My 6th grade teacher in Panama used to call the TV "the idiot box." Was he right ?

Answer 1

Like a lot of things it depends on how you use it. It depends a lot on if you control it or if it controls you. 'The idiot box' used to be a fairly common description of the TV and for good reason. However, I see TV as getting both worse and better at the same time.

There are many many shows that are not only stupid but provide very poor role modelling, give people an inacurate understanding of the outside 'scary world' and tend to over-emphasize image over substance which is indeed a very worrying trend.

That said, there are also some very good uses of TV for teaching and entertaining. If you discriminate in what you watch and you avoid the commercials then it can indeed be a very useful tool in your overall education.

If you just mindlessly channel surf and get exposed to little carefully prepared bites of misleading information, it can give you a very false picture of the world and indeed turn you into an 'idiot'.

Answer 2

If you mean is "idiot box" an expression some use to refer to a TV, the answer is yes. If you mean is the TV in fact an idiot box, I guess that depends on how you view the programmes on TV, whether you think they're informative and educational or whether you think they're mostly garbage.

Answer 3

Television is a telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures and sound over a distance. The term has come to refer to all the aspects of television from the television set to the programming and transmission. The word is derived from mixed Latin and Greek roots, meaning "far seeing" (Greek "tele," meaning far, and Latin "visus," meaning seeing).

As with all technology, it can be used for good or bad, as an idiot box or as a smart box...

Answer 4

He used to be. Now the PC is the new idiot box.

Answer 5

Yes! Absolutely!!! LOL!

Nevermind... now I agree with the guy below me, LOL!

Answer 6

Yep he was!