The Tube Boobs

A large new survey reveals that only 22% of high school students spend more than one hour a day on homework. 55% (perhaps the more honest among them) said they studied less than 3 hours per week. Of that group, 65% reported that they made mostly A’s and B’s, which says more about the dumbing down of standards than the abilities of the kids.
(Further note: Almost all of these homework hours are accomplished with some combination of TV, music-player and text-messaging in operation, thus diminishing the concentration level.)



The real corruption of television and movies, more so than the overdone sexuality and violence, is that misbehavior is constantly being shown with little or no repercussion, often with little notice being given to it at all. In other words, the abnormal is treated as normal, even as being "fun stuff." For the generations between 5 and 35, brought up more by mass media than parents, these depictions are a strong teaching tool, instructing them as to the boundaries of acceptable behavior.



One of the insidious things about television is that, since it’s written by New York and L.A. people under general instructions to create edgy, exciting characters, the resultant populations of TV show dramas and comedies, are hardly like real people, even metropolitan-based people. Since this involves a kind of symbiotic reflection with the mass of TV viewers, i.e., they model themselves somewhat on what they see portrayed on the tube, than this mass media – and to a lesser extent movies – is creating a warping in the population’s sense of itself, actually affecting people’s behavior in a mostly negative way..