Information flow management. Raising children with cartoons

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

We bring to your attention the third lecture of the Teach to Good project from the course "Information security of an individual in an aggressive mass culture" (14+). It was read out at the Sober meeting in Taganrog in May 2017. Lecture 1. Lecture 2.

Information flow management

We will begin the third lecture by repeating some of the theoretical points that we have already studied. In order to ensure your information security in an aggressive mass culture, you must be able to manage yourself. Any management always implies the presence of specific goals. Therefore, the first thing you need to do is make a list of specific goals that you strive to achieve, and begin to evaluate all your actions from the point of view of whether they bring you closer to what you want or not. (slide 1.2) … This, in fact, will be what is called a conscious life.

But if you put in the first place some small or exclusively mercantile interests (car, apartment, etc.), then life, although it will be conscious, is unlikely to be happy. Therefore, pay enough attention to this issue to strive for something really important. As your horizons develop and, possibly, your inner qualities change, goals are likely to change too, reflecting your development - this is a normal and natural process. In addition to the fact that we have learned to live consciously, in previous lectures we learned what a conscious perception of information is. (slide 2.2), and also appreciated the content that modern television and cinema offers. At the same time, if the sphere of cinema is diverse in nature, and there is both a large amount of bad and quite a lot of good in it, then modern television in 90 percent of cases is extremely destructive, especially if we take our central television channels.

1. Television

Looking at this slide, let's try to answer the question of whether to watch TV today. I think that everyone who has such an item as "creating a strong and healthy family" in their personal list of goals will agree that it is better to remove the TV from the house in the current situation, or use it only as a monitor. The slide also shows us that television workers today are largely responsible for the decline in the moral level of the population and the subsequent increase in the statistics of divorces, abandoned children and many other negative social phenomena, since the images they form in the minds of viewers directly affects on their behavior. An important point is that television is, first of all, a tool that in itself is neither bad nor good, it is made as such by the goals for the achievement of which it is used. And the goals, in turn, are determined by specific people responsible for the content that will be filled with television. Therefore, refusing to watch TV, we should not stop trying to influence the politics of TV channels, for example, by contacting the authorities or speaking on the same talk shows and bringing the truth about the importance of sober lifestyle. Obviously, it will not be possible to isolate oneself from everything negative, and therefore the task of every sane person is to try to change the surrounding information environment for the better.

This idea is best revealed in the following aphorism: “It's very easy not to watch TV - I don't have it at all. The trouble is that you constantly have to deal with viewers. And as statistics show, television today still remains the main source of information for 60 percent of the country's population, which means it plays a dominant role in the management of social processes. In addition, a significant part of the audience, having switched to the Internet, continues to consume the same television content there. When you make the decision to “remove the TV from the house,” you begin to manage your information flows. What happens at this moment? You identify a constant channel of information that affects you, determine the goals of this influence, compare them with your personal life guidelines, and make the best decision in this situation - to completely stop watching TV. Some, after conducting such an analysis, decide, for example, to watch only news on TV or some particular program. But even in this case, they, in fact, give a significant part of their worldview into the hands of Konstantin Ernst and those like him, because it is the management of the TV channels that determines the range of news that viewers learn. With a high probability, the most important thing in this case either passes by the attention of the mass audience, or in such a way that it will be perceived wrongly.

So, information flow management includes:

1. Identification of information flows affecting you (TV, music, movies, magazines, etc.)
2. Determining the goals of this influence ("what does it teach", or what ideas the information source promotes)
3. Comparison of the identified influence with your list of goals (how useful or harmful the information coming to me is)
4. Formation of your attitude to the channel / source of information (complete refusal, periodic viewing, regular study, etc.)

To completely close the issue with television, let's watch a video dedicated to advertising, which, even by the simple fact of its presence on television, significantly influences the formation of clip thinking among viewers.

2. Cinematography

Now let's deal with the topic of the second lecture - with films and TV series. Watch them or not, and if you look, then how to make sure that the time spent is beneficial or, at least, not harmful? Last time we learned that going to the cinema for a random movie about which you know nothing or received a minimum of information from advertising is like playing the lottery, in which you will lose in 3 out of 4 cases. You will be fooled for your own money. What to do in this situation? There are two approaches.

The first is proactive: no need to watch random movies. Before going to the cinema or downloading a movie, study the available information about it. This can be both reading reviews on the Internet on those sites that you trust, and information or recommendations received from friends and acquaintances. However, as we talked about in the second lecture, the modern system of film criticism is built in such a way as to get the most out of the minds of people and distract from the discussion of the main issues concerning the ideas and values promoted by cinema. And for the same reason, most of your friends also do not know how to rate films, and are highly likely to recommend you, including frankly degrading films. As a result, whether you like it or not, sometimes you will come across films that will "teach the bad", and at such moments you need to implement second approach to cinematographywhich can be conventionally called "responsiveness" … Every time you stumble upon a harmful, destructive film, you will be faced with a choice - "keep silent" or "respond with dignity." To remain silent means to leave everything as it is, without reacting in any way to the information attack carried out against you. Adequate response means telling others about why this film is harmful and what ideas it promotes. How best to do this - personally express your opinion to the one who recommended the film to you, or write a comment on your page on the social network or make a detailed review for the Teach Good project - everyone decides for himself, based on his life circumstances and from the understanding that your action benefited others, and did not become just an advertisement for a bad film. However, you should share your impressions even if the movie was good, in order to express your gratitude to the creators of the picture, as well as recommend it to other people. Most importantly, in reviews of films, one should always focus on the ideas that cinema promotes in order to stimulate others to correctly evaluate the films from the standpoint of answering the question "what are they teaching?" With such a conscious and responsible approach, you will hardly be able to watch more than one or two films a week, but in any case it will be time spent with benefit for you and for those around you. If you are used to watching several episodes of TV series every day, then most likely this wasted time does you more harm than good.

Recommendations for watching movies:

1. Do not watch more than 1-2 films per week
2. Read the information about the movie before watching
3. During the viewing, identify the main ideas promoted by the film, answer the question "what does it teach"
4. Write your own review of the film, revealing the meanings promoted by it, its educational component

Modern animation and parenting with cartoons

If with films you in some sense have the right to "play roulette", periodically getting on negative content, then in the case of children and cartoons, such an approach is no longer acceptable. What is a cartoon for a child? In fact, it is a model of the world around them, so children tend to very actively imitate what they see on the screen. For this reason, the question of what the cartoon brings to children in their bright souls becomes very relevant - more relevant than the same question, but in relation to adults. In the first 5-7 years of life, children, like sponges, absorb everything they see in the world around them, and it is during this period that the formation of the child's personality takes place.

An important feature of childhood is the lack of a meaningfully conscious, critical attitude to all that information that enters the psyche, that is, in most cases it passes directly into the subconscious and becomes the brick on the basis of which the child's future worldview will be based. The further development of the child depends on what foundation will be laid in these years. At the age of 7 years, children receive most of the information through non-verbal means of communication: static and dynamic images, emotions and intonation, gestures, facial expressions, etc. In infancy (0 - 1 years old), the source of information is the parents, especially the mother. In early childhood (1 - 3), parents remain assistants to the child: he begins to actively explore the world and … watch cartoons. At preschool age (3 - 7 years old), the child becomes an active consumer of cartoons, since he has mastered speech, mastered elementary stereotypes of behavior, there is physical independence from his parents. Each cartoon expands the boundaries of the child's world, plunges into a new reality, introduces new areas. And the main thing here is to what extent this reality suits the age-related interests of the child. As far as he can understand what this plot is about, what they were trying to tell him about. The logical connection between events is important, as far as the child is able to trace it, whether the child can connect the events he himself saw and establish cause-and-effect relationships, understand what is coming from. The child's readiness to sit in front of the screen is clearly not enough to give a cartoon a positive assessment.

Cartoons for modern children take up a huge part of their pastime. There are several reasons for this:

• The cartoons themselves are interesting to the child due to the peculiarities of their age;
• The creators of modern cartoons use every means at their disposal to keep children on the TV (humor, bright colors, dynamism, etc.);
• Many parents find it easier to leave their child at the TV than to come up with games and entertainment for him, help him develop and participate in his development.

For these reasons, the functions of upbringing, cognition and development go to a very large extent to cartoons, in particular, and the TV screen in general, since there is no guarantee that the child will only watch cartoons. Now let's see what qualities modern cartoons bring up in children?

The main disadvantages of modern animation:

• An overabundance of aggression and violence on the screen. Too detailed scenes of fights with blood, murders, demonstration of the attributes of death (skulls, cemeteries). The main character is often aggressive and can harm others. The child can then imitate the cartoonish cruelty in their life.
• Complete impunity. A bad deed by the character is not punished, and sometimes even welcomed. The child may form a stereotype of permissiveness.
• Blurry of ideas about good and evil. There is no clear line between good and evil. Black appears to be white, and white appears to be black, and sometimes there is no edge at all, and everything is seen as innocent individualism. Even a positive character can do bad deeds for good purposes.
• Endowing a woman with masculine features of appearance and character and vice versa. This is reflected in the behavior, clothing, role of the character. Often women in cartoons have an unequivocal sexual interest in men, showing and demonstrating it on the screen in every possible way. In addition, cartoons often contribute to the incorrect formation of the image of mother and motherhood.
• Early sex education. This opens up the sphere of drives in the child ahead of time, for which the child is not yet functionally, morally and physically ready. In the future, this will result in difficulties with creating a family and procreation.
• Excess humor and stupidity. Firstly, it is bad humor when gloating becomes the norm. Positive heroes gloat over evil, arrogantly sneer at each other. Secondly, humor over vices. In this case, vices become attractive. But since the child has not developed critical thinking, he can no longer rethink the attitude set through humor and perceives vice as the norm. Thirdly, it is an excess of humor. Nowadays in modern cartoons they laugh at everything and make fun of everything - especially what is considered traditional. This is how the cult of stupidity is realized; lack of seriousness and responsibility entails the same attitude towards life. Humor and laughter are powerful psychological defenses that work through the mechanism of devaluation and belittling the significance of the object being ridiculed. Of course, there is no need to rush to the other extreme and remove humor altogether. But the abundance of humor suggests that funny scenes compensate for the lack of interest created at the expense of other substantive characteristics of the film (for example, the originality of the ways of presenting good and evil, the presence of ideas that go beyond satisfying physiological and everyday needs).

Some disadvantages of the pictorial side of cartoons:

• Excessive emphasis on secondary sexual characteristics. The external female appearance is emphasized: a clear relief of the chest, waist, hips - which arouses interest.
• Increased dynamism … Watching too dynamic scenes and scenes with bright flashes on a TV screen overexcites the central nervous system and greatly contributes to the formation of clip thinking in viewers.
• Naturalism, when the processes of physiology are deliberately underlined: wounds, discharge (bunches, drooling), muscle relief, etc.
• Inconsistency of the soundtrack with the video sequence. Inconsistency of speech with the age of the child. The heroes speak either in complex words, or their speech and emotions are primitive to the point of dullness.

For the normal development of a child, cartoons must contain the following information:

• A kind, caring attitude to the surrounding nature: to animals, plants, other people.
• Obedience, respect for adults, instilling kindness, honesty, Love. We are not talking about unconditional obedience, because adults make mistakes, and children can correct them.
• A lifestyle without alcohol, cigarettes and other addictions. The appeal of a sober and healthy lifestyle. This also applies to cases when alcohol and cigarettes are not directly shown, but are shown metaphorically or with the help of jokes, hints, hints.
• Correct Russian speech: without distortion, without an excess of foreign words, without foreign words if possible (ok, for example, you can replace it with “good”, “okay”, “understandable”), without primitive and ornate speech, but rich and figurative.
• Interest in books, knowledge, self-development and improvement of their human qualities. It is necessary to show that knowledge leads to an improvement in the situation and the resolution of life problems.
• Shame and conscience. Conscience is an innate feeling that tells a person how to do the right thing. It is necessary to show from childhood that it is right to live in harmony with your conscience. Without shame and conscience, you cannot become a Man.
• A clear distinction between good and evil, good and bad behavior. Children are very sensitive to everything that comes into their psyche. Evil in cartoons must be punished - punished with the language of life's circumstances or with the hand of other villains - ending the plot with a positive ending, where good wins. The best way to win is to help the villains sincerely repent - to rethink their actions and thoughts and change their behavior.
• Ethnic wealth … Russian civilization is inhabited by many peoples. We all have kind and interesting tales;
• Heroism … One of its features is that this heroism should not be based only, and not even so much on strength. He should be based on the ability to choose the right option, apply his Knowledge, give the opportunity for evil to sincerely repent and change. Individualism is destructive for humanity, therefore in cartoons it is necessary to show collegiality, in which everyone makes his own valuable and unique contribution, and the result of the team is not reduced to the sum of the contribution of each of the participants, but is a work. In modern cartoons, as a rule, there is one "best" (leader) who subjugates others and pulls the whole team on the hump.

Thus, here is a far from complete list of advantages that need to be filled with cartoons for children. There are few such cartoons among modern ones, so the general recommendation boils down to showing children mainly Soviet cartoons, and modern ones - only those in which you are sure. But the most important thing concerns parents: try to watch cartoons with your children, comment on the actions of the cartoon, talk with children about their favorite cartoons, but do not impose your truth, but work out it together. Let's finish today's lecture with a video review of the rather deep Soviet cartoon "Fantik. A primitive tale ".