I just followed someone's advice (it was on the listserver last week) and
re-read Putnam's indictment of TV in "Tuning In, tuning Out." He says the
case is "largely circumstantial"; as I read his evidence, he associates the
spread of TV with the decline of social capital. He differentiates between
newspaper readers (who are "joiners") and TV viewers (associated with "low
social capital"). He says the increase in TV viewing might account for
one-quarter to one-half the total drop in social capital.
Here's my point. We might not like TV or think there's a lot of trash on
it (no disgreement here). But to say TV is the cause of the decline of
social capital is to attribute a lot of power to the box and not much to
other sources. What's the relationship between TV viewing and the
perceived political helplessness of lots of people these days? Between TV
viewing and the fairly widespread feeling that public places are dangerous
places and that wealth means a withdrawal from public life, be it in
private schools, private transportation, or "gated communities"?
Further, Putnam is silent on a factor that some other intellectual
historians have seen as an important part of the decline of civil
society--the retreat of intellectuals from public life into the academy.
So, although I think control of TV is probably a good idea, I don't think
fewer viewing hours will translate necessarily into an increase in social
capital or civic engagement. What are people going to do with the time they
don't spend watching TV? How will that time be translated into civic
participation? I think those questions are as central to service-0learning
work as anything Putnam proposes (and I can't find a solution anywhere in
the two essays I've seen).--DD
David Droge For a moment's diversion go to
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