My Back Pages: Internet Killed the TV Star?

A discussion of literacy in today's classrooms inevitably involves the Internet, and schools are working furiously to keep up with the new demands of the Internet age. But the World Wide Web isn't the first innovation that has permeated education. It's instructive to look back at how educators dealt with the last major technological change that influenced literacy: the television.

In the December 1978 Educational Leadership, Western Washington University clinical professor Don Brown predicts that television is here to stay. He urges educators to learn to use television to their advantage instead of "constantly decrying its content." 

Read the article: Reading TV: Today's Basic (PDF)

Brown emphasizes the power of television as a medium, writing, "Television today shapes human dreams and future life styles even more precisely for the masses than yesterday's fine written literature did for the affluent, educated few." 

Has the Internet as a dominant medium altered this phenomenon, with its almost infinite content catering to every niche and interest and its emphasis in Web 2.0 on interactivity? Educators who were enthusiastic about, or at least amenable to, the power of television should be both excited and challenged by the force of the Internet and will likely enjoy the positively quaint—in today's eyes—limitations of TV.