I founded The Television Project, a non-profit organization, to raise
awareness that television use contributes significantly to parental
stress. It seems to me that there is a huge blind spot right in the
middle of our culture, one which we have been unwilling or unable to
examine, and one that is destructive to our children. Our purpose is
to empower parents to control television use and discover alternatives
that make for happy and mentally healthy children.
My passion about
this issue starts with a childhood that sometimes did and sometimes
did not have television. I am the oldest of four children and the oldest
of my grandmother's eight grandchildren. Every summer we spent all together
in her house in the country. We had no electricity. Returning to the
city, my mother would occasionally allow the TV to remain broken. I
distinctly remember her asking me, one gray November day, if she should
get it fixed. My answer was a horrified no! It was clear to me then,
30 years ago, that we became a different family when we had television.
Without television, we greeted my father when he came home, we played
together, I talked to my mother as she cooked dinner, my brother acted
out all of World War II, my sisters created elaborate games requiring
much cutting, pasting, sewing and building. At dinner we sat at table
for extended periods of time talking. We all read voraciously. With
television, much of that activity ceased. Instead we watched Dark Shadows
and Superman in the afternoons, sometimes cuddled together but often
cranky about who had the most blanket, and whose show was to be watched.
Dinner became an anxious bolting of food with an eye to the program
schedule and what we might miss. There seemed to be more fights and
general crankiness.
At Vassar College,
I majored in psychology and earned certification to teach elementary
school. My decision to continue my education at the Episcopal Divinity
School was prompted by my question, "What is spirituality?"
This question came through my readings in Jungian psychology and a course
I took senior year in a History of Religions class. It was there that
I learned of the importance of story in shaping the character of the
person. At the Episcopal Divinity School I discovered personally how
story teaches morality and nurtures the soul.
After graduation
from E.D.S. I went to work for a management consulting firm. For eight
years I traveled to small towns throughout the country coaching factory
employees in team problem-solving. It was during this period that I
began to be alarmed by the pervasiveness and homogeneity of styles as
seen on television. A waitress in Waverly, Tennessee, a hotel clerk
in Sydney, Ohio wore their hair in the styles of talk show hosts; a
bartender in Hermann, Missouri wore two studs in an ear. Regional differences
were minimal. I began to wonder if the outward imitation reflected an
internal similarity. Were the values expressed in Hollywood stories
were also shaping the interior world of Americans? In informal conversations
with the workers, I discovered that the majority of them watched television
unquestioningly. However, the older people who had grown up in a world
prior to television shared with me a concern about how television use
was and is reshaping how children are raised and the experience of being
a family.
I wanted to do
something about television and children. That desire became "my
television project," which I would work on when the time was
right. Meantime I talked about the issue with anyone who was willing
to listen. Reactions
fell into three categories: "my family doesn't watch that much
TV," "you are absolutely right," and "what are
you talking about?." These reactions convinced me of the need
for educating parents about television use. In 1993, I launched The
Television
Project.
For five years I worked diligently at publishing a newsletter, conducting
workshops, and raising funding to continue the effort. There were generous
contributors who helped The Television Project move forward, but this
was not enough to maintain a full-time executive director. Now The
Television Project is mainly a Web presence, though I'm happy to conduct
workshops or give presentations when invited. I hope that you learn
from this site and will become empowered to take action with your
own families.
Please e-mail us
with suggestions and comments. We are always interested in hearing stories
of individuals and families and how their lives changed through the
control of television use.
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