Bedtime story short reads - a collection

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Yes, reading to kids is important. Yes, other forms of literacy are important. Our kids, like most others in the Western world, watch television for more than three hours per day on average. They "read" – in the classical sense Mark Latham means - for 12 minutes per day on average.  Yet screen literacy is not a priority! 

In the classroom it is as if the "text" of television does not exist. There is monumental denial throughout society that television is the most powerful "text" available to our kids, we don’t teach them how to interpret it, and as a result they are sitting ducks, literally and metaphorically. In the context of uncritical reception, anything is propaganda. 

In the coming decade, I predict the debate over the influence of fast-food advertising will absorb our energy, and result in the banning of such advertising but it will obscure the equally important issue of screen literacy.

JM Lyndon