This kinda stuff has bothered me as long as I can remember, but it was refreshed a couple days ago.
So, I'm talking to my daughter the other day, and we began discussing someone that she knows who doesn't allow her child to watch any TV, nor would she wish him to use the internet. He can only read books and play with educational toys. Idea being, that the child will become more advanced somehow, by not knowing about the world around him...his environment, if you will. This isn't the first I've heard of such ideas...in fact, I've heard MANY people spout off similar things.
See, whether we like it or not, the technological age is here, and it's experiencing exponential growth as we speak. Books....written word on paper, is an antiquated form of communicating information NOW. Not tomorrow, not in some Jetson's like future...but RIGHT...NOW.
In Sternberg's Triarchic Theory of Human Intelligence, the third subtheory deals with the ability to adapt to one's environment. I think we can all recall the most basic premise of a species adapting to it's environment or perishing, right?
Well, what justice are you doing, by forbidding your child the knowledge of the world around him? Forbidding him from adapting to his environment.
How are you making him more intelligent?
If anything, you are putting him at an extreme disadvantage when it comes to socializing with other children, and this could potentially lead to him being an outcast, and THAT could lead to depression issues.
Let's go a step further with the thinking that the internet is bad thing.
If you were to write a book report today about the moon, using a book printed JUST LAST YEAR as your source of information, your book report would be wrong.
You would not be more intelligent because you only used a book for your source material, because your report would be, in fact, erroneous.
Why?
Because it would tell you that the moon was barren, and contained no water.
BUT, as of late last week, we know that there is, in fact, gallons of water under the moon's surface. This knowledge comes from the fact that on October 9, 2009, NASA bombed the moon to search for just such a thing.
Your book...even if it was printed in September of this year, would tell you no such thing.
The line of logic that dictates books are more "intelligent" than up to minute information, is staggeringly absurd to me. Furthermore, I don't think anyone who makes such statements actually ever put any thought into what they're saying. I think it's just some bizarre belief that they have been indoctrinated into, so they parrot it at any opportunity.
I wonder if when broadcast news became a reality, there were people who swore that waiting for the paper the next morning was more "intelligent"?
While we're at it...why don't we just drop all current form of communication, and go back to drawing on cave walls?
See how dumb that is?
Just because something was done one way once, doesn't mean it was better....it just means that was all we could do at the time.
From the time they were small, I've always explained everything to my children in extreme detail. When I first showed them Jurassic Park, I also showed them the "making of" so that they understood what they were watching. Not just for the purposes of not being scared of what they saw, but so that they understood the art involved in movie making.
When I took my children to see The Dark Knight last Summer, several people said I was crazy to have done so. That some of the imagery was too dark for them.
But if you ask my children about The Dark Knight, they'll tell you that Heath Ledger gave a brilliant performance as the Joker...they KNOW that the Joker isn't a real person.
But the child that my daughter and I were discussing...the discussion that started all of this....he believes Batman is a real person according to her.
She thought that was...weird, but hardly more intelligent.
One thing I can tell you with absolute certainty, is that my children know more about what's going on in the world, than I EVER did at their age. I think if you take a hard look at your children too, you'll say the same.
We live in a hi-tech, multimedia world.
That is a fact.
That is YOUR environment.
That is your child's environment.
Instead of shielding your child from EVERYTHING, and having them read books by candlelight for information, how about taking some time to explain to them what it is they're seeing around them, Charles Ingalls?
It will be ok.
Trust me.
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