By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Jul 30 1998 (IPS)

Argentinian children spend hours in front of TV sets and read 10 times less than their U.S. counterparts, despite the significant development of children’s literature in Argentina in recent years.

Children between the ages of 10 and 13 look at television for at least four hours a day, which means that they spend more time in front of the T.V. set than in school, according to a study sponsored by the Association of Hinterland Newspapers of Argentina.

The issue has begun to cause serious concern not only among foundations that are trying to encourage the reading habit and curb consumerism, but also among some paediatricians who specialise in child nutrition, obesity and cardiology.

The Argentine Council on Arterial Hypertension of the Argentine Cardiology Society warned this month that, in general, Argentinian children watch too much television and spend too much time playing video games and peering at computer screens. These habits, part of an increasingly sedentary and passive lifestyle, are causing an increase in cases of obesity and diabetes in children: more time spent looking at TV means less time spent on sports, walks and reading.

Italian political scientist Giovanni Sartori warned in his book ‘Homo Videns: The Television-driven Society’ that the daily consumption of television is harmful to children since it destroys their capacity for abstraction and stifles critical thought.

Argentine teachers and experts in paedagogy like Agustin Maurin agree.

According to Maurin, the latest survey by the Ministry of Education concluded that seven out of 10 children between the ages of 11 and 12 do not know how to write a summary or identify the main theme of a text. The report attributed this to low levels of reading.

“The practice of reading is the only one that guarantees the formation in children of the ability to make distinctions and reason, and at the same time to dream and create,” said the expert.

The Reading Foundation here has pointed out that children in Argentina read less than one book a year, while the U.S. average is 10.5. The foundation attributes this to the myth that “a child that can master television, video games and a computer is better equipped for the future than one who cannot”.

The study sponsored by the Association of Hinterland Newspapers of Argentina reveals that half of the children aged 10 to 13 in the capital and in 16 provinces have a TV set in their rooms, while 60 percent of those surveyed said that when they got home from school, the television was already on.

More than half the children admitted that the television set went off only when they were ready for bed, and 75 percent said that comments about the shows were among the main topics of conversations with their parents.

On the other hand, reading books and magazines takes up barely half an hour per day on average, and newspapers hardly exist in the children’s world, except for the sports pages.

Paradoxically, statistics from the Argentine Book Association show that the number of children’s books published annually went from 358 in 1991 to 705 1997, when more than four million copies were churned out. At the same time, though, there has been an enormous increase in the number of cable channels offering children’s programmes 24 hours a day.

Argentina is the country with the most cable viewers in Latin America.

“When I was my son’s age, six years old, I had one or two favorite programmes at a certain time of the day,” said a concerned 35-year-old father. “He, on the other hand, knows that whenever he wants to sit in front the TV set there will always be something that interests him, and if he wants to watch for four hours, there will always be something.”

Educators say the answer is not to ban children from looking at TV, but rather to limit the time they spend doing so. Parents should also look at programmes with their children so that they can then comment on and draw lessons from them.

This would amount to accepting the reality of TV and its hold on children but, at the same time, deriving as much benefit from it as possible.

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