Mandy Steurwald, Youth Services Coordinator at the Lenox Community Center, watches television with after-school students earlier this month. It was an educational program. (Photo By Kate Abbott)
GREAT BARRINGTON — Local students turned off “Woody Woodpecker” this week and went out to spot real woodpeckers on the Housatonic River. They also abandoned “ER” to check out real ambulances and gave up watching Cookie Monster to build monsters out of vegetables.
It’s all part of a campaign at Rudolph Steiner School to get children off the couches and away from their television sets to promote more healthful, creative activities.
From April 19 to April 24, the school sponsored a local “TV Turn-off Week” as part of national campaign by the TV Turnoff Network. Local artists, public safety officials, merchants and even the post office joined in to sponsor activities for the kids.
According to the network, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., 98 percent of Americans spend an average of four hours per day in front of the TV — gaining weight, risking many kinds of health problems and stunting the growth of their brains. In the wake of a recent study that suggests watching too much television can cause attention deficit disorder in young children, the network estimated that 7.6 million children and adults in all 50 states and many foreign countries are taking part in this year’s Turn Off.
First grade teacher Ann Sagarin organized the week at the Great Barrington school.
“At the Rudolph Steiner School, we value kids’ imagination,” Sagarin said Monday. “Imagining is one of the natural ways of learning. Kids who receive pre-set images from the media don’t have a way of creating their own inner world. We’re short-changing kids’ educations by giving them media in exchange for their own rich internal life.”
Several parents in her class got her started on the Turn Off, she said, adding that they came to her very much interested in limiting the amount of television their children watched. They wanted to let other parents know about the ways watching too much television could hurt their children: It was important to them, their families and the school, Sagarin said.
She and her students put together an informational display at the school, so all the students could learn about the TV Turn-off Network.
“It encourages parents to limit media in their homes, so children can tap into creativity and free play in their own way, not a commercial way or a way television broadcasters promote,” she said.
The network partners with other organizations, some national, like the American Association of Pediatrics, and some local, to sponsor contests and events throughout the Turn-off week, Sagarin said. This year, the network worked with government-funded heath agencies, a YMCA, an anti-tobacco group, an independent bookstore, a nursing ministry and schools from New York to New Mexico. The network encourages people to form their own partnerships as well.
Its TV Turn-off Week 2004 happens to coincide with the Rudolph Steiner School’s spring break, and Sagarin found willing sponsors in the community to keep the students busy during the holidays. Local businesses and organizations have offered activities for children, to encourage them to get out of the house and explore. Southern Berkshire Ambulance Squad and the Great Barrington Post Office gave tours Tuesday and Wednesday, and the local store Expeditions gave away free copies of the “Hiking and Kayaking Guide to the Berkshires.”
Clay Mania in Housatonic will open its studio today and Friday from 1 to 8 p.m. and offer 10 percent off on classes in which kids paint their own pottery. On an Earth Day celebration Saturday, April 24, the Berkshire Co-op will hold a festival and invite children to make flags and veggie monsters, plant seeds and play games from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sagarin said the organizations will would welcome any children, not just Rudolph Steiner students, for the tours and games but some had asked that children of different ages come at different times. She suggested calling beforehand.
She said she knew about National TV Turn-off Week from teaching at the Housatonic Valley Association Waldorf School, just over the line in Connecticut. At that school, teachers remain with their students from grades 1 through 8 (moving up each grade level with them), and they are very supportive of turning off media, she said.
Children who watch television many hours a day aren’t running around the way they naturally do, Sagarin said. They are also at high risk for obesity and juvenile diabetes, according to recent studies. Because they keep their eyes unfocused and their minds idle, watching television impairs observation and inhibits the development of the brain, and television encourages a short attention span, which can contribute to attention deficit disorder, according to the TV Turn-off Network.
Surveys on the network also found that children who do not watch television are far less likely to demand toys — a child can develop brand loyalty by the age of 2 — and that watching television not only promotes violence but also increases childhood injuries.
The network offered evidence that children who watch less television or none at all get positive benefits. Barbara J. Brock, professor of recreation management at Eastern Washington University, conducted a national survey of families without television in February and March 2000. She expected to find 20 families who didn’t watch television and got 500, she wrote in the introduction. More than 70 percent of them responded to the survey, and 85 percent said they had never doubted their choice.
Her study, "TV Free Families: Are They Lola Granolas, Normal Joes or High and Holy Snots?" concluded that most families gave up television not to make a statement but because they wanted more time with each other. In families who did not watch television, parents spent an hour each day talking with their kids. The average TV-watching parent and child spend 38 minutes together in a week, according to Brock.
Moreover, 92 percent of the children in these families never complained about having no television, she said. And in a country where the average student spends more than 1,000 hours watching TV each year and only 900 hours in school, more than half of the children in TV-free families were straight-A students, according to Brock.
Sagarin said the Rudolph Steiner School believes not watching television is important to students’ education. She said she was also delighted that the Berkshire weather chose to cooperate.
“You couldn’t pick a better week weather-wise, if you’re going to turn off your TV, Gameboy™, computer games and VCRs,” she said. “People who try it can’t help but see for themselves the benefits.”
And that’s only for a week. Parents who heed the network’s advice might consider limiting television throughout their children’s education. They might also try it themselves.
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