Article September 16, 1996 Issue

Children and the media

by Kim Shippey

IMPRIMIS

Innumerable studies in the United States in recent years have drawn attention to something that many parents already recognize—the deleterious effect on young children of their prolonged exposure to dysfunctional elements in current American culture.

Writer, television host, and film critic Michael Medved last year focused on one of these studies during a leadership seminar on "Educating for Virtue: The New 'Values Revolution,' " in Salt Lake City, Utah.

He drew the attention of his audience to a University of Chicago survey of 25,000 teenagers in the United States which revealed that, in every ethnic group, children with immigrant parents perform significantly better in school than those whose parents were born in the United States. Also, immigrant mothers and fathers tend more than American parents to arrange proper study time for their children, to encourage older siblings to tutor younger children, and to restrict television. American children, said Mr. Medved, often lose hope, lose confidence, and lose resistance to the pessimism that is challenging so many of them.

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