Is Sponge Bob destroying kids’ minds — or accelerating their intelligence?
September 13, 2011 by Amara D. Angelica
Young children who watch fast-paced, fantastical television shows may become “handicapped” in their readiness for learning, says a new University of Virginia study.
U.Va. psychologists tested 4-year-old children immediately after they had watched nine minutes of the popular show “SpongeBob SquarePants” and found that their “executive function” — the ability to pay attention, follow rules, remember what they were told, solve problems, and moderate behavior — had been severely compromised.
“At school, they have to behave properly, they need to sit at a table and eat properly, they need to be respectful, and all of that requires executive functions,” said U.Va. psychology professor Angeline Lillard.
“It is possible that the fast pacing, where characters are constantly in motion from one thing to the next, and extreme fantasy, where the characters do things that make no sense in the real world, may disrupt the child’s ability to concentrate immediately afterward. Another possibility is that children identify with unfocused and frenetic characters, and then adopt their characteristics.”
OK, here’s another possibility: schools are just too damn boring and repressive, and it’s unhealthy to keep kids immobilized like prisoners. Can teachers — who were brainwashed as children to sit quietly, follow the rules, take mind-numbing drugs if they move around, and learn to be good little quiet robots — ever keep up with kids whose minds have been sped up way beyond them?
Here’s an idea: what if we replaced schools — modeled on 19th century factories and churches — with fast-paced animated learning environments using AI-enhanced video games, robot cartoon characters, and educational social networks, so kids can grow up with the ability to handle the wildly accelerating computerized world of the future?
Comments (15)
by magnus yung
I think better when I am moving around or looking at something visually stimulating. It is good to be able to sit down and work, but if I sit for too long I get numb and start imagining things just to escape the boredom of sitting still. I don’t think spongebob makes kids smarter, but it definitely gives them a boost of energy after the show. It might be caused by happiness. After lunch the kids are restless too. I wouldn’t say that eating food inhibits a person’s ability to focus.
by Reasoning Rodent
Please link me to an accredited Open Source School … after all, if children are our future, and not all parents can afford the top flight schools, Open Sourcing is our only hope for equal access and fairness. Open Source teaching, and publicly available internet access for all students.
by kenmizell
Don’t know about ‘accredited’ (but then you have to question who’s doing the accrediting…) But have you seen the Kahn Academy? http://www.khanacademy.org/
This is the future of education. No more will kids get their information 2nd hand (or 10th hand) from a teacher who read a book 10 years ago, now they’ll learn physics from Stephen Hawking. They’ll learn about marketing from Guy Kawasaki. They’ll learn about any topic from the world renouned experts in the field, for free.
by Vstoriguard
Brava, Ms. Angelica!
Two things: at various times in my complicated life I’ve been a teacher, a college instructor, a journalist and an historian.
My experience in teaching has proved to me (at least) that the American school is hopelessly outdated. You are quite right when you saw it is based on Victorian idea about how to produce good factory workers. All those bells, and lining up, and all the rest…
Oh, an aside, the real villans in the piece are not the teachers, but rather the forces outside school ..particularly politicians…who can’t raise their own children but think they know how all children should be taught.
Second, as an historian, I have seen the way that all new media…everything from novels to the internet…has been accused of destroying kids’ minds. Sponge Bob joins an ancient and honored community that includes Huck Finn, Superman, H.G. Wells, and, yes, Shakespeare’s Prospero…destroyers all of proper cognitive processing. All of them were accused at one time or another, of being a bad influence.
vs
victor-storiguard.blogspot.com
by Amara D. Angelica
Victor, I agree. As I see it, education, as conceived by big-government sociopaths aligned with teacher drones, unions, and mindless media, is primarily designed to keep the masses in line to provide an endless supply of passive workers to fund their central-planning socialist goals. Making learners independent thinkers with autodidact tools runs counter to those goals.
by Stei1853
In limited dosages, shows like these are probably fine. (Once a week?) Children are chaos wrapped in flesh and fueled by an intense energy to learn and play. Embracing this chaos from time to time (recess!) is good for their education. It’s when parents sit their kids down for hours on end that the damage/neglect happens. A child is a computer slowly being programmed… and when your input is $4i%, don’t be surprised when the software doesn’t meet your expectations.
I pray that once life expectancy takes off, world population stabilizes, and people have children LESS often, society can allocate tremendous amounts of resources to our young ones.
by Jackmode
I definitely agree with both comments. The ability to focus is diminishing among young children, as seen with the enormous increase in rates of conditions such as ADHD and subsequently the drugs associated with aiding the conditions. Isn’t attention a cognitive function that is absolutely essential to learning conceptual ideas, facts and other forms of learning? We must adopt the philosophy of optimizing attention span in our educational systems. Personally, I regard the ability to pay deep attention as one of the best qualities of what it is to be human.
Of course, technological advancement will enable us to grab the useful information quickly and leave out the (unimportant?) details because that is advantageous. Anything that is advantageous will proliferate, especially when it involves heuristics for useful information. We are already seeing this with news segments, web pages, etc. So we must be mindful that attention-span is an essential part of us while we continue to adjust to the new information-dense digital world.
Diet and exercise will continue to be absolutely critical to proper cognitive functioning (and particularly the ability to focus) for quite some time so we must emphasize this, but more so than currently being done. Everyone knows that exercise and diet can enhance well being more than most things. This can come from an obese, lazy smoker! People are failing to self improve in this regard, which can be seen in obesity rates. I propose that gym memberships be paid for by governments, which will have an initial investment but it will pay for itself several times over by vastly reducing healthcare costs.
by lachlan
I completely disagree with the point about accelerating intelligence! To put in layman’s terms (which I am), I think there are two very general types of people: those who create and those who consume (media, technology, etc.) – obviously there’s lot of overlap, but again generally speaking… I believe having a fully developed executive function is vital to develop into the former. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t advocate keeping the industrial age model of education, I just don’t think bombarding developing brains with fast paced digital imagery/stimulus will do anything but make them into short attention spanned consumers. Which might be fine once we get past the current paradigm where people have to work to provide basics like food/clothing/shelter, but who knows how long that will take???
by Editor
“Bombarding developing brains with fast paced digital imagery/stimulus will do anything but make them into short attention spanned consumers…” Agreed, and an important point, but I am not advocating compulsory “bombarding” of children (the war metaphor is indeed appropriate) and allow them to learn at their own pace and with tools (like those from the Khan Academy or in the most successful charter schools) that are most effective and enjoyable for each individual, something not possible with state-controlled education.
by Mind.matriX
Lol, apparently this study’s been everywhere. One of my professors used it in class today.
The sample size used in the study was too small, and there were a lot of flaws in the methodology of the experiment. Of course KurzweilAI would disregard these problems and put an obvious slant on how this study should be interpreted.
by Editor
Sample size, methodology: good points that I should have mentioned.
by geekette
I agree with everything you said except for one point. Retention of information in the human mind requires focus of attention. When we
are physically still, it engages different circuitry, some of it competing with,
focus of attention circuits that are active when we are active. I do think
sitting still as much as we are forced to is a BAD way to do things. But there needs to be a mind training to allow us to transition from a singular focus which is required for acquiring new information and retaining it, similar to that of meditation, and behaving like a squirrel. Kids absorb what they see like a SPONGE. Tai Chi is an nice blend of movement and concentration together. Totally different kind of mind state than that of hyper chaos behavior, flitting from one topic to the next, which is not conducive to retaining information.
DIET is another factor in our ability to concentrate. The American diet is loaded with sugar and carbs. This is another source of behavior
problem. and leads to obesity and diabetes.
Apologies for any typos. For some reason, the last upgrade in my browser makes the font size 6 when I pull up a news item.
by Editor
“Retention of information in the human mind requires focus of attention… there needs to be a mind training…”: Children focus spontaneously on useful and interesting information and when they are ready, and they don’t need meditation, Tai Chi, and other mind-control procedures — just freedom.
by rubart
Amara Angelica’s argument is a perfect example of “either/or”–that is, going from one extreme to the other with no middle ground. I think the University of Virginia study makes some very valid points: when children (and adults, for that matter) are subjected to to a continually frenetic pace, they lose their ability to concentrate and, in effect, become non-functional except as to how well they can be “moved” from one spot to the next (and the next, and the next, and the next . . .).
I agree that schools can be too damned boring. I certainly found them so when I was a student. But, by not being subjected to continual frenetic input (which we didn’t have in “my day,”), I learned to figure out *why* I found school so damned boring, what was wrong with much of what my teachers were saying about who I was supposed to be, who I *really* was, and what steps I might take to affirm who I really was and create a fulfilling life for myself (all of which I did).
In short, I learned to *own my own consciousness.*
This opportunity now seems lost in our present culture. Angelica might well cheer on kids’ growing up with all the chaotic madness so they’ll have “the ability to handle the wildly accelerating computerized world of the future.” But without having control of their own consciousness–which requires a solid amount of quiet time and space–they simply won’t exist, no matter how action-packed “their” lives are.
by Editor
“Requires a solid amount of quiet time and space…”: Agreed, something not possible with compulsory mass education.