In the course of the sermon last Sunday, the preacher said that his family (mostly likely the ones with all the power, strongly suggesting to the teenagers, who, being completely dependent, have to agree to things that they would never actually consider otherwise) had decided to turn off the TV. One of the sons is in his junior year of highschool, the other a couple of years younger. Good kids, but like all teens and young adults, much influenced by that barrage of media it is difficult to escape in our culture.
He announced the family will not be watching TV during the week, now that school has started. Reported that they discovered all four of them were in four different rooms, with eyes and attention glued to a screen of some sort, being mesmerized by different types of electronics. When the thought occurred that the older son will only be in the home on a daily basis for two more years before starting college, they realized that time is slipping away.
So they have all agreed that they will not turn on the television on weeknights. There was a sense of having kids rush through homework, and parents hurrying with other tasks in order to sit down in front of the 'idiot box' and turn their collective brains off. I am sure they are caveats for students needing to do research and write assignments, complete paper for class work. But they will not all be giving other projects half the necessary attention in order to dash off to look at mindless programming on the tube.
I personally wanted to stand up in my chair and shout: Amen to that.
And want to ask the person I live with who sits in front of the television for up to five hours every night: when you get to the pearly gates and they ask you to look back over your life, questioning what you might have done differently - will you say " dang, I wish I had watched more TV!"
No comments:
Post a Comment