Media violence does not harm children
We often have trouble understanding the complicated connections between culture and violence. One of the reasons is that so many"experts" are thrown at us, often offering contradictory conclusions. Some experts, however, have better credentials than others. Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles, no fan of TV violence, has been studying and writing about the moral spiritual, and developmental lives of children for much of his life. His works have been widely praised and circulated as new, insightful looks at kids' complex inner lives. Parents worried about the impact culture has on their kids should ignore the headlines and read Coles's book, The Moral Life of Children. They would know more and feel better. A young moviegoer, Coles writes, can repeatedly be exposed to the"excesses of a Hollywood genre sentimentality, violence, the misrepresentation of history, racial stereotypes, pure simplemindedness and emerge unharmed intellectually as well as morally. In fact, sometimes these images help the child to"sort matters out, stop and think about what is true and what is not by any means true" The child, says Coles doesn't forget what he's learned in school, learned at home, from hearing people talk in his family and his neighborhood Culture offers important moments for moral reflection, and it ought not to be used as an occasion for"overwrought psychiatric comment, Coles warns, or for making simpleminded connections between films and"the collective American conscience