ERIC Number: ED180024
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1979-Jul
Pages: 15
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Technological Culture and Human Communication.
Carney, John J., Jr.
Children need to develop skills enabling them to respond to television efficiently, analytically, and with discrimination. Removing children's advertising from television will not help them to understand the nature of the appeals used by the advertiser, who will find other means of reaching children; and advocating no violence on television brings children no closer to understanding human aggression. Education is the way to guard human communication from the liabilities of technological culture. Broadening perspectives about mass culture should help to decrease anxieties about the mass media. The next step is to recognize that technology does not introduce a new problem nearly so much as it aggravates very old ones; this means that the basic problem is one of human interaction, human communication. Instead of worrying about the child's interaction with television, teachers should concentrate on how television affects other forms of human interaction; for the communication revolution has brought people together while estranging them at the same time. The thing to do in this situation is teach fundamentals, developing the critical thinking skills that enable more complex decisions about television viewing and media usage. By teaching the maxims of mass communication, teachers can show their students how to understand the mass media, thereby controlling them. (RL)
Publication Type: Information Analyses; Opinion Papers; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Note: Paper presented at the Conference on Developing Oral Communication Competence in Children (Armidale, Australia, July 12-18, 1979)