Amusing Ourselves To Death Summary

Amusing Ourselves to Death, explains how television creates communication by redefining public discourse. Public discourse is the forms of conversation dealing with political, religious, or commercial. Throughout the book, Neil Postman explains how society has become unknowledgeable about the changes because of being too consumed in its epistemology. Postman starts the book by showing historical facts in the first part of the book and describes the effects of media in American life throughout the second part of the book. Television, along with photography and telegraphy, is affecting human values and their critical thinking skills. Postman focuses mostly on the “serious discourses” involving politics, education, science, religion, and news. …show more content…
In the “Age of Television”, education has become entertainment with music, television, or visual stimulation. The text gives an example on how the Philadelphia public schools “have embarked on an experiment in which children have their curriculum sung to them” (Postman 94). Mr. Jocko Henderson, the teacher who thought of this idea, wanted to “delight” his students and teach them. This experiment shows how teachers are starting to use entertainment as the way of teaching. Not only were teachers starting to use entertainment for education, but television did the same. Television established “Sesame Street,” a show that “attempts to make learning to read a form of light entertainment” (Postman 94). The text demonstrates how television isn’t only focusing on entertainment and amusing the “audience”, but teachers are also. Mr. Henderson wants to create each subject with this rock music format. Television has inspired all forms of discourse to use entertainment to get attention. With television being the discourse everyone looks at, it has changed the way that humans think and evaluate. Instead, they accept the information that they are giving