Schools and Media: Children in an Electronic Age

Chapter 9

Schools and Media: Children in an Electronic Age

Chapter Summary

SCHOOLS AND MEDIA: CHILDREN IN AN ELECTRONIC AGE

THE ROLE OF THE SCHOOL IN SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Schools as Social Communities

School Size and Organization

Big School; SmallSchool

Age Groupings in Schools

Coeducational versus Same-Gender Schools

Class Size and Organization

Advantages of Small Classes

Benefits of Open Classrooms

Cooperative Learning

Peer Tutors

Bet You Thought That ... Home-Schooled Children Were Socially Disadvantaged

The Teachers’ Impact

Teacher-Student Relationships

Keeping Control: Classroom Discipline and Management

Teacher Expectations and Children’s Success

School-Family Links

School Culture; Home Culture

Learning from Living Leaders: Nancy E. Hill

Cultural Context: Matching Classroom Organization to Cultural Values and Practices

Parents’ Involvement in Schools

School as a Buffer for Children

After-School Programs

Learning from Living Leaders: Deborah Lowe Vandell

School Integration

ELECTRONIC MEDIA AND CHILDREN'S SOCIAL LIVES

Watching Television and Playing Video Games

Hours of Involvement

Content of Television Shows and Video Games

Do Children Understand What They See?

Television’s Positive Effects

Learning from Living Leaders: Aletha C. Huston

Negative Effects of Television and Video Games

Television Biases Perceptions

Television and Video Games Displace Other Activities

Television Stereotypes Minority Groups

Television and VideoGame Violence Leads to Aggression

Television and VideoGame Violence Leads to Desensitization

Television and Sexuality

Real-World Application: Advertising Influences Children’s Choices

How Can Parents and Siblings Modify TV’s Negative Effects?

Into Adulthood: Still Playing Games?

Internet and Cell Phone Connectivity

Internet Access and Use

Effects of Internet Involvement

Internet Identity

Effects on Social Relationships

Research up Close: Role-Playing Games and Social Life

Effects of Internet Sex

Learning from Living Leaders: Patricia M. Greenfield

Effects on Mental Health

Cell Phone Connections

Insights from Extremes: The Risks of Sexting

Chapter Summary

Key Terms

At the Movies

Learning Objectives

Explain what is meant by school representing a social community.
Describe the influences of school size and organization on social development (e.g., opportunities for participation in school activities, age groupings and school transitions, coeducational versus mixed gender).
Describe influences on children’s social experiences by class size and organization (e.g., small classes, open classrooms, cooperative learning, peer tutoring).
Summarize the findings regarding how teachers contribute to children’s social success via teacher-child relationships, classroom management, and expectations.
Define the Pygmalion effect and the notion of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Describe the links between family and school in terms of similarities and differences in home versus school culture, parental involvement, school as a buffer for children with stressful home lives, and after-school programs.
Summarize the findings regarding the effects of school integration on student self-esteem, achievement, educational attainment, and interracial attitudes.
Describe the effects of television and video games on children in terms of the number of hours spent watching TV and playing video games and the content to which children are exposed.
Define what is referred to as magic window thinking.
Summarize the positive (cognitive and language development, prosocial behavior) and negative effects (perception bias, displacement of other activities, stereotypes, aggression, desensitization, sexuality) of television and video games.
Describe the ways parents can modify the negative effects of television.
Summarize the effects of Internet activity on identity formation, social relationships, sexual risks, and mental health.
Discuss the effects of cell phone usage on social interaction.

Student Handout 9-1

Chapter Summary

Role of Schools in Social Development

Schools have an informal agenda of socializing children by teaching them the rules, norms,and values they need to make their way in society and helping them develop the skills tointeract successfully with their peers.
Schools are communities of teachers, students, and staff. Children who develop a sense ofcommunity in school do better socially and have lower rates of violence and drug use; theyare also less likely to drop out of school.
In small schools, children are more likely to participate in extracurricular activities and lesslikely to drop out than in large schools.
Making the transition from elementary school to middle school or from middle school tohigh school can affect children’s self-esteem negatively.
Children in single-gender schools do better academically and perhaps socially than childrenin coeducational schools, perhaps because of differences in the characteristics of the schoolsand the parents who select them.
In small classes, teacher-child contacts are more frequent and personalized and children arebetter behaved, interact more with their peers, and are less likely to be victimized.
Elementary school children in open classrooms have more varied social contacts, developmore positive attitudes toward school, and show more self-reliance and cooperation inlearning situations. High school students in open classrooms participate more in schoolactivities, have more varied social relationships, and create fewer disciplinary problems.
Cooperative learning involves small groups of students working together. This classroomtechnique has a positive effect on children’s self-esteem, concerned feelings about peers,willingness to help, and enjoyment of school.
Peer tutoring in which an older, more experienced student tutors a younger child hasbenefits for both the tutor and the pupil, but tutors usually gain more. They benefit in self-esteemand status, and they derive satisfaction from helping others.
Children whose relationship with the teacher is close and warm have high levels of schooladjustment and are likely to be accepted by their peers . Minority children are especially likelyto benefit from close teacher-child ties.
Children are likely to succeed academically and socially when teachers expect them to doso, demonstrating a self-fulfilling prophecy or “Pygmalion effect.”
Teachers have less positive expectations for poor and minority children.
When parents are involved in their children’s school, the children tend to do better, especiallyif the parents’ involvement includes communicating expectations to teachers andcommunicating the value of education to children.
Children in high-quality after-school programs have better emotional adjustment, better peerrelationships, better conflict resolution skills, and less delinquency than latchkey children.
Children from integrated schools feel safer and more satisfied and develop more positiveinterracial attitudes than children from segregated schools.

Television and Video Games

Television viewing is a major influence on children’s social behavior. Viewing begins earlyin life and increases until adolescence.
Children watch a variety of programs, including cartoons, situation comedies, family-orientedprograms, and educational shows. Boys watch more action-adventure and sports programs;girls prefer social dramas and soap operas.
Very young children display magic window thinking in which they do not distinguishbetween TV or video game fantasy and reality.
Programs that teach children about social rules and expectations, such as Sesame Street andMister Rogers’ Neighborhood, have positive effects on children’s prosocial behavior.
Negative effects of television and video games include biasing children’s perceptions; childrenwho are extensive TV viewers tend to overestimate the degree of danger and crimein the world and underestimate people’s trustworthiness and helpfulness.
TV and perhaps video games curtail children’s social interactions and activities such as sportsand clubs.
TV portrayals of minority groups often support ethnic stereotypes.
Exposure to violent TV and video games leads to desensitization and increased aggression.
Exposure to sexually suggestive media fare leads to more acceptance of sexuality, earliersexual activity, and higher rates of pregnancy.
TV advertising influences children’s consumer choices, especially preferences for food andtoys that may be either unhealthy or dangerous.
Parents can modify the effects of media viewing by serving as interpreters of media messagesand as managers of access to programs and games.

Internet and Cell Phones

Boys are more likely to be heavy gamers and access more sexual material than girls.
The Internet is a new venue for maintaining social ties and forming new, albeit weaker, tiesas well as for exploring identities.
Children are exposed to pornography and other adult sexual material—often inadvertently—which can cause anxiety and upset. Internet chat rooms offer teens the opportunity to exploresexual issues and feelings.
The Internet can affect children’s and adolescents’ mental health, especially by onlineharassment. It can also foster exchange of information between individuals with problems,such as self-injurious behavior.
Cell phones foster social connections with peers across time and space; they may become“addictive”—if children think they can’t live without them—or dangerous—if children usethem for sexting.

Student Handout 9-2

Key Terms

GLOSSARY TERMS

cooperative learning / A teaching technique in which small groups of students work together.
desensitization / The process by which people show diminished emotional reaction to a stimulus or event.
latchkey children / Youngsters who must let themselves into their homes after school because their parents are working outside the home.
magic window thinking / The tendency of very young children to believe that television images are as real as real-life people and objects.
open classroom / A relatively unstructured organization in which different areas of the room are devoted to particular activities and children work either alone or in small groups under the teacher’s supervision.
peer tutoring / A method of instruction in which an older, more experienced student tutors a younger, less experienced child.
Pygmalion effect / A phenomenon in which teachers’ expectations that students will do well are realized.
self-fulfilling prophecy / Positive or negative expectations that affect a person’s behavior in a manner that he or she (unknowingly) creates situations in which those expectations are fulfilled.
stage-environment fit / The degree to which the environment supports a child’s developmental needs.

OTHER IMPORTANT TERMS IN THIS CHAPTER

collective efficacy
cyber bullying
cyber sex
family-school links
fantasy-reality distinction for TV viewers
homeschooling
Internet identity
online harassment
racial integration
residential segregation
same-gender schools
schools within schools
self-care
sexting
token programs

Practice Exam Questions

MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS

Larger school size is associated with: (a) more extracurricular participation (b) lower dropout rates (c) *less extracurricular participation (d) a greater sense of belonging to the school community
The degree to which the environment supports a child’s developmental needs is called: (a) developmental soundness (b) age-appropriateness (c) temporal-need concordance (d) *stage-environment fit
Which of the following is accurate regarding single-gender schools: (a) single-gender schools are not currently legal (b) single-gender schools appear to increase gender-typed behaviors and interests (c) enrollment in single gender schools appears to reduce self-confidence and self-esteem (d) *none of the above
Which of the following are accurate regarding parents’ involvement in their child’s education: (a) about 50 percent of U.S. school children have parents who attend at least one school or class event during the school year (b) parents are equally likely to participate in school activities regardless of the child’s age (c) *when parents attend parent-teacher conferences or join the PTA, the children tend to do better academically and socially (d) SES and family structure do not affect parental involvement in their child’s education
Working parents who cannot be with their children in the hours after school: (a) are generally unaware of the risks (b) have no way to monitor their children’s activities (c) *often use after school programs as an alternative to self-care (d) all of the above
Children watch more TV if their family is: (a) *single parent (b) affluent (c) European American (d) Asian American
Which of the following is true regarding television’s effects? (a) *children learn specific prosocial content from the programs they watch (b) children are unable to generalize what they learn to their own interactions with peers (c) children do not derive additional benefit from having their parents watch the programs with them (d) children have difficulty learning prosocial lessons from TV
Which of the following is true regarding the degree to which television portrays sex: (a) *TV programming emphasizes a recreational orientation to sex (b) TV programming does not make people more likely to view women as sex objects (c) TV programming does not make people more likely to endorse sex-stereotyped attitudes (d) TV programming does not make people more likely to engage in sexual behavior
Which of the following is true regarding the degree to which television advertising influences children: (a) advertising has not been related to children’s level of materialism (b) advertising has not been related to older children’s requests for toys, CDs, clothes, and computer games (c) *children who watch more TV ask Santa for more toys, especially toys they saw advertised on TV (d) only adolescents who have their own financial resources are affected by TV ads
Which of the following is an established gender difference in Internet use? (a) *boys are more likely to be consumers of sexually explicit images than girls (b) boys are more likely to download illegal content than girls (c) boys and girls are equally likely to be heavy gamers (d) boys use text messaging more than girls
Experimental work on friendship formation over the Internet shows that: (a) *the relative anonymity of the Internet reduces the risks inherent in self-disclosure (b) with online friends, adolescents find it harder to express their true selves (c) adolescents report liking new acquaintances less if they meet over the Internet than if they meet in person (d) none of the above
Which of the following is recommended by the AmericanAcademy of Pediatrics? (a) *children under the age of 2 should not be allowed to watch TV (b) older children should be permitted televisions in their bedrooms (c) all parents should buy and use a V-chip (d) children should only watch TV when with their parents

ESSAY QUESTIONS

1. Describe 4 ways in which the Internet has a positive effect on children’s social relationships.

2. Discuss the school as a social community.

3. Has school desegregation worked? What are the benefits of integration for children’s social relationships?