Children’s TV & Science ... the missed link

It’s Easter holidays here which set me wondering, children do not just learn about the world from the classroom, they learn about it from being outside, the media and their parents. From my childhood memories I don’t recall visiting too many geological sites, we went to plenty of museums, but frankly Sussex hardly abounds with interesting Geological sites (actually 

seeing a rock is an event) so what does the media provide?

In the UK there is a whole host of children’s TV channels, the two main ones running from 7am until 7pm are CBBC (run by the partially state owned BBC) and CITV (run by Independent broadcasting funded via adverts). There are also channels only available via satellite or cable – but since they are not available to all homes and feature virtually nothing of value I’ll ignore them

So, what’s on TV?

On CBBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/watch/whatson/, today, the 13^th of April children could enjoy 2hrs 50 of ‘The Legend of Dick and Dom’ which is about as wholesome as a Happy Meal and features nothing of value, let alone educational value. 3 episodes of ‘Arthur’, a variety of light drama interspersed by news.   A virtually identical story is present with tomorrows planning; although that does include 30 minutes of nature programming in the form of ‘deadly 60’ a Steve Irwin inspired search for animals that can kill you. The Children’s programming does not just infect a channel it also spills over onto the BBC’s flagship channel, that actually has some science, ‘Blast Lab’ which is a sort of experiments show – dealing mainly with making a mess via the mediums of physics and chemistry

On CITV, the story is equally poor,

http://www.citv.co.uk/page.asp?partid=31 for today, the 13^th of April,

No box of wholesome scientific programming for children here!

from 6am to 6pm children can watch; Fireman Sam (maybe he sorts out a volcano? ), ‘The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That’ – ‘that’ appears to be magical adventures. Just under an hour of Pokémon, bit of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, two hours of ‘Horrid Henry’, ‘Almost Naked Animals’  and ‘Atomic Betty’ ... all in all no scientific TV.

So, between the two major children’s TV channels there is only one hour of science program, within the Easter holidays where it can be expected that the channel will enjoy significant viewership (partially today as there is some cloud over the UK). Now of course it is holidays, but surely children should have more educational program, science as a whole is such a brilliant subject so much more exciting and interesting that bloody Pokémon or ‘Dick and Dom’.  

Alternatively the channel could use this time to teach children to cook, healthy eating, community guidelines – areas which are important but ignored. Even history, typically an area of great stories and plenty of blood and disease has been replaced by rubbish.

Within mainstream TV the BBC has a world renowned record for producing brilliant nature, travel and scientific programming – children’s programming; arguably an important part of a child’s development is left to be a variety of worthless programmes.  When I was younger (many moons ago....) there was a brilliant nature program ‘The Really Wild Show’ I can still remember some of the information shared on that program, it won a host of awards – but now is gone; what will children watching TV today know? Little of science, nature or history. Originally, I had intended that I would find a children’s TV program that was fairly scientific and write a brief post on it, I am dismayed that no such program, geological or otherwise exists.

Future Scientists?
Image source: The Telegraph

The BBC (I’ve given up with ITV – they never produce anything worth watching anyway) does run a children’s news program, named ‘Newsround’ which airs from between 2 and 10 minutes (not to get in the way of quality resourceful programming). It covers essentially the same stories as the ‘adult’ news, but in a more child friendly way, well the service had, of course reported the Japanese quake and terrifying tsunami. It has given simple, pleasant descriptions and even a demonstration (from a different BBC program, but still useful) which can give interested children information into a fascinating phenomenon... but Newsround also has to cover news, sport, celebrity rubbish and whatever else – in a maximum of 10 minutes; severely stunting its usefulness.  From volunteering within events where children are present they do have an interest in natural sciences and geosciences, so why is an interest that could evolve into a passion being denied information at such a young age? Quite simply it is irresponsible of both the BBC and ITV to not include factual, useful children’s programming within their broadcast. 

Slow News Day

The BBC recently ran a story in how the Lonely Planet has been a little nasty to the delightful Devonian city of Plymouth, naturally as someone who has reasonable ties to the city I had a quick read of the article and then set upon reading the actually Lonely Planet entry – I have a strange thing about reading guide book entries for places I know rather well.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/devon/hi/people_and_places/newsid_9373000/9373118.stm

It turns out that the BBC has been a little misleading on two counts,

Firstly news tends to be ‘new’ it’s kind of in the name, well this edition of the book is available on GoogleBooks (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tqpP0B-Hg7IC&lpg=PA196&dq) and does have an informative section on Plymouth which matches the text in the article; interestingly though this book has been out for three  years  (published in Feb 2008) and is duplicated in the Great Britain book (published 2009) , yet its cutting comments on Plymouth’s significant but at times God-awful architecture have been sitting about for three years... yet only make news on the 25^th of January 2011.

Secondary it subscribes to the Daily Mail manner of producing stories; that is ‘focus on the bit you want to bring across and only slightly mention any other aspect, oh and get something basic wrong’, it performs the later by successfully getting the wrong page number (it says 162, while in reality its page 196) while the former it delves into by essentially it indicating that Lonely Planet states that Plymouth is a bit of a dive but Exeter and Torquay are alright.

Well actually the only the negative text in the Lonely planet passage has been successfully mined out by the BBC, the rest of the article tends to be fairly nice, describing Plymouth’s history, wide range of attractions, bars and restaurants with the usual good flair – with a much larger slot that the more traditionally touristy Torquay and Exeter, besides , other than shopping and a day wandering round the compact barbican looking all historical– there aren’t many reasons for tourists to voyage to Plymouth.

So, this blog is roughly about geoscience; and its communication... what does the Lonely Plant describing Plymouth 3 years ago as grimy have to do with anything? Simple, the article was published not nationally, but in the local section, it’s audience was people from Plymouth or South Devon who may have strong feelings about the tourism knock-on effects of a poor write up, and travel guides are similar to scientific papers, they are an evidence based opinion, fieldwork has been conducted (the authors heading out and researching), it has been subject to peer review (has to be good quality or the ‘Rough Guide’ will sell more) and its audience is seeking knowledge and willing to gamble holiday time and money on it – the fact that the BBC felt it newsworthy to publish a three year old story on not a great deal of controversy points to how science can be reported; when a slow news day comes about, an old story, designed to generate aggravated feelings can be pumped out to generate emotions or concerns– something we’ve seen once or twice before