Customer Reviews

Endangered Minds: Why Children Don't Think And What We Can Do About It

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I read this book over 8 years ago. It really opened my mind to how I wanted to raise my children with respect to television, family time, over commitments, and developmental learning. I have two children ages 8 and 10. They are both at the top of their respective classes, they love to learn and they love to read. They are able to carry-on intelligent conversation at the dinner table and with others that they deal with. They had very little TV exsposure as pre-schoolers, and now TV is limited to the weekends only. I credit this book with guiding me to be a better parent in regards to their academic development. I recommend this book to any new parent. Gain control of the TV and computer games before they take hold of your children's minds.

If you are an advocate of letting your children watch "good TV", like PBS, this book will be a hard pill to swallow. I read it years ago, and loved it. I occasionally go back and reread a passage or two.

She discusses brain development in children at great length. She cites some of the studies that indicate that children who view Sesame Street on a regular basis, express shorter attention spans than those who do not view such programming.

I liked much of the in-depth physiological brain developmental information.

I would highly recommend this book to both parents and teacher alike. Healy maintains an interesting writing style throughout the text, and actively engages her audience. While I do feel the text is rather long, it doesn't dissolve into random banter. The book stays focused until the end, providing many provoking lines of thought. For instance: Since the introduction of standardized schooling over a hundred years ago, the rate of literacy has radically declined. How did we go from a nation of unschooled but highly literate people, to a nation of overschooled and illiterate people? Such illuminations, beg discussion.

Healy's basic premise in this book is that human minds undergo actual physical changes with external stimuli, with different kinds of learning and stimuli producing different effects. She also attempts to show that while the human mind is pretty plastic, it is not infinitely so in that some physical characteristics of the brain are more or less fixed by the time the child reaches adolescence.

With this premise, she attempts to relate how a juvenile mind constantly exposed to fast-paced but unmeaningful visual stimuli (the average TV show) is not prepared adequately to face the demands of school. Thus the worsening of reading skills of today's schoolkid, the increasing prevalence of ADHD and tuned-out kids, or kids who just don't think.

Her arguments are often backed with scientific research, although a good amount of the evidence is anecdotal where scientific data is lacking, mostly gleaned from neuro-scientists and educators with strong suspicions. Her case on the whole is rather strong and convincing.

The solution in short for parents: good ol' fashioned reading and spending time on meaningful communication with your kids, and turn off that TV! Okay, at least severely limit TV-time, since Healy does name a couple of suitable children's shows (Sesame Street is NOT recommended!).

I would recommend this book for parents and educators.

For parents, if you REALLY care for your kids, and are willing to make sacrifices for them. Otherwise don't read this book.

What is amazing about this book (and I am referring to the first edition) is that it describes Generation-X. This book was originally published in 1991, which means that it dealt with children who lived in the eighties. In fact when you read what the children were like in those times (I was one of them...in fact I graduated from High School the year the book was published)and then you relate it to what is written about Gen-X you find an incredible parallel. Has indeed the dominance of television in the first MTV culture (Gen-X) created a generation of people who are not able to truly utilize higher-level thinking abilities? When you compare Healy's work with what we see today it seems that Healy was indeed onto something when she originally wrote the book.
But the book continues to be timely in that television, and "busy" parents, have not disappeared. The influence of both continues to occur, but what do you expect from Gen-X parents who grew up with this?
As one who not only ministers to youth, but has also taught in elementary education and has friends who are teachers, I can tell you that this book is still on target. The scary thing to me is that I think the "restless" nature of kids today is much worse than the past. I believe that ADD and ADHD are "problems" that have developed primarily out of a "television" culture and a culture of "hurried" parents. And until parents start to limit their children's television viewing and spending more time interacting with them, playing with them, and allowing them to be children, the problems will not disappear! I am a parent so I know the challenge!
This is a great book! Every educator and parent should read this!

As a physician I urge every parent to read this book.Turn off the TV!! Spend time with your children. MAKE THEM READ, FOR HOURS AT A TIME! (just like they now sit in front of the TV or nintendo,for hours at a time.) I love her conclusions,and if every one is not YET proven scientific fact, I believe most of her conclusions will eventually be supported by research. It is all good advice and observation in any case.

The difficulty I had with this book is the impression I got that the author did research on a variety of areas relating to brain development and then loosely connected these areas in broader sections. I got lost in some of the data and conclusions, and would sometimes forget what the point of a given section was. She seemed to take too many different directions to prove her point, as opposed to having information that built upon itself.

Having said that, I did find many of Healy's conclusions important, e.g., what is taught in school today is not what is important, but what is easy to measure. She also educated me on the importance of "Whole-language" learning for children, which I don't necessarily agree with and is controversial in my state, Massachusetts. Concerning television, she devotes a whole chapter to condemning Sesame Street. I agree with this assessment, but thought the subject was better exposed in Marie Winn's "The Plug-In Drug" mainly because the latter described the marketing techniques employed by the program.

My favorite chapter was the last, where she explores the future of human brains. Some provocative food for thought is mentioned like: "now, with a flood of data available, the educated mind is not the one that can master facts, but the one able to ask the winnowing question."

The detriment of television on developing children is difficult to prove, I'm learning from reading this book and other similar material. The lack of research on the effects of television is alarming to the author and to me. She has convinced me that television does affect brain development and needs to be better understood. But even the steps to proceed to more understanding are not being taken, which is suspicious.

A large emphasis of this book is that we, as a species, are unique in that we have only a couple instincts, even crawling is learned and not prewired. Therefore our brain adapts to our environment, in the first year favoring areas which are being stimulated. As TV is non interactive, the theory proposed by this book and accepted by the American Academy of Pediatrics, is that TV is harmful to young minds (AAP warns for parents to not allow any watching of TV for children under 2). Since the publication of this book, a one to one correspondence to Attention Deficit Disorder, obesity and anger have all been found related to the amount of time watching TV (any type). There has also been a corresponding drop in the ability to do complex tasks, analyze complex problems and overall literacy for the last 40 years. These are measurable, seen in standardized tests, and now accepted scientifically, but there has been little widestream acceptance as the very mechanism for disseminating this information is TV. It's a must read. Many preschool teachers we know can spot the children who've watched lots of TV by their aggression and difficulty concentrating. Friends who've been teaching for now 30 years have remarked how they are having problems getting even the new teachers to understand the material they are teaching. If you like this book I'd recommend "The Well Trained Mind".

Writes author Jane M. Healy: "many of today's youngsters, at all socioeconomic levels, are blocked from this goal (meaningful learning) by detours erected in our culture, schools, and homes. Fast-paced lifestyles, coupled with heavy media diets of visual immediacy, beget brains misfitted to traditional modes of academic learning."
Parents need to limit children's access to video games, TV, and even computers. Making sure your children get adequate sleep and have some structure in their lives is important. Talk to your children and interact with them. Read to your children.

"Endangered Minds, Why Children Don't Think and What We Can Do About It" by Jane M. Healy, Ph.D. is an alarmingly accurate account of the downward spiral in American schools. It investigates causes of the inability of children to use higher level thinking skills. It puts forth the concept that the human brain is continually changing. Further it offers that the experiences we have shape and change the function of our brain as early as conception and as late as death. This account examines American lifestyles and the effect these lifestyles have on the development of our children. It looks closely at the advent of the electronic age and its effects on children's brains and abilities. It is a must read for teachers and parents. Or anyone who has ever asked, "Why don't children think anymore?"