sesame Street, ...)
Let's talk about the science, such as there is. The widely-respected economist who is one of two authors of the book "Freakonomics" reviewed the data in a very large-scale study (20,000 kids) undertaken by the US Department of Education. They followed all these kids from birth through the eighth grade. They looked at how they did in school and how they were brought up. Researchers went into the parents' homes, interviewed the parents, and so on. That's some hard-core statistics. I take it pretty seriously.
The freakonomics guy found zero correlation between how much TV the kids watched and their grades by the eighth grade.
The interesting thing, actually, is that he found zero correlation for just about anything else you might do to try to be a good parent. Apparently, it doesn't help to:
- read to your kids - take them to museums - spank them (or not spank them) -
What seemed to matter was not what you did but who you are: not whether you read to them, but how many books you have. Not whether you take them to museums but what level of education you have.
An article such as the one you link to is written based on the presumption that the amount of TV a kid watches might be an issue. On the whole, I don't buy it.
People demonize television, video games, you name it. I say nonsense: it's all popular culture, and it can be good or bad depending on what sort of mix of a life you put it into.
Kids' personalities and outcomes are mostly genetic. And most of what isn't, is peer group and culture. Parents: you don't actually count for much. Sorry. The blank slate is *so* just a myth. So relax, do what you can, and don't feel bad about letting them watch Dora. And enjoy the ride.
Are you talking about the Early Childhood longitudinal study? I could not find anything about Levitt actually having contributed to this study, I only found evidence of him talking about this study, either on NPR or in his book.
My personal education research advisor, _MWife_, thought the conclusions highly dubious, because she believes that the data is not suited for this approach. She thinks that she would be hard-pressed to come up with a study design that could tease out the differences that Levitt is trying to make here.
_MWife_'s interpretation suggestion is that the study shows that a statistically significant portion of the parents are not honest about what they do with their children. That's why the actions appear to make no difference. However, there are material indicators that give the researchers insight into the attitudes the parents display when the researchers leave the house.
For this reason, using the number of books in the house to get a handle on the importance of reading (both as a behavior and as a modeling attitude) is a standard technique in education research.
_MWife_ also points out that there are studies (such as this one) that show that the disparity in reading performance between economically well-situated and disadvantaged children is most prominent during the months of the summer. While during the school year, young children learn at about the same rate, the disadvantaged children start with a deficit when rejoining school in the fall, because the summer months remove their access to books (either at home or elsewhere) and to interested adults (that say, might take them to the library). Summer book reading programs with free book donations to the disadvantaged children have proven effective in this respect.
I don't think a moderate amount of television -- particularly children's educational television (say, Dora the Explorer) is bad for kids.
Everything in moderation, right? If my kids come home and my wife is at work, I have no qualms in sitting the kids (aged three and two, but they've started this much earlier) in front of Dora the Explorer for an hour while I cook dinner. My kids are constantly demonstrating Spanish phrases and other things they've learned from watching that show (or Sesame Street, ...)
Let's talk about the science, such as there is. The widely-respected economist who is one of two authors of the book "Freakonomics" reviewed the data in a very large-scale study (20,000 kids) undertaken by the US Department of Education. They followed all these kids from birth through the eighth grade. They looked at how they did in school and how they were brought up. Researchers went into the parents' homes, interviewed the parents, and so on. That's some hard-core statistics. I take it pretty seriously.
The freakonomics guy found zero correlation between how much TV the kids watched and their grades by the eighth grade.
The interesting thing, actually, is that he found zero correlation for just about anything else you might do to try to be a good parent. Apparently, it doesn't help to:
- read to your kids
- take them to museums
- spank them (or not spank them)
-
What seemed to matter was not what you did but who you are: not whether you read to them, but how many books you have. Not whether you take them to museums but what level of education you have.
An article such as the one you link to is written based on the presumption that the amount of TV a kid watches might be an issue. On the whole, I don't buy it.
People demonize television, video games, you name it. I say nonsense: it's all popular culture, and it can be good or bad depending on what sort of mix of a life you put it into.
Kids' personalities and outcomes are mostly genetic. And most of what isn't, is peer group and culture. Parents: you don't actually count for much. Sorry. The blank slate is *so* just a myth. So relax, do what you can, and don't feel bad about letting them watch Dora. And enjoy the ride.
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My personal education research advisor, _MWife_, thought the conclusions highly dubious, because she believes that the data is not suited for this approach. She thinks that she would be hard-pressed to come up with a study design that could tease out the differences that Levitt is trying to make here.
_MWife_'s interpretation suggestion is that the study shows that a statistically significant portion of the parents are not honest about what they do with their children. That's why the actions appear to make no difference. However, there are material indicators that give the researchers insight into the attitudes the parents display when the researchers leave the house.
For this reason, using the number of books in the house to get a handle on the importance of reading (both as a behavior and as a modeling attitude) is a standard technique in education research.
_MWife_ also points out that there are studies (such as this one) that show that the disparity in reading performance between economically well-situated and disadvantaged children is most prominent during the months of the summer. While during the school year, young children learn at about the same rate, the disadvantaged children start with a deficit when rejoining school in the fall, because the summer months remove their access to books (either at home or elsewhere) and to interested adults (that say, might take them to the library). Summer book reading programs with free book donations to the disadvantaged children have proven effective in this respect.
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