Monday, October 12, 2009
English- Can TV actually make you smarter?
After reading both of the articles, Watching TV Makes You Smarter and Thinking Outside the Idiot Box, I was torn between which one I agreed with. I decided that I agree with both of them for the most part because TV could make you smarter, but it really depends on what you’re watching. There obviously isn’t a lot of thinking involved if you’re watching something like The Girls Next Door. However, the TV show mentioned in the first article, ER, could technically “make you smarter”. Like the article said, a lot of what is going on is implied rather than said, so watching this show does require some thinking. I also think the first article was well-written and the author did a good job taking a side that most people don’t consider. How often do you hear people saying that TV actually makes you smarter? Hardly Ever. I thought the author used a variety of examples that his readers would be familiar with from The Sopranos to The Day After Tomorrow. Although at the end of the article I wasn’t totally convinced, I still thought it was well-written and it really made me stop and think.
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I do think that TV has gotten smarter. However did you notice that the author put graphics in the essay that basically he made? That made the whole essay unconvincing to me.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that the author himself made those "graphs." There is no mention of their conception in the article.(there aren't any in the article I read) I feel that the second article (Idiot box) was more convincing as well. Although, I think this article may be more convincing because it was written as a response to the article written by Johnson(tv makes you smarter). Her entire article is filled with criticisms of Johnson's article. Perhaps if Johnson could argue against Stevens' claims (which had not been published yet) his article would have changed.
ReplyDeleteAnyone can learn something from watching television but it is the least reliable source to get the facts. It was purely made for entertainment, and channels could include lectures on genetic biology but they don't because no one would bother to watch it. Instead T.V is used to "feed the beast". It is possible though that we may unconsciously remember some scientific terms which were used in medical drama shows such as E.R or House, but that is because there is that visual image we connect with the word. So, we technically remember random things from watching television. What we remember may have no connection with reality, so that is why watching too much television is not favored by most people.
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