Baroness Benjamin, who shot to fame as presenter of the BBC’s Play School in the 1970s and was made a Liberal Democrat peer last year, suggested that children should be taught how to limit their use of modern technology, and by exercising restraint they will learn how to resist other temptations when they are older.
Speaking at an event about children’s TV hosted by campaign group the Voice of the Listener and Viewer, she said: ‘Children must not watch television or access the internet in their bedrooms.
‘I was at a school today and I asked the children if they had televisions in their room, and almost half of the children put their hands up and said they had.
‘They must switch them off. We must teach children how to resist and how to say no.
It teaches them how to take on things in their wider life, whether it's drugs or bullying or having affairs. It takes strong minds.’ Scientific research has already shown that children who have a TV in their room suffer academically, and last month it was revealed that a couch-potato generation of youngsters were watching TV for up to six hours a day.
In February, during a debate on parenting in the Lords, Baroness Benjamin, 62, said that televisions and computers should be banned from children’s bedrooms as they are being used as ‘surrogate parents or baby-sitters’, and called for an improvement in modern children’s programmes.
But speaking at the event, Joe Godwin, the director of the BBC’s children’s department, defended TV’s role in allowing children to wind down after a day at school.
He said: ‘Going to school is hard work and it is important that when children come home they can veg out.’
Baroness Benjamin, who is married with two children, also called for greater diversity on screen and among those who make programmes.
She said: ‘Often the adverts on commercial channels contain more diversity than the programmes themselves.'
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment