By PLS
Maternal instinct, if there is such a thing, was totally left out of my make up. With babies I had to learn it all, and the crash course that came with baby number one was rough. I’ll leave out the excruciating details and sing praises to the most wonderful nanny in the contemporary world: TV.
Let’s be honest. Sometimes the only way to relief and sanity for the most devoted and responsible parents is TV.
But not just any TV. PBS. Only PBS.
Why? Three reasons.
First, no commercials hawking candy, sugar-coated cereal and greasy salty stuff.
Second, no consumerism, no message that happiness is something you buy.
Third, the values thing: no violence or cruelty. When my kids were little, PBS meant Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood and Sesame Street with a big yellow bird. These days my grandson loves PBS for the big red dog. But always PBS programs for children have encouraged kindness, honesty, cooperation, generosity, sincerity, friendliness, learning, resourcefulness, cheerfulness, helpfulness, the building blocks for a self-respecting life, a good community, a decent world—the values at the root of every ethic or religion in the world, for that matter.
So PBS has always been safe for children to watch.
Recently there’s been a big fuss about rampant obesity among children as well as adults, and blame has attached to the marketing of junk food to children. Surprise! Surprise! This irresponsible exploitation of impressionable young minds has been obvious to attentive parents for two generations now. And people who carp at teenagers hooked on plastic shouldn’t be surprised either. Ever since these poor mall rats were tykes in front of the tube they’ve been bombarded with the message buy! buy! buy! for status and happiness.
Some critics insist there’s no “need” for PBS anymore, not even in children’s programming. But can anyone promise with a straight face that commercial TV in a non-PBS world will be as consistently imaginative as public TV has been? Does anyone expect that commercial TV will produce a full range of young people’s programs that don’t depend on noisy distraction, violence, sexual stereotyping, consumerism? Does anyone believe that commercial TV will allow ads only for food that is healthful and playthings that are durable and genuinely educational as well as fun?
As some Congressional committees propose to slash the PBS budget by 25% or more and conservative ideologues advocate a total elimination of PBS, let’s look at the core mission of these two methods of delivering TV programs to children.
In the commercial TV world children exist only as the means to make a profit. Children’s happiness is a by-product at best.
The goal at the very heart of public TV is healthy, happy, well-educated children.
The choice is pretty simple, isn’t it?
PS. Back to the nanny bit. Good as PBS may be, an hour was the max for my kids, even when I was totally frazzled. Then the TV got turned off and they had to read or build things or go outside and run around—and when they complained of being bored, I said, “There’s a solution. Use your imagination.” Which they did, after more or less grumping about it.