A shout-out to The Daily Show

When we are staring at one of those rectangular screens, rather than game-playing, one of our favorite family shows is The Daily Show. We hook-up the computer to the TV and enjoy some Hulu time. An interesting thing happened when we watched a show from last week involving an interview with Mike Huckabee about abortion:



Now, many people talk about how awful it is that people use the Daily Show as "their sole news source" (And I agree, it is bad when people do this, but you have to remember that this is probably mostly people who weren't using any respectable source for news. Not like people stopped turning to the NYT in order to grab their news from the Daily Show ... and the Daily Show does show us how ridiculous many "credible" news sources are. But anyway, off-topic...)

However, many people forget about the advantage of this easily-digestible, silly show about current events. They are fun to watch as a family. When I was Sam's age, I couldn't stand when 60 Minutes came on the TV .. I would stare at the ceiling and imagine it covered with elves fighting cockroaches, rather than go through one of those segments. But, Sam, Mary and I actually enjoy watching The Daily Show together; Sam is often the one requesting we watch it. (Now, I know it has an obvious political-skew, but one that is pretty close to our home values anyway. But that is a discussion/investigation/arguement for another time.)

After this particular Daily Show viewing, we spent much of the evening talking about abortion, reproductive rights and family decisions, etc. A topic that would have been hard to open if we'd led with, "So, Sam ... What do you think about abortion?" Instead, The Daily Show brought the topic into our home in an intelligent and less-heavy way. Sam actually said, "I've learned more tonight talking with you guys than I did all of 6th grade." Now, that is a bit of an exaggeration from a short-sighted kid newly out of school. (Sam constantly came home with really smart and interesting things that he learned at school) But again, homework took up the time for us to have these types of discussions.

I don't know if homework really helped Sam in his pre-teen years (I know it helped, but did it help at the expense of greater value from family interaction). I understand the need for it in the teenage (and after) years, because a certain independence is being discovered and a need for self-reliance, control and motivation. However, in this age-period of family learning and activity - homework sure was a burden and seemed to be just an extension of the skills he was already learning at school.

So, thanks Daily Show.