Quotes of the Day

At last! Quotations from my new hero, Neil Postman. :O)

"A written sentence calls upon its author to say something, upon its reader to know the import of what is said.  And when an author and reader are struggling with semantic meaning, they are engaged in the most serious challenge to the intellect. This is especially the case with the act of reading, for authors are not always trustworthy. They lie, they become confused, they over-generalize, they abuse logic and, sometimes, common sense. The reader must come armed, in a serious state of intellectual readiness. This is not easy because he comes to the text alone. In reading, one's responses are isolated, one's intellect thrown back on its own resources. To be confronted by the cold abstractions of printed sentences is to look upon language bare, without the assistance of either beauty or community.  Thus, reading is by its nature a serious business. It is also, of course, an essentially rational activity." (50)

"It is quite likely that most of the first fifteen presidents of the United States would not have been recognized had they passed the average citizen in the street. This would have been the case as well of the great lawyers, ministers and scientists of that era. To think about those men was to think about what they had written, to judge them by their public positions, their arguments, their knowledge as codified in the printed word.  You may get some sense of how we are separated from this kind of consciousness by thinking about any of our recent presidents; or even preachers, lawyers and scientists who are or who have recently been public figures. Think of Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter or Billy Graham, or even Albert Einstein, and what will come to your mind is an image, a picture of a face, most likely a face on a television screen (in Einstein's case, a photograph of a face). Of words, almost nothing will come to mind. This is the difference between thinking in a word-centered culture and thinking in an image-centered culture."  (60-61)

"What reading would have been done was done seriously, intensely, and with steadfast purpose. The modern idea of testing a reader's 'comprehension,' as distinct from something else a reader may be doing, would have seemed an absurdity in 1790 or 1830 or 1860. What else was reading but comprehending?  As far as we know, there did not exist such a thing as a 'reading problem,' except, of course, for those who could not attend school. To attend school meant to learn to read, for without that capacity, one could not participate in the culture's conversations. But most people could read and did participate. To these people, reading was both their connection to and their model of the world. The printed page revealed the world, line by line, page by page, to be a serious, coherent place, capable of management by reason, and of improvement by logical and relevant criticism." (61-62)

"There could not have been a safer bet when it began in 1969 than that 'Sesame Street' would be embraced by children, parents and educators. Children loved it because they were raised on television commercials, which they intuitively knew were the most carefully crafted entertainments on television.  To those who had not yet been to school, even to those who had just started, the idea of being taught by a series of commercials did not seem peculiar.  And that television should entertain them was taken as a matter of course.
Parents embraced 'Sesame Street' for several reasons, among them that it assuaged their guilt over the fact that they could not or would not restrict their children's access to television. 'Sesame Street' appeared to justify allowing a four- or five-year-old to sit transfixed in front of a television screen for unnatural periods of time. Parents were eager to hope that television could teach their children something other than which breakfast cereal has the most crackle.  At the same time, 'Sesame Street' relieved them of the responsibility of teaching their preschool children how to read--no small matter in a culture where children are apt to be considered a nuisance. They could also plainly see that in spite of its faults, 'Sesame Street' was entirely consonant with the prevailing spirit of America.  Its use of cute puppets, celebrities, catchy tunes, and rapid-fire editing was certain to give pleasure to the children and would therefore serve as adequate preparation for their entry into a fun-loving culture." (142) Emphasis mine.

"'The Little House on the Prairie, 'Cheers' and 'The Tonight Show"'are as effective as 'Sesame Street' in promoting what might be called the television style of learning. And this style of learning is, by its nature, hostile to what has been called book learning or its handmaiden, school-learning. If we are to blame 'Sesame Street' for anything, it is for the pretense that it is any ally of the classroom. That, after all, has been its chief claim on foundation and public money. As a television show, and a good one, 'Sesame Street' does not encourage children to love school or anything about school.  It encourages them to love television." (144)