Breaking into the Academy: Television

To borrow a line from Monty Python again... And now for something completely different...

At the beginning of the month, there were a number of blog entries about television being good and bad for children (see TV Viewing Good & Bad For Kids, Seattle Study Says, From the "really?" department - TV is good and bad for tots). This trend continued into the month with entries like TV Cuts Chances of Getting a Degree from The Committed Sardine Blog.

The interesting thing (or at least what managed to really catch my attention) was that about the same time, joannejacobs.com posted an entry at her blog entitled TV junkies. The entry stated that "students with a TV in the bedroom score lower on standardized tests; those with a home computer score higher.... [with] significant [differences]."

Yet, a day or two later the Blogging Baby posted an entry Proof that too much TV hurts kids that stated

Three recent studies offer scientific proof of the anecdotal evidence that too much TV can screw up kids’ brains. One of these studies has shown that merely having a TV in a child’s room is linked to poor academic skills. In another, researchers tracked over 1,000 kids for almost 30 years and found that those who watched the most television between the ages of 5 and 15 did the worst in school, and were least likely to graduate high school and college by age 26. The third study found that very young kids who watch the most TV have the lowest reading comprehension at ages 6 and 7.