THE NEW KINCHIN LAY.(children and mass media)(Critical Essay)

ABOUT FIVE years ago, there was a road accident in the country just north of Melbourne. A car carrying a family plunged down an embankment, injuring all the occupants except a six-year-old boy, and trapping them in the wreckage. The boy managed to get out, climbed the embankment and flagged down a car. His family were rescued, and the boy was a hero.

The media are always looking for popular heroes, and will sometimes manufacture them if genuine heroes are not available. Here was not only a real hero, but a child hero. One network offered the family a new four-wheel-drive in return for letting them run a series of feature stories on the boy for a week in their current affairs programs. No doubt the network phrased the offer in positive terms--a car for you, fun and fame for your son, good wholesome family stories for the viewing public. Who could refuse?

The father refused. He told them bluntly that he wanted his son to grow up as normally as possible. He knew that the sort of media attention the boy would get would endanger that normality and his son's chances of leading a balanced, happy life. His refusal was sufficiently unusual to make the news (though not on television). People don't usually reject such offers. The opportunity of money and television fame, however brief, is the stuff of dreams, and if it comes to one's children, so much the better.

It was ironic, and remarkably wise, that the father should speak of protecting the normality of his son's life. For most people now television is an integral part of normality; for him, on the contrary, it represented a threat to normality. When we were looking for a primary school for our son, we asked first at the local state school, ideally placed just a short walk away. One of the brochures they gave us was about children's reading. It advised that one should "turn off the television", clearly accepting that it was normal for households to have the television on all the time. It may well be normal, but it is another thing for a school, which should be preparing its students for an independent life in the world, to accept the fact. Television is an enemy of mental independence.

The same school also plays pop music over its public address system after the bell rings to signal the start of the school day. When the students have assembled, the music is turned off, usually before the song has finished. The brighter students, and especially those interested in pop music, would realise that the school does not care about the music at all but is just using it, pandering to the children's supposed taste. (After the music stops, the voice of the headmistress booms out with the daily announcements--over the whole neighbourhood, in fact, if the wind is from the west. As Humphrey Appleby might say, being pandered to and shouted at every day is an excellent preparation for life after school.)

School, for many people, is the only place where they might ever be exposed to the sorts of richer possibilities of life that television and radio mostly ignore. They will be surrounded by commercial popular culture for the rest of their lives. If school cannot show them that life need not be lived in the shallows, they may never even be aware of the hidden depths. What are we to think of a school whose cultural standards are no higher than those of its students? Schools, particularly primary schools, should at least have the courage to lead, not follow, their students. (We chose another school.)

IS THERE A TIME in their lives now when children are not the targets of commercial popular culture? The Wiggles draw the main audience for their banal songs from pre-schoolers, and they are competing in what must be a very lucrative market with Bananas in Pyjamas and Teletubbies among others. Even the more meritorious Thomas the Tank Engine stories have become little more than a means of selling the associated products. All of these are promoted by the ABC, our non-commercial network, which presumably takes a generous cut of the profits.