Back To School: She Spent The Summer Binge Watching

A mother walks into the living room where her pre-teen daughter sprawled on the couch, glued to the TV. Mom is carrying a newly purchased backpack, and states smugly, "She spent the summer binge-watching. Soon she'll be binge-studying." Why do I hate this commercial? Let me count the ways.
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You have probably seen the commercial for buying school supplies at Office Max/Office Depot. A mother walks into the living room where her pre-teen daughter sprawled on the couch, glued to the TV. Mom is carrying a newly purchased backpack, and states smugly, "She spent the summer binge-watching. Soon she'll be binge-studying."

Why do I hate this commercial? Let me count the ways.

First, who lets her child spend the entire summer binge-watching TV shows? The girl is pictured as a total couch potato. Surely, she could have been reading for pleasure and filling her free time outside getting some form of exercise.

Second, why would a new backpack motivate this girl to give up her supposed three months of binge-watching and start studying?

Finally, what on Earth is binge-studying? And why does the mother wish this for her child in a tone that sounds downright mean to me? I'm guessing binge-studying is the equivalent of cramming facts for taking high stakes standardized tests.

Here's what I wish for the child in that commercial instead of binge-watching or binge-studying:

Instead of binge-watching TV, I wish she had read the new Harry Potter book or played outside or rode a bike or scooted down the block or ran through a sprinkler.

Even if she wanted or needed to stay inside, I wish she had interacted with a friend or sibling. They could have been playing an imaginative game or putting on a play or having a friendly competition over Monopoly. Even an electronic round of Minecraft would have been preferable to solitary TV-watching.

If her mother was so eager to get her off the couch and out of the house, I wish she had signed her up for a summer activity. This could have been free at her local library or relatively inexpensive at a community center.

Not to pile on Mom, but I wish she had involved her daughter in that trip to the office store for school supplies instead of leaving her home alone to unsupervised TV-viewing. Perhaps her daughter would be more excited about returning to school if she got to select her own backpack.

I know. It's just a silly commercial. But I fear it reflects something deeper about our values these days. It implies that unless kids are told what to do by schools that feed them facts to be memorized, they don't have a clue how to spend their time aside from watching TV. It also implies that learning is not terribly different from binge-watching television. It is a passive activity and the student just sits there absorbing what the teacher offers. In this scenario, unstructured time is the enemy that prevents a child from learning. And busyness is the savior, even if it is not particularly meaningful.

I still believe in the innate curiosity and creativity of children. So the notion of binge-studying just rubs me the wrong way. Why is the mother so pleased by the prospect of her child studying, what I am not sure, rather than actually using her mind and learning? I guess a parent who thinks a new backpack will cure what's wrong with this picture will be disappointed that binge studying doesn't ensure her child receives a good education. Or maybe her child's education is solely the school's job, and Mom's responsibility ends with buying a cool backpack.

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