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3) Do children understand what they watch?
Merilyn Truxal, who runs a private, state-licensed nursery-kindergarten, tells the story about a mother whose four year-old watched an episode of the popular television show I'LL FLY AWAY, depicting the South during the Civil Rights Movements of the 1960s. The next day the young girl cried when it was time to go to her sitter who is African-American. The mother tried to understand what the girl's difficulty was when she finally said, "remember that program last night, Mom. It said you weren't supposed to have a black sitter for me." Confused about where this attitude would have come from since the family was very careful about not communicating negative attitudes regarding race, the mother finally realized the child had picked up a comment made by one of the racist characters in the television show and internalized it. Children often cannot discern between negative and positive modeling. (See Truxal, Merilyn (1994) "Increasing Teacher/Parent Awareness of Developmentally Appropriate Movies for 3-6 Year Olds through Use of a Rating Scale", ERIC ED 371 873).