Control the Remote
It’s 7 in the evening, do you know, what your kids are watching? More importantly, are the shows your kids love right for them? Here’s how to tell…
Believe it or not, TV can be good for kids. It’s just a matter of choosing shows that fit these criteria:
Appropriateness. Shows should note kids’ developmental stages and needs — communicating at their level, featuring child characters, depicting Filipino culture, using familiar and local contexts, believable heroes, reconcilable story lines.
Promotes positive values. Shows should reinforce positive values and character building, depict good manners and codes of proper behavior. These may be:
- Physical or biological (healthy food habits, safety, hygiene, exercise)
- Intellectual (critical thinking, reasoning, knowledge)
- Moral (practice of Filipino values, personal discipline, honesty)
- Spiritual (prayer and faith in God)
- Environmental (protection and conservation of resources, respect for life, cleanliness)
- Economic (positive attitude toward work, industriousness, saving)
- Social (appreciation of individual and cultural diversity)
- Political (heritage, national unity, diplomacy)
No gratuitous sex and violence. Shows should not depict violence as justified, without consequences, pleasurable and funny, heroes as violent aggressors, or revenge as the motivating factor. They should not treat violence as an acceptable form of self-defense or avoiding insult, show physical violence, or use of weapons to harm others. They should be free from scenes of gratuitous sex (torrid kissing and bed scenes), sexually suggestive images and language, adulterous practices, pornography, prostitution or pre-marital sex.
Good production values. Wholesome doesn’t mean boring and dry. Shows must be entertaining and visually appealing — capturing kids’ attention, allowing reflection between sequences, drawing content from diverse sources to expand learning and discovery, using ingenious and attractive props and sets, sound and visual effects not harmful to kids’ hearing and eyesight.
Appropriate language. Shows should develop language abilities — Filipino, English or Taglish — by exposing kids to clear and appropriate use. They had best avoid cuss words, colloquial, vulgar / indecent terms.
Cautious use and treatment of themes and issues. Shows must be aware of issues involving the young — emphasizing positive themes, promoting child rights and responsibilities, calling for parental guidance of mature and sophisticated themes. They should give attention to equal gender portrayal, just treatment of indigenous people, respect for the disabled and compassion for the less privileged. They should enable parents to monitor programs with serious subjects, warn kids about their meanings, and help them make sense of what they see.
Viewer participation. Shows must demonstrate that learning through TV is both fun and intellectually rewarding. They must stimulate imagination and creative thinking, employ mental challenges, make kids analyze situations, promote interaction, encourage practice and development of artistic and creative talents.
Allows feedback. Kids should be allowed to express and make ideas known through media correspondence. This allows them to participate in media content management and production planning, ensuring these are appropriate for their age and evolving capacities. Shows should give exposure to feedback and respond to them.
Realism. Shows must distinguish reality from fantasy, avoiding deliberate substitution of unnatural / abnormal images for what really occurs around kids. Blatantly unrealistic dream states create confusion when kids interpret their experiences. Plots should have a credible progression, resolutions of conflict attainable, portrayal of characters featured in their own language and culture realistic.
Parental involvement, justification for adult influence. Instead of replacements for parents, shows should serve as conversation pieces for parent-child interaction. They should provide adults with space to mediate images and help kids make sense of them, encourage adult presence, remind parents to explain implications of what a child is watching, and when applicable, indicate PG ratings.
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