11 March 1999, 880 words
Violence among the nation's youth can apparently be fixed very easily. All we need to do is ban soca music, according to Dr. Herb Addoo; make religion compulsory in schools, according to Education Minister Dr. Adesh Nanan; and censor TV shows, according to letter-writer David Subran.
Apparently, I've been reading all the wrong books and articles. All the information I have tells me that violence is caused by factors like poverty, social injustice, economic disparity, political corruption, poor education, and irrationality. At least, these - and not music, lack of religion, and television - are always the common factors in any society which has significant violence. But maybe something is wrong with my deductive abilities, too.
The fact that more religion has never helped cure social problems doesn't lessen enthusiasm for it as a panacea, save in those atheistic societies which choose to deal with poverty, social injustice, economic disparity, etc. instead of calling upon Benny Hinn. Blaming music isn't a new idea, either - it's just another U.S. import from the era of rock 'n' roll.
As for TV - well, that particular whipping boy has been perennially popular for the past 40 years, too, when it came to explaining every issue related to young people, from bad grades to bad manners to bad behaviour. Trouble is, the research doesn't support the hypothesis.
There is not one reputable study which has convincingly demonstrated that television is a causative factor in violent behaviour. At most, some studies claim that TV violence may act as a trigger provided other factors (abuse, poverty etc.) are present. And none of those studies ever had a proper control group (i.e. a group that had never been exposed to TV with the same social/cultural/demographic profile as a group which had) so any conclusions they made were, well, inconclusive.
In fact, there is only one study I know of which had a real control. This was done on the island of St Helena (yes, the same one that Napoleon was exiled to) which is now a British crown colony. Television was first introduced to the island in the mid-1990s. In a five-year project, a team of psychologists studied about 300 St Helena children between three and five years of age before and after TV was introduced. The team found that the children did not become more violent. It should be noted, though, that only 3.4 percent of the island's children had behavioural problems (a rate bettered only by Japan, which by the way produces some of the most violent cartoons in the world - check out the artistic Samurai X on TTT.)
Now this finding didn't surprise me in the least. I have always been sceptical of claims that television and movies can determine children's behaviour. My first reason for being sceptical is personal: I have been an avid fan of martial arts movies since I was nine and yet I have never gone around karate-chopping people.
My second reason is a logical one: if TV influences children's values and behaviour, how come it doesn't influence them for good rather than ill? I mean, it has always struck me that even in the crassest shows, the hero, no matter how violent, is always portrayed as honourable, strong and committed to justice, whereas the bad guys are always obnoxious and/or absurd. So why would children want to be like the bad guy, who on top of everything else always gets his butt kicked?
But Mr. Subran apparently didn't bother to research this issue before dashing off his letter. (In Trinidad, whether you're Lloyd Best or M.F. Rahman, unsubstantiated opinion always carries more weight than reasoned empiricism.) Indeed, I suspect Subran didn't even bother to look at the children's shows on local TV. For the younger viewers, there is the perennial Sesame Street and the excellent Rugrats on TTT, while TV6 has favourites like Gullah Gullah Island and Barney and Friends. Among the shows offered for viewers between nine and 90, TV6 has Batman and Superman, both very well-scripted cartoons that deal with issues like honour, duty, obsession, loyalty, irrationality, punishment and, what is more important, treats with them in ways that mirror real life. (Superman, for example, always has to figure out clever solutions to foil the crooks, despite his super-powers. Batman's enemies usually have psychological motives for their evil deeds and Batman himself is a flawed champion - just like villians and heroes in the real world.) Other shows like TV6's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena (which TTT is now repeating for about the third time) offer similarly complex insights in gripping and often witty episodes.
Clearly, however, none of these shows has helped mitigate violence among the youth. So it is either that TV really doesn't determine what the youths do, for good or ill, or that I have really bad taste in shows. Either way, I suppose we will continue to hear that TV, music, lack of religion, Carnival and meat-eating is to blame for every social ill. After all, people always prefer to find scapegoats rather than causes: it saves them having to think and do. Mr. Subran, unsurprisingly, has also written a letter to the editor supporting hangings.
Copyright ©1999 Kevin Baldeosingh