How did generations with unlimited TV and no enrichment…

[Anonymous]

We had one TV, it was kept in the living room, and we were each allowed to choose one hour of tv a week during the school year. So if my sister was watching her chosen hour, I could watch that, plus another hour. We also watched the news and Sixty Minutes etc as a family. And if our mom or dad was watching something (rare) we were allowed to watch.

During the summer we were allowed to watch TV when the sun was high (11am to noon, 1pm to 2pm, as lunch was at noon). So we weren't outside in the sun getting burned. Plus our one hour another time of day. The rest of the day we were outside playing or inside reading or doing arts and crafts.
 
That's a heckuva lot less screen screen time than kids get today.

I spent a lot of time reading to entertain myself.

[Anonymous]

We didn’t take our TVs to school with us in our pockets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think education was much, much better.

This.
I can scarcely believe what passes for a curriculum in the schools today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think education was much, much better.

This is probably true in many circumstances. For one, women didn't have as many career opportunities. So you had some really smart women go into teaching, more so than today probably.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:…succeed in life? Not being snarky, I’m just trying to understand. When I was young, children just watched TV and had no academic “enrichment” outside of perhaps an instrument and a sport. Certainly no Kumon or academic acceleration. They went on to have successful careers and great lives. Were standards lower? Are children going to be a lot smarter because of screen time limits?

My bright kid did not have Kumon or other paid for academic acceleration. Stop projecting onto all kids today.

[Anonymous]

Lots of immigrants from race to the top cultures. Too many people overall too, and too few colleges

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There was a lot less competition because the world was not globalized and populations were smaller, and most state tuition was quite low so the need to chase aid was nothing like it is now. I watched TV constantly as a kid and did only 1-2 low-key activities of 1-2 hours per week until high school.

My elite alma mater is only ~10% larger than it used to be but receives an order of magnitude more applicants today. At the same time, the US population has increased by 100M people and international students have gone from 6 to 20% of the undergraduate student body. College applications were done in hand or by typewriter and the common app was in its infancy.

It isn’t surprising that when there is less opportunity to go around, people will do more extreme things to access it.

This!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:…succeed in life? Not being snarky, I’m just trying to understand. When I was young, children just watched TV and had no academic “enrichment” outside of perhaps an instrument and a sport. Certainly no Kumon or academic acceleration. They went on to have successful careers and great lives. Were standards lower? Are children going to be a lot smarter because of screen time limits?

Lol, seriously? What limits? They’re on screens all day at school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I was a kid in the 80s, every child that attended our public elementary had a very good chance of emerging a strong reader and speller with a command of math facts. If you were precocious you were tracked into a gifted program that achieved much more.

Now it’s hard to guarantee *anything* even at privates. Parents have to be involved to ensure a decent outcome.

Now there are too many kids who have such low literacy and families that are so poor and uneducated that most of resources are spent on catching them up at least somewhat
Add the globalized world where highly qualified families have highly qualified kids and you have what you have today.

[Anonymous]

I watched a TON of TV growing up (but also did sports and choir and hung with friends) and I still don’t think my screen time would be comparable to today’s smart phone addicts and gamer teens.

I also walked to school, spent a ton of time without adult supervision, babysat other kids at age 11+ and went to a tech- free summer camp. I think the time spent with other kids being bored and figuring out what to do is what is really good for critical thinking and brain development, navigating social stuff without constant adult interference in a minimally structured environment, and the chance to be independent is what today’s kids will lack, even if they watch less TV as elem schoolers and get more “enrichment”.

[Anonymous]

We were never allowed to watch tv on school nights and we didn’t have IPads or smartphones. We did our homework, read books or we just messed around. We didn’t have tutors but I took a lot of dance and my siblings played sports. Our brains weren’t assaulted with social:media garbage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People had less money then to spend on all this enrichment. But kids still had drive and ambition and if they grew up poorer they were really driven to make money and improve their circumstances and hit the ground running once they finished college and got into the real world. The motivation and desire was there, just waiting for the opportunity.

What's the saying.. "necessity is the mother of all inventions".. well, in this case, being poor spurred me to get an education and a job. I had to hustle. I went to a no name state u.

When you are down at the bottom, you have nowhere to go but up. When you start from the UMC, it takes a lot for the offsprings to stay there.

[Anonymous]

You could coast on being smart for longer in school because parents weren’t supplementing. We didn’t have cell phones, just tv, so even if your parents were lax about tv, you probably weren’t watching it for as long as kids now watch things on their phones. We had text books, so studying might have been easier.

[Anonymous]

Back in the day the only tv everyone had in the house was in the living room and parents controlled what everyone watched. After 8 pm you went to your room and settled down for the night. Lights out at 9 pm.

I raised my kids the same way. I truly believe when women started working full time outside of the home and the term latch key kids became the norm, society took a big hit. It all went down hill from there. The tv became the babysitter.
It's no one's fault. We were lied to and were sold sin as freedom.

[Anonymous]

Alot of kids didn't need screen time limits. Yes, we had tv/video games, but kids were allowed much more freedom and socialized more in person. As far as enrichment, activities were a thing, but again kids imo had a better balance.