Summary Of Amusing Ourselves To Death By Neil Postman

Amusing Ourselves through School How many kids watch Sesame Street before they are even in kindergarten? As of 1996 about ninety five percent of all preschoolers have watch the show. According to Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death, that is not a good thing for the future of the human race. He takes a strong stance against education on television, and repeatedly states that he thinks that the television is good only for pure entertainment. Postman is a supporter of print and speech as the main sources of education, and not mainstream print or speech either. He wants well-structured and versed pieces of literature to be presented in the news and in magazines. Basically, education should not be on television and should be kept less fun and more structured. Now, it has become all about being fun and amusing to the audience. …show more content…
Postman is not condemning them for being entertaining, because he says that should be television’s sole purpose. When they portray education as entertaining is where Postman starts to disagree. When Sesame Street is the only way kids see education as soon as they see that learning is not always fun, they lose interest and start to become uninterested in education as a whole. In Postman’s words, “We know that Sesame Street encourages children to only love school when school is like Sesame Street.” This contributes to our country’s literacy problem most people that can read, read at a fifth grade level. It all starts with the predetermined thought that school should be fun. But, television impairs our ability to think about the education we are