Postman: Amusing Ourselves to Death, Sept. 11

After reading Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death I’m not convinced that the state of public discourse in the age of television is as negative as Postman deems it to be. I think he romanticizes the typographical age and is unduly negative when it comes to the age of television, which can now be called the age of the Internet.

McLuhan has a more postive viewpoint of the age of television, calling it inclusive and leading us away from a society that was almost solely dependent on the visual. I think we now live in a society that is as varied communicatively, as we are ethnically. It isn’t that we are less literate as a culture, it’s that literature now has competition when it comes to public discourse, whether it is politics, education, religion, or news. 

Still, at times, I did find myself agreeing with some of Postman’s major points, especially as it relates to education and television. New technology ultimately always “wags the dog” when it comes to education. Technology is always imposed on the education system and it is left to the system (and often individual teachers) to decide how and when to incorporate new technology into the classroom.

Many of Postman’s arguements about television and education can now be found in discussions about the Internet and education. When, how and in what capacity should we start teaching children about the Internet?

A few years ago at a school board meeting that I attended these very questions were being asked. It seems that the answer, just like with television, was to put education on the web. In other words, rather than teach about the Internet, the content of courses was going to be directed by the Internet. Televisions are no longer being rolled into classrooms today, but expensive personal computers are, and for what purpose?

Ultimately, we need to teach children the basics of communication (reading, writing and language). Television demands an understanding of language and presentation, and the Internet of reading and writing. The exciting nature of communications today is that it is a dynamic force, and we need all the tools that we have learned through the typographical age and the television age to manage it.

Tags: education, media, reflections, technology