One Saturday morning many years ago, I was watching an episode of the ‘ Roadrunner' on television. As Wile E. Coyote was pushed off of a cliff by theRoadrunner for the fourth or fifth time, I started laughing uncontrollably. Ithen watched a ‘Bugs Bunny' show and started laughing whenever I saw Elmer Fuddshoot Daffy Duck and his bill went twirling around his head. The next day, Ipushed my brother off of a cliff and shot my dog to see if its head would twirlaround.Obviously, that last sentence is not true. Some people believe thatviolence on the tube is one of the main factors that leads to real-life violence,but in my opinion, television is just a minor factor that leads to real-lifeviolence and that it is the parents responsibility to teach kids the difference.According to Rathus in Psychology in the New Millennium, observationallearning may account for most human learning (239). Observational learningextends to observing parents and peers, classroom learning, reading books, andlearning from media such as television and films. Nearly all of us have beenexposed to television, videotapes, and films in the classroom. Children in day-care centers often watch Sesame Street. There are filmed and videotapedversions of great works of literature such as Orson Welles' Macbeth. Nearlyevery school shows films of laboratory experiments.But what of our viewing outside of the classroom? Television is alsoone of our major sources of informal observational learning. According to Sweetand Singh, viewing habits range from the child who watches no television at allto the child who is in front of the television nearly all waking hours. Theysay that on average, children aged 2 to 11 watch about 23 hours of televisionper week, and teenagers watch about 22 hours per week (2). According to thesefigures, children spend less time in the classroom than they do watchingtelevision. During these hours of viewing, children are constan...
