TV serves us most usefully when presenting junk-entertainment; it serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse - news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion.
Interpretation
Television is most beneficial when entertaining but harmful when it treats serious subjects superficially.
In this quote, Neil Postman highlights the dual nature of television as a medium. He suggests that while TV can provide valuable entertainment that serves as a distraction, it becomes problematic when it trivializes serious issues such as news, politics, and education, leading to a misunderstanding of important topics in society. The quote emphasizes the need for viewers to be critical of the information presented to them through television.
In practice
During a media literacy workshop, I used this quote to discuss the importance of critical thinking about televised information.
Television is a non graded curriculum and excludes no viewer for any reason, at any time. In other words, in doing away wtih the idea of sequenece and continuity in education, television undermines the idea that sequence and continuity have anything to do with thought itself.
Television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.
Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.
When two human beings get together, they're co-present, there is built into it a certain responsibility we have for each other, and when people are co-present in family relationships and other relationships, that responsibility is there. You can't just turn off a person. On the Internet, you can.
A book is an attempt to make through permanent and to contribute to the great conversation conducted by authors of the past. […] The telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be quickly replaced by a more up-to-date message. Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation. (70)
Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?
Education should turn out the pupil with something he knows well and something he can do well.
Public libraries are the sole community centers left in America. The degree to which a branch of the local library is connected to the larger culture is a reflection of the degree to which the community itself is connected to the larger culture.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
Giving children the sense that you always ought to speak up for what's right, even if it costs you something, that's something you can do.
Here’s a bumper sticker I’d like to see: “We are the proud parents of a child who’s self-esteem is sufficient that he doesn’t need us promoting his minor scholastic achievements on the back of our car."
This is the practice school of writing. Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it. Some days you don't want to run and you resist every step of the three miles, but you do it anyway. You practice whether you want to or not. You don't wait around for inspiration and a deep desire to run ... That's how writing is too ... One of the main aims in writing practice is to learn to trust your own mind and body; to grow patient and nonaggressive.
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