The effect of the media (cartoons and TV series) on school children in Malta : educators’ perspectives

Abstract

This research focuses on the effect that media (children’s cartoons and television series) has on school children’s behaviour from the educators’ perspective; concentrating on the violent and aggressive attitudes that a child may often adopt that may lead to bullying. A qualitative method was applied to this specific research. To gather data, focus groups with educators were conducted and observation sessions were held in the playgrounds of two Maltese junior schools. The experience of educators, gained daily from witnessing how children behave, produced reliable and detailed data that addressed the aims and confirmed the hypotheses that were outlined at the beginning of this research. The data indicates that educators believe that solely the media (children’s cartoons and television series) is to blame for the aggressive and violent behaviours that children often display at school. Educators seem to point accusing fingers at the perceived lack of television regulation and the fast technological developments that are enabling children to access the various media and to be fed by it, unscrupulously. They tend to believe that, this perceived lacuna is providing children with disreputable role models and feeding them questionable moral standards. The dissertation ends with a number of recommendations that could, perhaps be implemented with the hope of reducing the amount of children who appear to be violent both in school and out of school. This research highlights the need for parents/guardians to be made aware of the potentially negative effect that the media can have on their children and to effectively take control over the media that their children are exposed to. It is their positive values that should prevail, not those of the media that might tend to glorify violence to the detriment of society in general.