This week the pupils of one national school and their parents didn't watch TV for five days. How did they survive? Kathryn Holmquist, Education Correspondent reports
The pupils of Glenageary-Killiney National School and their parents were shocked when they were asked to turn off their TVs for a week. Some reacted like patients about to be pulled off life-support and they worried about possible withdrawal symptoms. Before long, however, the talk at the south Dublin school gate among parents, was that families were enjoying the fine weather, getting plenty of fresh air, playing board games together, reading more and talking together for prolonged periods.
TV Turnoff Week has been encouraged by the Reading Association of Ireland, although the concept originated with the Washington, DC-based TV-Turnoff Network. The network has filed a petition with the US Federal Communications Commission to require broadcasters to run warning messages reminding parents that excessive TV viewing has negative health and academic consequences for children.
The official international TV Turnoff Week runs from April 21st to 27th, so there is still time for Irish schools to try out the experiment when they return from the Easter break.
Having tried it with her school and with her own family, Muriel Rumball, principal of the Glenageary-Killiney national school, says the exercise showed how much TV impinges on the enjoyment of family time.
The Gordon family volunteered to give an account of their TV Turnoff Week to The Irish Times.
The family's "No TV" week started on Sunday with immediate negotiations.
"Everyone else in school is starting on Monday!" was one complaint. For Mark (11) the response was unequivocal: "No way, there's a Man U match on Wednesday!" The family agreed the match would be outside the ban, but still faced a battle when Mark wasn't allowed to watch the Premiership highlights.
By 9.40 a.m. on Sunday, the first day without TV (Playstation was also banned), Mark had declared: "I never knew how long a day could be without TV."
His mother, Sue, was concerned he would find it the most difficult, since she reckoned he is sociable and sporty, reads little, and was the least likely of her four children to have the inner resources to find alternative forms of entertainment.
During the day, the family played games together and talked. The house seemed strangely quiet without the background noise of the box. Sue found herself "listening to CDs I had never listened to before".
By Monday evening Mark was engrossed in The Hobbit and the family was making the most of the good weather. The two younger children, Nicola (6) and Jennifer (4), were enjoying instalments of the children's classic, The Velveteen Rabbit, when not out playing in the garden.
Without TV, mealtimes were no longer a battleground. "There were squabbles, but no extreme withdrawal symptoms", says Sue.
On Tuesday, the family went to see Mark play soccer - an outing they would not normally have taken. Sue was beginning to realise how much the family enjoyed spending time together during the long, spring evenings. Previously, TV had eaten up all this time.
She realised that they coped well without TV during summer holidays and that having evenings without TV almost gave a holiday feel to the week.
She and her husband read in bed, "This exercise has given me an insight as to how life can be managed without TV and the need to achieve a better balance for our family," she says.
On Wednesday, Sue said, "We certainly have talked more, enjoyed activities more together and learned to compromise (the Man U match)."
Thursday brought this insight: "We felt slightly out of step with the rest of the world. But this week has changed the way we are going to use TV. I've realised that we had lost the balance by having the TV on all the time.
"From now on, the TV is going to stay off until after dinner. Then we are going to choose one programme for the children to watch. We are going to be selective about our viewing.
"If we fall back into the old pattern, we will consider having more TV-free days on a limited basis."
Sue's husband, Colm Gordon, a director of C & C, found the week more difficult. A news and current affairs junkie, he wanted to watch developments in Iraq on TV. Hearing it on radio and reading about it in the newspaper wasn't the same: "I feel we've lost out on an important piece of history," he says.
International TV Turnoff Week runs April 21st-27th