I hope it's ok just to jump in.
My problem with Teletubbies is this, they are age appropriate only
for children 1yr old and slightly above, yet children above the
target range watch these program and get little or no valuable
information from them. They aren't taught anything. What's more two
and three year olds who watch them develop poor verbal skills. This
isn't the programming's fault by any means. It is the fault of the
consumer who choses to submit these characters for their children's
consumption. There is a point where you have to separate learning
from television.
----Original Message Follows----
From: "Tim Rhodes" <proftim@speakeasy.org>
Reply-To: virus@lucifer.com
To: "Church of Virus" <virus@lucifer.com>
Subject: Re: virus: Matrix...and teletubbies
The noted Dr Sebby wrote:
>....If repetitive 'uh-oh's' and 'ooh-la's' constitute 'good
programming'
>for children(1yr olds or not) then why bother educating them when
they
>get older?
You might want to familarize yourself with the voluminous data on
developmental stages in early childhood learning. 1-3 year olds
learn in
much different ways than, 5-8 year-olds or, say... a 12 year-old
with a
fake lightsaber. A program aimed at the way a 2 year-old learns is
going to
be vertually insufferable for an adult to watch (tried sitting
through a
whole episode of Mister Rogers, lately?). If you liked the
Teletubbies (and
you're not stoned) it would mean either they were missing their
target age
group or you were a very, very "challenged" individual.
It just wasn't made for your brain.
> The one 'teletubbie' episode i had the chance to see seemed like
an
>experiment in fostering infant stress/frustration....basically, there
>was this one teletubbie...lets call him dipsy for sake of
>argument...anyway, he wanted to do something fun, a game or
something -
>it doesnt matter...but every time he started in on his 'fun project'
>some computer 10ft away would indicate a problem requiring resolution
>ASAP...so he would relunctantly abandon his 'fun project' and
>slooooowwwwly plod over to said computer, hit a few buttons and be
>rewarded with a beep of approval indicating that everything was ok
>now....he would then, with great impatience, sloooooowwwwly trundle
back
>to his 'fun project' and attempt to begin this 'fun' activity....but
>every time he would commence doing this 'fun' thing, the computer
would
>have a problem again, and he would have to go back and sort it out,
>etc.......Well, it went on repeating this annoying and frustrating
>process about 10 times - all the way through the program...in fact he
>never did succeed in permanently resolving the computer's
problems...the
>show ended with everyone completely irritated, frustrated and
>dissatasfied
Sounds like a good life lesson for the little future workers of the
world to
grasp, no? Much more effective than going to work with Mommy or
Daddy for a
day, I suspect too.
-Prof. Tim