You know, I was thinking about my kids and how much they are missing out on educational opportunities that I had as a children. There are so many things they just don't know that was common knowledge for me. And I blame it all on television.
You see, the shows I grew up watching were highly educational. Shows like Tom and Jerry, The Bugs Bunny Road Runner Show, and Sylvester and Tweety.
When I was a kid, it was clear that cats ate mice, and mice were clever and quick little things that found ways to keep away from cats. In Tom and Jerry, we also learned an important truth about mice: they always lived in little holes in the wall. Of course, as a kid, I always wondered why there were no holes in our walls that were mouse sized, but I figured that someone somewhere must have them.
And then there are the numerous scientific principles that I learned from Road Runner. For example, for every action there is an equal and opposite delayed reaction. You know, like the five second delay on gravity that allows the Road Runner to run across a chasm, and gives the Wyle E. Coyote time to wave good-bye before plummetting to the canyon floor below. And, of course, most important...never ever buy your products from ACME, because they'll never work as advertised.
Sylvester, of course, taught us the same lesson as Tom, except as it applied to birds rather than mice. Cats love to eat birds...particularly birds that, for whatever reason, never learned to fly. I also learned you can't trust cats for anything (which is something any dog lover could tell you anyhow).
These are lessons my kids are missing out on. Instead, they're watching shows like The Magic School Bus, which teaches them about such useless topics as muscle fatigue, effects of pollution on coral reefs, how light works, etc. Or Lazy Town, which tries to convince my kids that they should be exercising more and watching television less (nevermind they have to actually watch television to learn this lesson). I mean, just what is this world coming to?
Let's bring back the classics, folks. The good old days of television. I mean, after all, have you noticed that the test scores of our children have been dropping ever since these shows dropped from the airwaves? Coincidence? I think not!
