Modern Day Mentors: When Media Mentors our Children
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Most of us are guilty of it, no matter our school choice. We give our children access to mentors who become role models to our little ones right under our noses - and we don’t even know these people. And many of them are literally pretend people. They are actors, performers, or characters on our children’s shows, movies, and for some families, social media. They are good, bad, and everything in between. They are altruistic, narcissistic, or just your average Joe.
In the 1990’s, John Taylor Gatto wrote about this phenomenon in his book, Dumbing Us Down. He wrote:
“Two institutions at present control our children’s lives: television and schooling, in that order. Both of these reduce the real world of wisdom, fortitude, temperance, and justice to a never-ending, nonstop abstraction. In centuries past, the time of childhood and adolescence would have been occupied in real work, real charity, real adventures, and the realistic search for mentors who might teach what you really wanted to learn. A great deal of time was spent in community pursuits, practicing affection, meeting and studying every level of community, learning how to make a home, and dozens of other tasks necessary to becoming a whole man or woman.”
We all know schooling plays a massive role in a child’s life (in varying degrees) - no matter how you choose to educate your child. It can be actually quite suffocating when you think about what percentage of life “schooling” takes up in your child’s day. But that’s number two in the ranks. Number one is television.
You can substitute television with whatever media you like. The substitute more likely reflects the age of your child and the permissions you give her. Media can be a huge help in homeschooling, especially YouTube how to’s and educational videos. Media can mean family time with stimulating discussion about important topics. I am not saying children should not have any access to media.
But when I read this quote by Gatto, a little panicked flag rose in my own heart. It was a reminder to me what many of us know to be true if we allow ourselves to admit it - we allow complete strangers into our homes to mentor our children in big ways, sometimes bigger than the real people in their lives…real people who actually know our child. Some of us let our children worship fictional characters with regular viewings over and over and over again, eating up our children’s free time that could have been used to explore their actual real world.
No matter how educational, character building, or joy-producing media can be for our children, it’s important for us to keep this potential problem in mind. It’s important to curate and monitor the amount of time and emotion our children invest into strangers and fake people, no matter how “good” they are. Because at the end of the day, we want our children to live a full life, living the way God inspires them to live, and listening and being guided by the people who actually love them.
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