Getting With the Program

About 50 children at Rossmoor Elementary School in Los Alamitos are logging on to the Internet, writing critiques about their favorite educational television shows once every couple of weeks and then sending them off to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

On the receiving end is psychology professor Sandra Calvert, who can’t wait to read them.

Calvert, who is in charge of the university’s Children and Media Project, and her team of about 10 psychology students hope to receive 6,000 such reports from 600 children across the country by the end of this school year.

After analyzing the data, these researchers hope to have a good idea of what children nationwide are learning from commercial television labeled educational and informational.

That and making television a better place for children, Calvert said, are the purposes behind the study, which will be published and delivered to the Federal Communications Commission this year.

Thus far, Calvert said, the “kids are walking away with some very important lessons.

“It’s amazing to me the complexity of what these children are taking away from these programs. I’m really impressed.”

Meanwhile, the children are learning how to watch television shows critically, are fine-tuning their Internet and keyboard skills and having their voices heard in a national debate.

When Congress passed the Children’s Television Act in 1990, broadcasters wanting to renew their licenses were required to provide educational and informational programs for children.

But many in the educational profession began to question the validity of shows being touted as educational.

For example, Calvert said, broadcasters were saying that “The Jetsons” was teaching children about the future and living in the 21st century, and G.I. Joe supposedly introduced children to patriotism. The truly educational shows were being broadcast in the early-morning hours, in the time slots deemed less lucrative by advertisers.

Tighter guidelines introduced by the FCC in August 1996 forced television broadcasters to air at least three hours per week of children’s educational programming and those shows had to be broadcast when children were more likely to watch.

Calvert said there were plenty of studies analyzing the shows coded “EI”--educational informational--but no information was being sought on what second- through sixth-graders were learning from these programs.

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Then came the idea for the animated online site in which children become mini-television critics. The children click on one of the animated icons for 35 shows and begin to write. And like real critics, some students write more laboriously and are a bit more long-winded than others.

“We tell them to pretend like they are telling a friend who didn’t get to see the program about it and tell us what they learned,” Calvert said. “It’s amazing to me the complexity of what these children are taking away from these programs. Kids will relate the lessons to their own lives about the environment and other things.”

A parent at Rossmoor who knows Calvert told principal Laurel Telfer about the study. Her interest piqued, Telfer spoke with Calvert and was impressed with what the group was attempting to accomplish.

“I thought it was the perfect opportunity for [students] to take a real active role in something that affects them directly,” Telfer said.

About 15 children were chosen from each participating grade, and letters were sent home asking parental permission. Some children smelled work when they realized it was a writing-based project, said media teacher Cynthia Carlson, but most were excited and signed up for it in late October.

Parents also are pleased, Telfer said, now that their children are becoming “knowledgeable consumers of the media.”

Jeffrey Mirich, a fifth-grader at Rossmoor Elementary School, is a fan of “The Wild Thornberrys,” “Hey, Arnold” and “Doug.” Sitting in the school’s media center among his peers and surrounded by an array of computers, the 10-year-old furrows his brow and writes:

“The Thornberrys went to Antarctica. They were in search of wildlife. Then Elisa found a snow monster. First she was afraid of it, then when she met it he wasn’t so bad. I learned it’s better to conquer your fears than to be afraid forever.”

Those words, along with those of his peers, have earned their media center a $225 grant donated by the Smith Richardson Foundation, which is funding the university’s research. In June, the media center will receive the same amount to be used for more computer software, Carlson said.

And if anyone imagines Calvert to be a stuffy psychology professor doing these studies from afar, think again. Every Saturday morning, the avid animation fan with no children of her own gets up early to catch her favorite television shows. Although she enjoys the stories and lessons, she still sees a dilemma that, in her mind, will take a lot of creativity to alleviate.

Most programs have a pro-social bent focusing on environmental, gender and racial issues. “Certainly children are walking away with measurable benefits from viewing these programs,” she said, although she wishes there were more programs with an academic bent.

Rossmoor student Jeffrey Mirich waxes philosophical about the study: “If shows aren’t too informational, the government can take it off the air,” he said solemnly. “This is for the good of the nation and education.”