Nanci Kuykendall

>This could be corelation and not causation, that is
>maybe very young kids who have the physical
>attributes (whatever) of ADD will be drawn to
>television.

I think this is a logical assumption. I have two
kids, and one, Thomas, has these tendancies that
schools label as problems, and he is SO into tv and
movies that he has wanted to be a director for three
years now. He's passionate about it. My other son,
Alex, is very calm, patient, loves puzzles, plays
musical instruments, etc. He loves to watch movies
too, but not nearly as much. He can take it or leave
it most days.

Both boys have had identical mainly non-restricted
access to tv, in fact Alex even more so than Thomas.
Thomas is so very sensative that we learned to filter
his programming access when he was too little to be
discerning on his own, as what he was watching was
having a very profound impact on his behavior and
happiness. He just could not say no for himself to
ANY tv or movies. Now he's old enough to get
information about a program beforehand and decide for
himself, or to watch and bit of something and tell us
it's not for him. With Alex, on the other hand, he
could always watch pretty much anything and shrug it
off or ignore it if he didn't care for it.

>Our brains actually are kind of flexible so that
>they can be tailored or adapted to the environment
>that we live in.

That's an understatement. Our brains are extremely
flexible. It's not only reasonable, it's obvious, to
assume to we are shaped by our environments, in my
opinion.

>Probably all the best pilots and air traffic
>controlers in the year 2050 will have to grow up
>playing videogames to have the synapses they need to
>run the computer consoles that they work at.
>Betsy

Fascinating idea, and also seems quite plausible,
given how plugged in we are getting and the increasing
complexity of our tools.

Deb said:
>You might wonder that if a trained, expert, certified
>teacher can't be at least as interesting as a TV
>program, the problem isn't with TV or the kid but in
>the belief kids need to pay attention to boring,
>blathering drones in the first place.

I think it's also likely that tv, video games and
other modern media are such a sensory barrage for some
of us (like me) that we learn to dial down our
receptivity levels if we can, so that it takes more
flash and more zing to reach us and we are not
drowning in input. In which case the school officials
are trying to reach us through a "cone of silence"
that we have built around ourselves. It's either
that, or there are so many other people in class and
other noises and so forth that we just can't focus on
what one person is doing/saying. For those of us who
are more easily overwhelmed by sensory input, it can
be exceedingly difficult to selectively filter. For
myself, I either have to "turn the volume down" on all
the input and end up seeming kind of spacey, or else
limit my time in very stimulating environments (such
as with lots of people and activity etc around- like
school, or the supermarket) to bits and bites that I
can handle before feeling buried under an avalanche of
input. It's self defense.

.....>school officials who overwhelmingly suffer from
>reasoning deficit disorder - a condition caused by
>school attendance.
>Deb

HA! I love that!

Nanci K.