Californians are not being told why most of our children achieve so little in our schools. The real obstacle to achievement is what they are taught outside of school--a host of attitudes and values that distract them, stunt their minds, and undermine what schools are trying to teach.

THEIR MAIN TEACHER IS COMMERCIAL TV, along with videos, electronic games, and recorded music. School children, on average spend 12% of their waking hours in school. They spend 30% plus on electronic entertainment--experience which is overwhelmingly anti-schooling, anti-authority, anti-civilization. TV starts on Toddlers by age two or three, while their brain networks are being formed. It distracts them from the activities that develop brain capacities, skills and confidence essential for success in school. They start school with an average 4-hour per day TV viewing habit --a disastrous distraction from genuine learning.

TV continues to distract them from mental growth --ESPECIALLY READING. Only skillful readers can do serious academic work, and most of our kids never become skillful, not because teachers fail to teach them basic reading skills, but BECAUSE THEY PRACTICE VERY LITTLE. Then when school texts get more difficult, they are frustrated. They think they know how to read. They don't see why school should demand so much difficult reading, concentration and persistentence --so unlike the effortless, mindless, instant gratification they find so comfortable on TV and their other electronic distractions.

I am not blaming the Kids--they are simply learning what TV Teaches--what we encourage. Because it seizes their minds so early in their lives, it has enormous, damaging influence, especially on their attitudes and values.

IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE THE SIGNIFICANT NUMBERS OF YOUNGSTERS WHO ARE HIGH ACHIEVERS--10%-20% IN MOST SCHOOLS. If schools are so bad as some critics charge, how do these kids manage to learn so much--from the same teachers and curriculum as classmates who learn little? The reason is their attitudes, their priorities. From Kindergarten on, they have worked hard to do what teachers require and as a result they develop the skills and knowledge to excel. Before Kindergarten their parents stimulated their development and protected them from excessive indulgence in entertainment. Most high achievers watch some television, but its influence is mitigated by other influences in their experience, especially parental guidance and example.

Virtually all the professionals who study child development and health agree that TODAY'S AVERAGE AMOUNTS OF TV VIEWING DAMAGE YOUNG CHILDREN. Led by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the American Psychological Association, more than 50 national PROFESSIONAL, EDUCATIONAL, AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS have called for cutting in half the time children spend watching TV. It is time parents and educators paid attention!

For three decades, paralleling the intrusion of television in American culture, student achievement has declined, while Teachers' have struggled to engage TV's victims with "new" teaching methods. They have lowered their expectations in order to keep on including and encouraging low achievers who have great difficulty with academic learning. Education policy makers have attempted one reform after another, trying to "fix" the schools so they will foster high achievement, in spite of the anti-schooling education Kids get everywhere else.

IT CANNOT BE DONE!

The entertainment media, getting to Kids first, with their exciting pseudo-reality, are simply too powerful. There is no reason to believe the current list of reforms (which would cost $ billions every year) will produce greater achievement for most of our youngsters than past failures--because the reform proposals do nothing about the crucial problem of student motivation--THE MOST IMPORTANT SINGLE FACTOR IN LEARNING.