Touch Football and Television
April 25, 2007 at 13:42:02
by Ernest Partridge

I belong to the last generation to experience childhood without television. And I have often wondered what was lost when the children of that generation deserted the playgrounds and moved inside to watch the tube.

It is widely reported that many children today spend more time watching television than they spend in a classroom. Thus as a child sits alone, hours on end in his own private world, he fails to learn the fundamental rules of social interaction – the necessity of compromise, accommodation, and empathy, which is to say, the ability to see the world (oneself included) from another’s perspective. Instead, his world is the world.

…Indoor activities have also changed dramatically with the advent of television. Card games and board games, like playground games, have given way to The Tube. And pity it is, for such activities develop a capacity for empathy – the ability to view the world from the perspective of another person.

Military strategists since (and doubtlessly before) Sun Tzu, twenty-six centuries ago, have insisted that the first rule of military engagement is to know the mind of one’s opponent. Legend has it that the game of chess was invented as a device to train military officers to do just that: think like the other guy. Empathy — “getting into the head” of one’s opponent — is also, paradoxically, essential to diplomacy and peacemaking.

Source: OpEdNews.com

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