Films, TV and other video media – Taking Children Seriously

In defence of screens and video games

On how video games helped develop skills needed to be a neurosurgeon.

Screens as a natural, integrated, positive part of life

It is not true that screen time implies an isolated child cut off from family life. Screens and non-screens can be intertwined worlds filled with connection, joy, fun, and learning.

Dead Poets Society: a film review

Why this film speaks to and inspire so many young people.

Dead Poets Society is not taking children seriously

Dead Poets Society is not taking children seriously. Taking children seriously is not just being a bit kinder to the inmates, or being a tiny bit rebellious against an authoritarian system you nevertheless continue to work in, it is a different thing entirely. It is about children actually being free.

Limiting your children’s screen time?

A list of some of the real life unintended consequences of limiting children’s screen time.

If a parent has an aversion to something a child enjoys doing, how do you solve that problem?

Such questions are in effect asking how we and our children can solve the problem created by us in effect having a visceral aversion to our children innocently enjoying themselves learning. Why is that the case, and when we are in such a state, what can we do about it?

Smash the TV and burn all the books

A satirical piece.

Which is the real ‘bad influence’? Video games or coercion?

Stealing from a child might influence the child to steal. And yet parents steal their children’s property in the name of preventing them from being under bad influences.

Why video games are GOOD

Video games are good because in order to succeed one must solve problems. The problems to solve are as widely varied as the videos are fun. In other words, every bit of fun in them represents a new problem to solve.

The One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest school of parenting

Parenting books often advocate being calm and ‘empathetic’ in our coercive control of our children, instead of shouting at them. This makes the coercive control chillingly Nurse Ratched like in its double binding mixed messages.

How the junkiest of junk tv can be genuinely educational

Even the junkiest of junk television can be superbly educational—by sparking questions and enjoyable conversations.

The importance of video games

Videogame players are learning not just knowledge of the overt subject-matter of the game, but inexplicit knowledge that applies in all creativity in the world. In a way, they are (mainly inexplicitly) learning how the universe works.

Taking the free world and children seriously: an anecdote

As Karl Popper said, “our own free world is by far the best society which has come into existence during the course of human history.”

Getting kids to ‘agree’ to TV limits

Getting children to ‘agree’ to TV limits is coercive, and pretending that it is non-coercive.

Relax about babies watching TV

Lighten up about babies watching TV! 🙂 Trust yourself, and trust your baby. You can’t plan for every eventuality, so enjoy things as they come to you.

In defence of television soap operas

What children learn from soap operas is how to live in our culture. Parents naturally want their children to rise above the culture—to reject its false ideas, if you like—but to do that, one has to start from the culture one is in, and improve it. There is no way of jumping to a better set of ideas without first criticising the existing ideas. The growth of knowledge begins with existing theories.

The final prejudice

Suppose you suddenly found yourself in the body of a twelve-year-old child. Suppose that despite this physical transformation, your personality, your knowledge and every other aspect of your mind remained unchanged. How might this affect your life? This was the theme of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (entitled Rascals).