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District show positive gains in language for participants from parents, schools, and teachers. In
all of these examples, the role of the adult was heavily emphasized.
In today’s world, mass media in general and television in particular are increasingly influential in
the socialization of the upcoming generations. The seductiveness of television makes it a key
socializing agent, especially for children from disadvantaged backgrounds who have no access to
other cultural commodities or recreational facilities, and who are more or less left to their own
devices by parents unable to cope with their problems. These are some of the serious problems
that face countries like Brazil (Chevallier & Mansosur, 1993).
Television is such a dominant force in Brazilian culture that the television seems to be a "school
outside school" attended by practically all of the country’s young people irrespective of age and
social class. For some, it is the only school they know.
The fragile condition of Brazilian education is of prime importance when implementing a
television program for children. Brazil, with its material poverty, very short school days and
poorly paid, insufficiently trained teachers only compounds their problems. With all of these
difficulties, schools have now been given another mission: education in the mass media.
Realizing this mission, an innovative experiment was conducted to promote education through
the use of television.
The overall objective of the experiment was to teach children and adolescents to use television
actively and critically. The educational principal of the program predicated the integration of the
mass media in the school room, both as objects to be studied and as educational tools. The aim
was to connect up previously conflicting discourses, as the only way of securing a unified
socialization process and one that was adapted to present and future needs.
Results showed that the objectives of introducing children and adolescents to the conscious
perception and critical discussion of televised messages gave them knowledge of the technical
aspects of the production and transmission of messages. Survey's conducted by Edward Palmer
(1988) and Sachiko Kodaria (1991) indicated that children received an understanding of the
different types of shows and of the organization of scheduling. They also gained the ability to
distinguish between real and fictional elements within messages, and was aware of the different
ways in which televised messages influence feelings, values, self image, opinions, and behaviors.
A perception of the different ways in which social, economic and political events were presented
and learned.
Involving parents through multi-media
Another initiative undertaken in promoting early child development was started by the
Educational Television Intervention Programs Project (ETIPS) of Tennessee Technological
University in Cookeville, Tennessee. Acknowledging that parents are the major resource to the
holistic development of their children, ETIPS developed and field tested a supplementary model
for early intervention in rural isolated regions.
The major goal of the ETIPS has been to develop parents as a resource in their children’s
education by showing them how they could be effective at early intervention if good examples
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