When a TV programme is targeted at young kids, many adults will assume that the content must be suitable and someone out there must have screened the script and images.
Especially if it is marketed as an educational programme (which is probably EVERY programme out there now), then it can only benefit the child's development, right?
I beg to differ.
In fact, so many educational programmes actually discourage the development of critical thinking and creativity in young kids. I shared more on this in a Facebook post (click below for details).
It also bugs me that too many TV programmes are written and delivered in a dumb-down approach.
Usually I do not watch with my 5-year-old when she watches during the occasional 5 or 10 minutes segments that she is allowed to switch on the TV. Those are the periods when she is ready for school and waiting for me to pack things up before we leave home. While I may not be next to her, I can hear the programme and it almost always makes me cringe!
Imagine a young child who watches such programmes regularly and is constantly exposed to the same dumb-down approach and be "taught" to think only in one particular way? Or have everything explained in the most simplistic manner? How can they be imaginative or think out of the box?
Without intervention from discerning adults, young kids have no chance at all to differentiate between the truly educational programmes and the entertaining-but-dumb ones.
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