As an example of the former, mid 19th century American citizens who listened to Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas for hours both because they’d been exposed to words and had the capacity, and because of the sense of civic duty they felt. As an example of the former, “debates” like those televised during the most recent election cycle wherein no issue, regardless of the significance, commands any more than three minutes of dialogue. We’re all impacted by the “television age” which I definitionally expand beyond what Postman intended in order to account for more modern visual technologies.  This book was written in 1985, before the damage to the typographic mind had been compounded by technologies like the iPhone. 

In Postman’s words, what television has brought on us is superficiality, inability to pay attention, a need to be up to the minute with fleeting news, and at the end, a culture that demands to be entertained. “Television’s way of knowing is uncompromisingly hostile to typography’s way of knowing; that television’s conversations promote incoherence and triviality; that the phrase “serious television” is a contradiction in terms; and that television speaks in only one persistent voice—the voice of entertainment”. 

So, what does this mean for us? Is an education that focuses heavily on texts doomed? Well, without deep intentionality, it would seem the answer is yes because the television age is the operating system of modern life. It goes on in the background, without awareness (we’re being acted upon), and we simply take this as a given. Of necessary implication then is a pulling away from texts, which studies suggest is actually the case. At very least, it needs to be said that if we have any desire to push back on image based communication and information—that is to be a literary culture, or simply “people of the book” as Christians have been called—there is some serious work to be done in our homes and in our churches even before the school can do its work. 

It may strike us as coincidental that the number of diagnoses of ADD and ADHD have increased exponentially during an era dominated by visual media, but I am not sure studies are needed to show the correlation. What about the fact that we speak, without irony, of needing the SparkNotes© version of, well, nearly everything? 

Postman’s thesis includes a subargument that George Orwell was wrong and Aldous Huxley correct. Correct about what? “In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.” Put more simply, Huxley feared culture would become so anesthetized that we’d not want to read a book; Orwell feared that draconian governments would ban books. 

GK Chesterton famously quipped that “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” If indeed in Christ we are alive, if we call his name in faith and in repentance, then we are not cultural floaters. If it is true that the modern world calls us to superficiality and distraction, still we need not float downstream; in fact to do so is sin. See Proverbs 21:25

Raising children in the modern world is a challenge. However, raising children has always been a challenge. Give your children words, beautiful words, and lots of them. Furnish their minds so they do not default to mere entertainment when bored. Help them to value that which is not fleeting. This is the concept of paideia, and it is why schools like ours were formed!