Текст 6 a medium of no importance

Grown-ups, as any child will tell you, are monstrous hypocrites, especially when it comes to television. It is to take their minds off their own telly addiction that adults are so keen to hear and talk about the latest report on the effects of programmes on children. Surely all that nonsense they watch must be desensitising them, making them vicious, shallow, acquisitive, less responsible and generally sloppy about life and death? But no, not a scrap of convincing evidence from the sociol­ogists and experts in the psyches of children.

The nation has lived with the box for more than 30 years now and has passed from total infatuation - revived temporarily by the advent of colour - to the present casual obsession which is not unlike that of the well-adjusted alcoholic. And now the important and pleasant truth is breaking, to the horror of programme makers and their detractors alike, that television really does not affect much at all. This is tough on those diligent professionals who produce excellent work; but since - as everyone agrees - awful programmes far outnumber the good, it is a relief to know the former cannot do much harm. Television cannot even make impressionable children less pleasant.

Television turns out to be no great transformer of minds or society. We are not, en masse, as it was once predicted we would be, fantastically well-informed about other cultures or about the origins of life on earth. People do not remember much from television documentary beyond how good it was. Only those who knew something about the subject in the first place retain the information.

Documentaries are not what most people want to watch anyway. Televi­sion is at its most popular when it celebrates its own present. Its ideal subjects are those that need not be remembered and can be instantly re­placed, where what matters most is what is happening now and what is going to happen next. Sport, news, panel games, cop shows, long-running soap operas, situation comedies - these occupy us only for as long as they are on. However good or bad it is, a night’s viewing is wonderfully forgettable. It's a little sleep, it's En­tertainment; our morals, and for that matter, our brutality, remain intact.

The box is further neutralised by the sheer quantity people watch. The more of it you see, the less any single bit of it matters. Of course, some programmes are infinitely better than others. There are gifted people work­ing in television. But seen from a remoter perspective - say, four hours a night viewing for three months - the quality of individual programmes means as much as the quality of each car in the rush-hour traffic.

For the heavy viewer, TV has only two meaningful states - on and off. What are the kids doing? Watching TV. No need to ask what, the answer is sufficient. Soon, I'll go up there and turn it off. Like a lightbulb it will go out and the children will do something else.

It appears the nation's children spend more time in front of their TVs than in the classroom. Their heads are full of TV - but that's all, just TV. The violence they witness is TV violence, sufficient to itself. It does not brutalise them to the point where they cannot grieve the loss of a pet, or be shocked at some minor playground

Answer the following questions:

1. Does the writer think television is harmful to children? Why/Why not?

2. Has the nation become more or less keen on television since it was first introduced? What development had an effect on the popularity of television?

3. How successful is television as an educator, according to the writer?

4. Why do most people watch television, according to the writer?

5. What effect does quantity of viewing have on people?

6. Why are children not affected by television violence, according to the writer?

7. In one word, what is the advantage of the book over television?

Прочитав Тексты 5 и 6, ответьте на вопросы:

1. Does television affect the British population according to the texts? Is it a transformer of minds?

2. Is it true that today awful programmes far outnumber the good ones?

3. The first article rejects the educational role of television and documentary in particular. What is your personal opinion of the BBC films?

4. Are you fond of night's viewing? Is it still popular with the British?

5. Who do you consider gifted people working in Russian television?

6. Does the quantity of programmes the British see matter much?

7. What are two meaningful states of TV for the heavy viewer/ children?

8. Do children understand the difference between TV and life?

9. Why did the written word have such an impact on civilization?

10. What ideas coincide in both texts?

11. Why can't youngsters concentrate at school?

12. What is the "lodger" syndrome?

13. What is an advantage of TV for the elderly?

14. In what way does the text "TV" stress the educational role of television?

15. Set the examples of a crucial role of TV for disaster relief, for example, people, famine, earthquakes, floods and so on.