Television, like anything else, has as much educational value as you allow it to. For example, television documentaries and sitcoms serve to reinforce or challenge societal norms and ideologies while reality television shows, in general, are intended to challenge long held beliefs and traditions. In contrast, Networks like as PBS and Nickelodeon educate young minds and the several hundred cable channels serve to support the education, whether easily apparent or trans[arentt, provided by the shows I've already mentioned as well as others. Therefore I would argue that television has significant educational value you only has to channel surf to se" that.
It highly depends on what you watch. It used to be true that it had no educational value, when TV was nothing more than sit-coms and cartoons and soap operas. But, today you actually have educational options to television viewing. There's a number of different History channels, and The science channel, just to name two that have very good, documentaries. News programming offers up political debates and commentaries, that we all need to hear and process. PBS has some good children's programming that teaches kids alot of valuable things.
Personally I’d prefer to read than to learn anything from the television. Television focuses more on the visual aspect than the substantive. It pulls your mind in different directions. When you're reading, it's just you and the words, so I think you'd retain the material better than TV. It also depends on what you are watching and how much.
I think if parents are afraid of their children watching too much television and not benefiting from it that they should monitor what their child watches. Make sure they know what the kid watches so that they know what the child is learning from it. Regulate television watching time and what is and what is not appropriate to watch. Watch together and talk about what the child watches and share the discussion. Most important of all, I think people should keep in mind that though television is tuned on for entertainment, it can also inform, enrich, and educate.
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