In this chapter we see how much the media as an impact on the young minds of children. Media influences system back since the early 1900 through books, radio, and movies. Through movies we see the Will Hays the president of the newly formed Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America use his new found production to establish and maintain a high sense of moral and artistic standards and stated in the book. Another person discussed in the book is John Collier, he believe that movies should be censors in teaching people about morals. He emphasized the importance of movies teaching moral lesson. Also the book talked about censorship. Censorship is basically put only the thing at is acceptable into movies, preserving certain thing, not touch specific subject eg governmental issues etc….Censors wanted movies to be uplifting by teaching the public moral lessons in a manner similar to that used by school. For eg… the censor code stress the importance of movies depicting good winning out over evil.
Another thing that stood out to me in reading this chapter is how the media influence control the thoughts of children. Teaching children the things of life and how things should be and what ought to be. Company from ever since has used kids to sell and endorse their products. One of the largest sell company that had a major impact on kids is Walt Disney. Their motion picture company aim specifically at kids through movies and as their begun to gross more revenue they designed theme parks to attract middle class families. The media also influence teenagers through magazines target at them. These magazines were corresponding to earlier concerns of controlling adolescent sexuality through high school activities. Magazine even influence the way kids perceive themselves as in what is the latest fashion to relationship advice and so on.
In today’s society we see that the media has a great impact upon the minds of everyone especially kids. Kids today play less and watch television and play more video games. It’s like in today’s society parents are using television to teach their children moral and educational lessons. I am not saying that it has negative affect but too much of anything is not good. I mean today we do have some channel like PBS that aim to help educate our kids especially in science and in math but I don’t think that parent should rely to much on those programs. Parent need to step in and guide their children, helping them to understand concepts and application. That one of the problem in the education system today children need to learn how to applied what they have learn to get a better understand of the material and television and magazines does not provide that in-depth learning. Teachers are not solely to be blame if kids are failing. The media has certainly played it part on influencing the younger mind.
QUESTION: Should government have more control on what the media portrays? Should schools incorporate more articles from magazines to help kids to understand the material that are being covered in classes? Should more movies be incorporated in the class, for eg we read the book the scarlet letter then watch the movies as a part of the assignment?
