Television Rots the Brain

Chris Rands

7th September 2001

“Television Rots the Brain”

“Television rots the brain”. I have never heard such a brainless statement apart from ‘women should be treated the same as men’!

The “Collins school dictionary” definition of “to rot” is “when something decays to the point it can no longer be used”. I am no rocket scientist but I am smart enough to know that my brain has not decayed “to the point it can no longer used” because if it had I would not be here writing this essay. TV does not ‘rot’ the brain, TV expands your horizons and heightens your awareness. Without TV people would not know half as much about: culture, nature, food, gardening, home improvement, technology -the list is endless.

School teachers are always going on and moaning that we do not read enough books and we watch a horrific amount of TV but you cannot learn as much from a book as you can from a TV show. How can you get the full story about a country from a book? There are no moving pictures and sounds and your imaginations has to do all of the work whereas if you watch a TV show you can get all of the information you can in a book from one screenshot. There is a famous saying that goes “one picture speaks one thousand words” so if one picture says one thousand words them then one minute of TV must say one million words. I don’t know about you but I would rather watch one minute of TV than read a one million word book. TV does not rot the brain. Reading books does. Look at all of the geeks that read 100’s of books and don’t watch TV. Their brains must have rotted because if they had not then they would be clever enough to realise watching TV is much superior to reading books.

Learning while having fun! Nonsense you may say but the TV enables us to do this. The TV does not just provide entertainment. It also educates. The information for the Open University students is on the TV. There are other shows, that I am sure you have watched (but may not admit to), such as Sesame Street, which shows young kids how to count and read. Art Attack is another such show. This one shows you how to do creative with just a few arty things. Surely teaching kids to read and count or to be creative cannot be ...

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Yesterday was the day of the horrendous terrorist attack on America. If you did not have a TV because it “rots the brain” then you may have not known the whole story or have seen the TV clips of the planes hitting the buildings and so you have to imagine what it was like. But you cannot imagine what it was like because it was like nothing that had ever happened before. So you would be left with a very hazy view about what happened and not all of the facts. The TV has, by showing us the pictures and telling us what happened, brought nations together. Britain and the U.S have never been closer, well not as far as I know (that’s not very far).

What could be better than coming home from a hard day’s work and relaxing with a drink, preferably alcoholic, some chocolate and watching TV? Imagine what it would be like if there was no TV. Dad would be in the back shed making furniture. Mum would be in the kitchen (where all women should be anyway) and the kids may even be upstairs doing their homework. But instead they are all sitting in front of the TV together as a family. So TV builds family life. It is a fact.

Without a TV life would be so much more boring and tedious. If there was no TV then there would only be books to provide a sense of humour! Imagine a life without such hilarious shows as; Blackadder, Porridge, Only Fools and Horses. It would not be the same. TV provides a common ground for all people old and young. When was the last time you heard someone come into school and say ‘did you listen to that radio show on Radio 1’ or ‘have you read that book by Charles Dickens? It is so good’……..

‘Never’ is the answer. It is so much more likely to be ‘did you watch “They think it’s all over” last night. It was side-splittingly funny’. This shows that people do not get their sense of humour from books or anything else. It is TV they get it from. Old people also get together and talk about the TV shows they watched when they were younger (pretty sad really). The only people who do not talk about what they watched on the TV last night are the incredibly old people, but they do not count because they are not important members of society as far as I am concerned.

The Olympics is just about the biggest sporting event there is and without a TV you would not be able to see it. (Unless you have a very fat wallet and could see it live. But not many people can do that.) You would have to listen to a biased commentator talking all the time about the biggest sporting event there is. You can’t make your own judgements about the performance because you are an idiot and don’t have a TV because it ‘rots the brain’.

As far as this statement goes it is complete and utter drivel. As I have proved, TV is by far and away superior to any other form of entertainment, apart from certain other live shows only open to those who are 18 years and above. It does not ‘rot’ the brain, it expands it, totally the opposite. Of course if you watch such rubbish like ‘Home and Away’ or ‘Neighbours’ it is to our detriment but if we watch TV in moderation then it will only improve us as a person.