TV Reviews : ‘On Television’ Rips TV as Education Tool

As part of its “back to school” week of programming about education, public television rakes commercial television over the coals tonight.

“On Television: Teach the Children” (at 9 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15, 8 p.m. on KVCR-TV Channel 24) posits that television has become our country’s primary educational institution--and that the lessons being taught by advertiser-supported channels to the millions of children who spend an average of three or four hours in front of the set every day are frighteningly irresponsible.

Using clips from everything from cartoons to music videos to prime-time series and Marx Brothers movies, the hourlong program chronicles the sins of commercial TV’s curriculum: It promotes unbridled materialism, it glamorizes sex and violence, it belittles teachers and school, it pursues profits rather than the public interest.

No fooling? Those complaints have been true for at least the past two decades. Rather than recite the litany, writer-producer Mary Megee would have done better to address the more pertinent question of why, after all these years, the situation has gotten progressively worse instead of better.

The truth is that, for all of its faults, the biggest problem with television is that people watch too much of it. If vast numbers of parents really cared about the quality of what their children were viewing, there would be an uprising--there certainly is cause for revolt. But they don’t. Who do you think is allowing these children to watch so much TV, and such inappropriate programming? Parents who are hooked on television themselves.

Given that fact, it’s unrealistic for “On Television” to think that television can be made to offer up significantly more educational programming. Parents who do care what their kids are being exposed to can lobby for it, of course, but more important is for them to set limits on what their children watch, to watch with them and to aggressively seek out the many decent programs that already exist, on broadcast TV, cable and cassette.