That's Edutainment

The world is a stage of edutainment. Now, some of you may not of heard of the word 'edutainment' before, but even if you haven't you still know what it means. We are being educated by our entertainment far more effectively than our formal educational institutions are educating us. And what exactly is being tutored? Our worldview. In Tocqueville's Selected Letters, he states, "You know my ideas well enough to know that I accord institutions only a secondary influence on the destiny of men. Would to God I believed more in the omnipotence of institutions! I would have more hope for our future, because by chance we might, someday, stumble onto the precious piece of paper that would contain the recipe for all wrongs, or on the man who knew the recipe. But, alas, there is no such thing, and I am quite convinced that political societies are not what their laws make them, but what sentiments, beliefs, ideas, habits of the heart, and the spirit of the men who form them, prepare them in advance to be, as well as what nature and education have made them. " Industry instead of institutions are directing, not only our youth but, the entire consumer populous.

Schools once watched over by doting parents are now abandoned to educational professionals. Neighborhoods where each neighbor knew where the other neighbor's children were have gone by the wayside. Entertainment has taken over the outdoor afterschool playtime. This happened in my lifetime and those of us raised playing in the streets and coming home to dinnerbells let it happen. I don't exactly know when it all stopped. Maybe when we first heard that a child was kidnapped. Maybe when all the moms stopped baking chocolate chip cookies. I don't know when but here we are waiting for redbox to supply us with something for our family to do.

Sentiments once turned to wisdom, self control and maturity have, under the direction of a capitalist entertainment system, turned future adults into perpetual children or even worse perpetual teenagers