There is an evident reliability on the Internet and other technologies in today's society which underscores McLuhan’s referral to the “TV child,” or a child who spends so much time in
front of the television before first grade that this child is not adapted to
old school styles: “The TV child finds it difficult if not impossible
to adjust to the fragmented, visual goals of our education after having had all
his senses involved by the electric media…” (The Playboy Interview). This theory raises the question as
to whether or not the educational systems should adapt to the “TV child” rather
than the child adapting to old school ways. According to McLuhan, “this is an
age of information overload. …[and] the only way to make the schools other than
prisons without bars is to start fresh with new techniques and values” (The Playboy Interview). As a result, McLuhan proposed an assertion that educational systems needs to take learning out of classrooms, making assignments experimental and designated to involve students in society and not just "chained" to a desk. To McLuhan, "The metropolis today is a classroom, the ads are its teachers. The traditional classroom is an obsolete detention home, a feudal dungeon" (The Book of Probes); this theory also applies to the imminent influence advertisements have on our society and how unaware we are of these cultural impacts.
Has anyone been influenced to purchase an item or behave a certain way based off of an advertisement?
I find this whole notion very provocative: the suggestion that things are "so far gone" that the system must adapt to the child, as it were. But of course this also echoes the idea that contemporary schooling and "parenting" (gosh I hate that word) have created children who become increasingly used to being coddled and thereby unable to solve problems or show initiative as effectively as those raised with ore "traditional" methods (both in the past or in different cultures). I do think the digitization of the classroom is a very bad trend for childhood development in general.
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