Monday, March 17, 2008
Childrens' Magazines and Censorship
So, we signed Parker and Kira up for National Geographic Kids (for Parker) and National Geographic Little Kids (for Kira) because we love NG and thought these would be kid versions and awesome. Well, we got Kira's first, and it is pretty good. Obviously very watered down, but we appreciated it for a young toddler age. Then we received Parker's first issue. WOW. It was so totally the opposite of what we were expecting! Not classy at all, and filled with all sorts of "crap" for lack of a better word that didn't seem in the vein of National Geographic at all.
You open it and see the table of contents, and the next page is a huge full page advertisement for "The Water Horse" movie. Move on and see a full page on video game tips opposite silly pictures of athletes and stupid captions for each of them. The back cover and inside back cover are advertisements for Goosebumps of some such and some food product, both just BLARING at you visually. And one of the two-page articles is about "Stupid Criminal Tricks" or similar. There was one VERY awesome article about lions in the whole things with NG-like photography, but all in all it was just shocking and disappointing to both me and Jeff. So, what were we going to do?
Luckily, we saw it before Parker, and were debating on whether or not to even give it to him. We both really liked a few things in it, and were torn on what to do. So -- here comes the censorship -- we opted to glue pages together and cut the back cover off completely. Isn't that terrible???? But, if we are not having cable in this house because of the commercialism, does it make sense to subject him to it in a magazine? I am still not sure we did the right thing, and when the next issue comes, I'm just not sure what we'll do. I am just rather appalled at how anti-NG this magazine seemed!!
Labels: homeschooling, parenting, Parker, Pop Culture
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