California Department of Education
Taking Center Stage – Act II

DOCUMENT LIBRARY

Television Viewing: Guidelines for the Middle Grades

from Caught in the Middle, page 31.

  1. Involve students in discussion about the role and influence of television in society; stress the tendency of those who control program content to dramatize and glamorize the sensational in order to capture the viewer’s interest; help students evaluate the meaning and consequence of these factors for themselves, as viewers;

  2. Selectively assign television programs as adjuncts to regular classroom assignments;

  3. Choose program content that has the ability to stimulate independent thought including documentaries about nature, geography, technology, and world events;

  4. Include viewing assignments that introduce students to the visual and performing arts;

  5. Have guided classroom discussions about what has been seen, heard, felt, and thought in relation to specific viewing assignments;

  6. Have frank talks with students about television addiction and its power to compromise their minds, emotions and effective use of personal time;

  7. Communicate with parents about the school’s attempts to use television constructively to augment classroom learning;

  8. Help parents confront the responsibility to involve their children in talking about the ways in which television can get out of control and thereby damage family relationships;

  9. Provide parents with guidelines or other information to help them monitor the amount and type of viewing which their children experience;

  10. Encourage students and parents to watch some programs together and to then talk about what they have seen and heard; for example, typical conversations might include:
  • What were the issues expressed in this program? Were there morals?
  • What kinds of choices or options were possible in response to the issues?
  • What might have been the consequences of each of these choices or optional responses?
  • Would each of you (parent and student) have chosen to respond in the same way as the main characters in the program (fictional or nonfictional)? If so, why? If not, why not?