Let's Go to School to Have Fun?

After reading Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, I have come to many new deep realizations that were within the book, and the most intriguing one of them was about the topic about how entertainment has an impact in schools and learning. Postman explains that children that watch educational programs on television are being educated, but it is not the way they should. Children are learning to love school if it is the way it is on television, which is full of entertainment.

 

The shows on television are only meant to entertain and that includes educational programs, but in the end these programs do not teach. Now what this accomplishes for those children when they actually go to school is that it only makes them not want to learn anything if the learning does not come in a form of entertainment, since in television, "learning" is always fun and exciting. For example, if most students find any classroom assignment or lecture boring, it will usually have a negative impact on their learning because they want the lectures or assignments to be fun, which is not what school is about. In addition, students, both kids and teenagers, feel the same way, but it is not entirely their fault because we as kids did not foresee the consequences in which these programs would shape our way-of-learning mentalities. We just need to understand that school and learning do not need to be necessarily fun and entertaining, because in the end we have one job and it is to succeed in school whether you see it as amusing or not.

-Andrew Ramos