Teaching and Entertainment are Inseparable (Book Review Sample)

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ESSAY: Teaching and Entertainment are Inseparable
Introduction
Postman thesis lays emphasis on television articulating to define the true picture about how media of communication conveys information. Different media type favors contents and has the capacity to take a command on culture. This means that the communication media in a culture influences social preoccupations and culture’s intellect to be formed. Therefore, speech is a medium since it is the determinant of one’s thinking capacity in terms of view of the world. As a result, different languages have a different views and recreates new culture. Examples of this medium are television or typography and language, and they ensure an orientation is made on expression, thoughts and sensibility. In other words, the languages one speaks are forms of media. According to postman the main objective of writing the book was to express how America had undergone a change because of the media metaphor. This media made the public discourse behave like nonsense (Postman, 2006).
Postman lays his emphasis on television, articulating to define the true picture about how media of communication conveys information. Postman outlines that the truth about the media gets linked with biased form of expressions. For every culture, there is the truth and definition. Therefore, currently the truth got expressed inform of numbers, while” in the old days”, it was through parables and riddles that might seem childish to the current generation. Hence, culture transform as language grows (i.e. from oral to writing to printing and then to televising). Thus, the growth of epistemology that is television based, got accompanied by the fall of epistemology that is print- based which resulted to public life consequences. As a result, the author does not give a clarification on how the media affects the mind and capacities of people. Instead, he discusses on how the media brings about changes in the symbolic environment from gradual to additive, which is electronic media and thus change of people’s way of thinking.
Therefore, generation born and raised under the influence of television view the world in a different perspective, in comparison to generation rose without the influence of television. People, who depend on television as the source of their information, find themselves not having time to think critically concerning what the news casters say. For instance according to postman people should not think, neither does the news broadcaster wants them to think. The acceleration is by the fact that in “television after every thirty minute there is a new event with a different context and texture of emotions”. Thus, these events get structured in a manner that event program presented might stand as complete (Postman, 2006).
In cases where, these groups of people join schools where information passed is not colorful or it does not involve the change of images(like television) they reject or struggle with the concept of the form of teaching. Therefore, they face a rough time to teach the generation with that form of media. The student has the perceptions that even in schools; they have to be taught in the manner that is colorful as they have gotten used to in their early age. Collateral learning is a lesson that takes place when grammar taught is in a meaningful context. The grammar context teaches the student’s application skills in life, e.g. teachers teaching students on how to write resumes or how to acquire driver’s license. Majority of the students learns from current and emerging issues in real life. That is, learning from inspirational people like the Sudan lost boys with their startling struggle and people who are engaging like Sullenberger Chesley the hero pilot. Students like to relate their learning to events especially from people who have overcome odds. Whenever teaching, to make grammar lesson entertaining there is a necessity to teach other things to make the lesson collateral. Therefore, according to the author it does not mean that television is entertainment, instead it is had transformed entertainment to represent all experiences in nature. Thus, the contribution of television to philosophy of education is what makes the idea that entertainment and teaching are inseparable. So television teaches by expecting children to practice whatever they watch. This precision gets totally different from what happen in class whenever they are reading some books.
Majority of postman time was devoted in analyzing the key differences between viewing television and reading books. The rise of television (non- printing media) culture based, the lives of many revolve around images and viewed media rather than words. This has affected people’s ability to think for themselves or an account of whoever they are and what they believe. Postman has been seconded by researchers and writers in the belief of the brain activity necessary for readers is more flexible compared to that required for viewers. Therefore, through the process of readers trying to comprehend makes them adept cr...