Methods of Curbing Childhood Aggression Due To Violent...

No matter how we try to degrade it, television is a primary source of education in todays society. Next to parents, television is a childs most persistent and most influential teacher, according to the late Ernest Boyer of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Mr. Boyer believes: Through repetition, certain elements of television programming constitute an informal curriculum taught at home to all children, beginning at an early age, with the following themes: Consumption, sex, violence and anti-intellectualism. Children only spend five or six hours a day, five days a week, maybe 30 weeks a year in school. In the average home, however, TV is on six or seven hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks†¦show more content†¦We must take control of the television before we are the ones being shaped by our most manipulative creation. There are many reasons for feeling that violence needs to end among children. The dramatic expression of concern disturbs us due to the school shooting sprees throughout the United States over the past few years. Much fear has been created in the community and it is easy for us to blame the media for this crisis. We must consider also that historically, we have more latchkey children spawned by the decline of traditional families. There is a tremendous amount of violence that occurs on the set, and working parents are not always able to regulate the viewing habits of their children. From a sociological viewpoint, urban kids and minority children are most significantly impacted by the television. They spend more time in front of the set because of the lack of other entertainment. City kids have a closer proximity to violence and therefore an overload of unhealthy modeling. How do we know if it is the propinquity of aggressive action expression in reality, or if it is the violent act on the main source of entertainment that is more of a disservice? Who is responsible for shielding unhealthy models projected on television from the children? The American government is fearful that this new aggression that is affecting the young must be eliminated completely through censorship and the V-chip. This smut-screening technology appears