In the United States, a country where everyone has a nodding acquaintance with learning, a prominent education thinker tried a daring experiment. Steve Nadis explains:
I always felt that kids who are cut off from television are kind of out of it in a quaint, Amish sort of way. Which is why I’ve trained my children to become good TV watchers — or at least I’d thought they were trained as such. But now the strategy has appeared to backfire as my three-year-old is in open revolt. One night over the weekend we watched a family video (something about a dog?) and the next night the women’s figure skating on the Olympics (which I’d taped the night before). The next night, as we were getting ready for bedtime, my youngest upstart remarked: “I hope we don’t have to watch another movie tonight. That’s boring!” Instead, I was forced to read her a book before bed, all the while feeling like a total, unmitigated failure as a parent. So I ask you (at the risk of repeating myself): What’s the matter with kids today?