"The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining..." In chapter six titled "The Age of Show Business" of Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, entertainment interference with everything and anything is brought to our attention.
A triple by-pass surgery performed in Phoenix, Arizona was broadcast by at least fifty United States channels. A Roman Catholic priest in Chicago combines rock 'n' roll with religious teaching. In Massachusetts, a rape trial was televised as more realistic than a soap opera. The justification of associating entertainment with a personal surgery, a court trial, and religious teaching is "public education". Is it a bad idea to associate education with entertainment? I don't believe so. Personally, I learn faster if I am given a fun alternative like a song or a game. Entertainment sticks to my mind very easily. Is it sad to say entertainment is beneficial?
It is true that entertainment sticks in our brains longer. The question though, is about what it is sticking in our brains. Will the average person really take anything useful away from watching a heart surgery? A medical student might, but the average person is more likely to just think "That looks cool!" and remember it as looking cool. They probably will not remember much about the actual structures and functions of the heart. So while entertainment inserted into education may help us remember the event, it doesn't necessarily help us remember the useful or relevant parts.
ReplyDeleteBy mixing education and entertainment, the line between them will blur. I am against putting the two together because I believe that future generations won't even know that they are two different discourses instead they will believe it's one. They won't know whether to take education seriously. Accordingly, they become unaware there even was a line to begin with. As said by Postman, "For in the end, he was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people on Brave New World was bot that they were laughing instead of thinking, but they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking".
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