West Philadelphia Born and Raised

The girls who live next door to us are 16 and 13, they dress modestly, are not allowed to cut their hair and do not own a television. Now that the weather has warmed they are spending more and more time at my house hanging out with my little brother. It is an interesting paradox to witness these naive girls hanging out with my very savvy, very pop culture knowledgeable brother.

Occasionally he'll pop a crass joke that completely flies over their heads. Lately it's been fascinating to watch them clam up when we discuss Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. When the subject comes up their faces glaze over with the same expression I'd imagine they would have if we were talking about sex and doing heroin.

Nah, who am I kidding? I doubt they are aware of what heroin is and their breadth of knowledge on sex is highly questionable.

More and more I hear of parents turning off their televisions or attempting to limit their children's access to mainstream media. The same people who I'm sure once vegged out an entire summer watching MTV mindlessly. They worry about the effect of consumerism. They worry about the bad stuff on the news. They worry about all of the sex and drugs and violence.

And yet as I compare the two sets of children, those exposed to it all and those exposed to nothing, I really have to wonder which is a better approach.

I never had a filter put on what I could and couldn't watch growing up. If I wanted to catch the latest R rated film, I could. If I wanted to hear about all of the day's destruction and disaster on the evening news, that was okay as well. And when I entered the real world nothing has ever shocked me, or appalled me, or made me question anything. Because nothing was new.

These TV-less girls are planning a trip to Philadelphia next summer and when they were telling me last night I asked them if they planned on eating Philly Cheesesteaks while they were there. "You have to," I said. And one of them looked at me, point blank, and asked what in the world a Philly Cheesesteak was.

I realized in that moment that a Philly Cheesesteak is not something you learn about in a high school text book. They don't set aside a day in school to teach you the merits of sliced beef with onions and peppers. It's something you learn from exposing yourself to culture and the world around you, and what better tool than through television?

Now, I completely agree that we have gone too far in exposing our children to television at their every whim. It pacifies children in the car now, which I think is ridiculous. However, is exposure always a bad thing? Can we shelter children from too much? I certainly believe so.

Especially when you consider that next summer, when these girls make their way into Philly, they'll have no desire to hum the "Rocky" theme song while climbing the steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. And really, isn't that a shame?