Saturday, November 13, 2010

Thalassa and the discovery of the world

My children love the French Magazine anyone may watch on TV5monde, the French channel all over the world. Here is how TV5 presents Thalassa: Georges Pernoud and the entire "Thalassa" crew take you on board each week to visit faraway destinations and discover different cultures, people and continents."

This magazine is an amazing windows on the world, those reporters are discovering interesting situations, stories, people which gave us an opportunity to learn a lot about our planet, human kind, animals, culture...

It's not only the opportunity to learn about all those fascinating facts but also learn more about geography and professions that our children do not have much opportunity to cross in their daily life: scientists who work and research on all kind of field regarding ocean and nature, botanist, ecologist, marine biologist, microbiologist, zoologist...

My son really enjoy a lot this magazine :-)
I am not sure that children who watch TV on a daily basis and watch essentially entertainment programs like cartoon and movies, will be as interested by that type of program...

I would say that watching TV pretty rarely is making those program even more attractive. I can see that watching my daughter reaction, she loves entertainment, cartoons, movies. But she also loves watching TV so when I propose to my children to come watch "Thalassa" she is simply happy to watch something. But if I was to ask her, do you want to watch Thalassa or a cartoon or a movie, I know she will choose the cartoon or the movie. My son will still choose Thalassa.

And this is not the only example I have around me, I saw that when I was visiting homes where children watch television daily, they are not watching much documentary. I did this experience in a public school too, in second grade, in a class of 26 children, we show the children a fun documentary about the solar system, after 5 minutes already a few children were not watching anymore, then a few more and after 15 minutes only 6 children were still watching attentively the documentary, all the other were chatting, day dreaming or playing. All those children (beside mine) are watching television daily, most of them are also playing video-game daily.

I believe that those children got used to be entertain by those fictional programs, to not have to think, be in a passive state and that they became addicted to this.

It seems that children who do not watch TV programs daily and do not watch many fictional programs, have a better chance to appreciate documentaries.