Postman's other books included Conscientious Objections (1988), Technopoly (1992) and Building A Bridge To The 18th Century (1999). A decade later, however, Postman and Weingartner offered counterbalancing advice in Teaching As A Conserving Activity, which called for school uniforms and emphasised the teaching of standard English. He first gained widespread attention with his 1969 book on pedagogy, Teaching As A Subversive Activity, co-written with Charles Weingartner, which called for radical reform in schools, including the abandonment of tests and textbooks. Students saw him as an engaging teacher with a sharp sense of humour. He established the university's programme in media ecology in 1971, and was appointed professor in 1993. We would all be better off if television got worse, not better."Ī man of the left, and a member of the editorial board of the Nation, Postman won admirers across the political spectrum - from the former Nixon aide and Christian conservative leader Chuck Colson to the feminist author Camille Paglia.īrought up in New York city, and educated at the State University of New York and Columbia University, where he received his doctorate, Postman started teaching in the education department at New York University in 1959. Television, he wrote, "serves us most usefully when presenting junk entertainment it serves us most ill when it coopts serious modes of discourse - news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion. He was appalled not so much by the specific content of television as by the very essence of the medium, which he saw as an enemy of literacy and serious thinking. Postman was a disciple of Marshall McLuhan, who famously declared that "the medium is the message". "As a television show, and a good one, Sesame Street does not encourage children to love school or anything about school. In his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves To Death, which was translated into eight languages and sold 200,000 copies, he denounced the acclaimed Sesame Street series as mere show business. He rejected educational television as an oxymoron. "Everywhere one looks, it may be seen that the behavior, language, attitudes and desires - even the physical appearance - of adults and children are becoming increasingly indistinguishable." ![]() ![]() Postman's widely praised book, The Disappearance Of Childhood (1982), advanced the thesis that television, by erasing the boundaries of knowledge between children and adults, was making children apathetic and cynical, while infantilising adults. A professor of media ecology at New York University, he was outraged that billions of dollars were spent in the 1990s to connect every American classroom to the internet: "Why? Is there clear evidence that children learn better when they have access to the internet? The answer is no."
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