Neil Postman's Television As Teacher And Why Games Are Good For You

If someone were to look back a couple decades they would not only be amazed at how far along technology has come, but also shocked at how much it has taken over. This is a common theme when it comes to Neil Postman’s “Television as Teacher” and Steven Johnson’s “Why Games Are Good for you.” In both Postman’s and Johnson’ articles, the advancement of technology is threatening the existence of present day learning and education as books are on the decline. While Postman attempts to compete against the advancement of specifically educational television shows, Johnson has a different view of the matter. Both Postman and Johnson are watching as new technology and media is beginning to take over the older and less exciting sources of education and personal development. For Postman, he believes that educational television shows, such as “Sesame Street”, are stealing the entertainment away from the classroom making it a less desirable learning environment. To state his argument, Postman himself writes, …show more content…
Postman makes his opinion clear about the rise of educational shows when he writes, “as a television show, and a good one, Sesame Street does not encourage children to love school or anything about school. It encourages them to love television” (423). It is quite obvious that Postman dislikes educational shows mainly because they do not encourage the classroom learning style and instead they encourage a more sedentary lifestyle. The classroom setting is definitely a more suitable learning environment as it allows social interaction and help from teachers and classmates. On the contrary to Postman’s stern belief about the invasion of technology, Johnson is much more accepting of the fact. The entirety of Johnson’s article is consisted of an unbiased list of pros and cons between playing video games and reading books. This allows the reader to see both sides of the argument