issue38 [SJTU-ETB6 10G] 第6次作业

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ISSUE38 - "In the age of television, reading books is not as important as it once was. People can learn as much by watching television as they can by reading books."
WORDS: 580          TIME: 00:52:17          DATE: 2007-8-7 15:41:11

Is reading not as important as before in the era of television? The statement asserts so. I concede that television can be a more efficient and effective way of learning in a few certain respects. In my view, however, television cannot serve as substitute for books when it comes to learning in vast fields.

Admittedly, television possesses the new feature of being vivid and instant vision in describing events and scenes. For this matter, books cannot do better than television. Television's new feature makes itself be more attractive and interesting in conveying some visions which needs to be shown in all respects instead of just recording in words. Take the serial shows National Geographic as an example; though via color books we can learn some thing relatively attractive, the television's coming then makes the program which aims at imparting variety of natural world to people easily be accepted and welcomed. Also it is the same in the realm of art, especially the screen art which comes to being just with the advent of television. In this sense, the television is the inherent dependant tool for the surviving of screen art.

However, as we all know, the advantages--its vivid and instant feature-- of television is largely used for conveying information and providing entertainment rather than for learning. Variety of entertainment programs are on show in television for most part of time everyday--the main reason is that these programs are profitable tools which are determined by the audience rating, so the more attractive the programs are the more profits they will earn. Another useful trait is the information-conveying which embody all the new features television gets, but this usage is only conveying information--a process without thinking and learning. For all the two matters, the television furnishes us little knowledge.

Yet, in contrast, just as Shakespeare once said "Books are the nutrient of the whole world", books provide profuse kinds of knowledge. We can easily think of myriads of libraries and bookstores throughout the whole nation where so many amounts of books containing all kinds of nutrient are stored. Such as books on science, philosophy, history, art, technology, religion and so on. Obviously, television is so limited in this respect, and the only storage of some subjects is duplicated from the information recorded in books. So people cannot become independent or less independent of books only in this sense of knowledge amount even in nowadays.

Besides the large amount of knowledge books provide for us, books possess an advantage of describing human thoughts and scientific theories, which people can only learn from books. For this matter, the function can be summarized as "Books are the ladder of human progress"--a proverb said by Maksim Gorky. The process of obtaining thoughts or scientific theory--such as Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity--is not an easy one which can be finished in a flash. On the contrary, it needs think and think again which defers from person to person. So if this kind of things is done in form of television, how can one decide how many times should it be displayed? Only via books can this task be done nicely without doubt.

In sum, I concede that the merits that television gets are much more advanced than books. However, books facilitate learning if certain ways that television cannot achieve. So, we can safely arrive at the conclusion that books are still as important as it once was even if we are now in the era of television.