Home Schooling

WASHINGTON—Frank Lloyd Wright once said, “TV is chewing gum for the eyes.” Well, this summer, I have finally discovered what that means.

Like big-haired, nail-tipped airheads mindlessly smacking bubble gum while riding the Staten Island ferry back and forth across the bay, my roommate and I have found ourselves quite inexplicably stuck to our sofas, entranced by the moving images on the screen at the center of our apartment.

Our sole desire in life is to be left alone in our TV paradise.

Is that really all that bad?

I have heard all kinds of alarming statistics about the amount of television that Americans watch. The “average American” watches more than four hours of TV each day. At this rate, by age 65, that person will have spent nine years watching television. And the average American child spends roughly 1,500 hours a year glued to the tube—which far exceeds the 900 hours spent in school.

These numbers are apparently so alarming to scholars across the nation that there are approximately 4,000 studies currently examining the effects of television on children.

I say, why all the hullaballoo?

As I have learned this summer, television can be quite educational. Why, with my discovery of the wonders of cable, I’m beginning to think, who needs a Harvard education? After all, I can think of many Harvard courses that could just as easily be taken without ever leaving the comfort of your Lazy-Boy.

Wit and Humor—Move over, James Engell. If I want to learn how to turn the oddities of everyday life into humor, I’m not going to place $35,000 in Harvard’s coffers. I’m just going to watch Seinfeld re-runs. My roommate and I would both agree that anyone who can turn black-and-white cookies and women with extra-large hands into comedy is a true genius.

Justice—Sure, Bass Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel is a brilliant guy, but who wants to pack up all their stuff and move to Cambridge when you could just as easily have Detective Lennie Briscoe lay down the law for you? And with the 64 different versions of Law and Order on TV these days, you can even specialize your focus on a specific aspect of the law, from criminal intent to special victims!

Introduction to American Government—I think I’ll petition at the end of the summer to see if I can get credit from the government department for the many hours I’ve spent watching C-SPAN this summer. I think this all-politics, all-the-time channel gives students a much more realistic depiction of what the U.S. Congress is all about: gentlemen from Ohio with mops on their heads threatening to do the moon walk. Beam me up.

Ec. 10—I know that Baker Professor of Economics Martin Feldstein served on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors, but if I were looking for a really clear, and well-articulated explanation of complex economic matters, I would just tune-in to any cable news station and cross my fingers that the President was giving one of his talks on the “fundamentals” of the American economy.

Media and the American Mind—I’ve really learned this summer the degree to which the media serves as a filter for the American public, sifting through the daily news and picking out and presenting to us those items that are of the utmost importance. That’s why, with all of the crises looming over our heads this summer, from violence in the Middle East to corporate corruption to the war against terror, it has been so helpful that the cable news channels have really zoned in and focused on the issue that is truly most important to international security and the future of the world: the kidnapping of little girls.

Literature and Arts C-43a: How to Make Your Home Look Like a Medieval Court —Okay, so I futzed a little bit with this one. But I couldn’t resist the chance to talk about my roommate’s and my favorite TV habit, “Trading Spaces.” It’s a show on TLC where neighbors swap homes for two days and redecorate one room, using such exciting and innovative techniques as using lots of rich colors such as burgandy and gold and replacing wall paper with natural materials like hay and moss. Come to think of it, this really doesn’t sound all that different from a medieval castle!

Women’s Studies—If you’re looking for a fabulous case study on the status of women in modern society, all you need to do is turn on the tube! Women have come a long way, baby. We even have our own television station, now—Lifetime, “Television for Women.” How could women be expected to find television programming suitable for themselves without their own special channel? And what liberated woman of the 21st century could survive without cooking shows, soap operas and made-for-TV movies?

Sociology 11: American Society—I have personally benefited enormously this summer from a certain MTV program that has shown me what people are truly like in the “Real World”—lazy, homophobic and painfully self-absorbed. And I think our society will really benefit from a show that’s set to air this fall about couples on the verge of divorce who think that spending a week on a tropical island, constantly surrounded by video cameras and other miserable couples will help to bring them back together. Why has it taken so long for the leaders of this great nation to realize that putting people on reality TV shows is the way to lower divorce rates?

There’s an infinite amount of knowledge available on the airwaves, and it’s all just a click of the remote away.

So rip up your tuition checks, throw down your books and throw yourself onto the couch! I have seen the future of American education, my friends, and it’s cable television.

Kate L. Rakoczy ’04, a Crimson editor, is sharing an apartment in Washington, D.C. this summer with her college roommate. On the rare occasions when she leaves the apartment, she goes to work as an intern at the ABC News Political Unit. Though she’s considering completing her education on the couch in her living room, if Kate does return to Harvard in the fall, she will be a junior social studies concentrator in Lowell House.