Why do our kids do so badly in school? Lots of people will tell you it's because they spend too much time in front of a TV set. And it's true that the numbers are staggering. In 1990, one in four 9-year-olds spent six or more hours, seven days a week, watching TV. That's more than most adults spend at work and certainly more than these kids spent in school. It's also true that kids who watch lots of TV have poor test scores. What should we do?
Some people talk about parents' cracking down, but a Miami entrepreneur has invented a far more ingenious solution. It's a gadget that rations children's television time and shuts off the set when a kid has used up his allotment. Here's how it works. The parent enters Johnny's weekly ration of TV time into a black box that controls the TV power supply. To turn on the TV, the kid needs to punch in his four-digit ID number, and as he listens to MTV or plays a game of Nintendo, a clock in the black box debits his account. When he's used up his time, the set dies, and it's no more TV until next week. The gadget can also black out whole time periods--for instance, between midnight and 6 a.m. so a kid can't sneak out of bed to watch an X-rated film.
This TV chastity belt has gotten enthusiastic notices in the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and even TV Guide. Testimonials talk about how it has restored tranquillity to family life because parents don't have to say "no" all the time and how it teaches kids to budget their time and make judgments about what they really want.
Above all, of course, it ensures that a youngster's weekly ration of television does not depend on his own discipline or self-control.
Gadgets like this are familiar in the adult world, too. Look at the self- locking refrigerator device for people who are desperate to lose weight or the cigarette case that can be programmed to release only a certain number of cigarettes a day. You can also see it at the highest levels of the U.S. government in the Gramm-Rudman bill and the proposed balanced budget amendment. Both are based on the idea that people in Congress can't keep themselves from overspending, and what they need is a gadget that makes it impossible for them to lose control.
But before we put this difficulty in saying no down to human nature--which is the same thing as saying that youngsters can't do anything about it--there's another angle. Kids in Japan, Germany, France, Sweden and Holland also have TV sets, but as far as I know, there's been no wave of companies forming in these countries to market TV chastity belts. Their kids watch far less television, on average, than American youngsters. They also achieve at much higher levels. How come?
Most adults do what they must in order to get what they want, and kids are no different. Youngsters in these other countries know that if they want to get into university, it's not enough to squeak through high school. They must study hard and pass a demanding examination. As for kids who are going right from school to work, they know that the courses they have taken, the grades they have gotten and their success on examinations will determine the kind of job they get. American kids see no good reason to turn off the TV and do their schoolwork. A high school graduate who wants to go to college, and can swing it financially, will be able to find some school to accept him, no matter how little he knows and how poor his grades. It's about the same for youngsters who are going right to work. Top companies don't hire new graduates--they prefer workers in their twenties who already have experience. And the companies that do hire new graduates seldom ask for a transcript or care what kind of record a kid has.
Too much television may lead to poor school performance, but we are not going to take care of the problem by locking up the TV sets. Doing so might induce a handful of kids to start paying attention to their
schoolwork, but the rest will find other ways of occupying their time. We must connect student achievement with what happens after graduation--with getting into college or getting a good job--and we must make the stakes visible to our students. Until we do that, we will not get the kind of improvement in student performance that we want and need--no matter how ingenious and successful we are at turning off the tube.