Here are some of Neil Postman's arguments and assumptions. They are just that, arguments and assumptions. We can debate the truth and falsity of his claims, accept some and reject others, but his arguments and assumptions are difficult to ignore

He lectured at Bradley a few years ago and seems like a very likable person and a very insightful teacher. At any rate here are some of his key arguments and assumptions that you will know, understand, and hopefully be in a better position to evaluate at the close of our journey- "a journey not of sight nor of sound, but of mind, next stop, four One seven."

POSTMAN'S CENTRAL THESIS IN AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH ...

IN A NUTSHELL

"The state of affairs which indeed is equalled nowhere else in the world can properly be called mass culture; its promoters are neither the masses not their entertainers, but are those who try to entertain the masses with what once was an authentic object of culture, or to persuade them that "Hamlet if can be as entertaining as "My Fair Lady".

The danger of mass education is precisely that it may become very entertaining indeed; there are may great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say.

1. Substitute the word RELIGION For the Word HAMLET

2. Substitute The Word LEARNING For The Word HAMLET

3. Substitute The Word HISTORIANS

4. Substitute The Word "THE NEWS" For the Word HAMLET

1. What is information?

2. What are the various forms that information take in a culture?

3. What conceptions of intelligence does a form of information transmission or mode of discourse require?

4. Why style of learning does a particular form of information transmission insist upon?

5. What kind of information best facilitates thinking?

6. Is there a moral bias to each information form?

7. How do new sources, speeds, contexts, and forms of information transmission redefine . important cultural meanings?

8. For example, does television give new meaning to concepts such as "patriotism" or "privacy,'

9. For example does television give new meaning to concepts such as "marriage", "commitment", toparenting"?

10. For example does television give new meaning to concepts such as "learning"?

11. Does television change the nature of what it means to make an "evaluation" or "judgement"?

12. Does television change the nature of what it means to "understand" or the concept of "understanding"?

13. How does television change our conception of news, political debate, and religious thought.

14. How do different information forms persuade and exert influence?

15. Is a newspapers "public" different from a televisions "public"?

16. How do different information forms dictate the type of content that is expressed.

17. Does a technology like the computer help solve the problems which most people have to deal with?

18. Does a technology like the computer have as many costs as benefits?

19. Is the principle problem we confront in solving our problems insufficient data? 20. How can we become more media-conscious?

21. How can education be used as a tool to understand and control our technological mediums of communication?

CHAPTER 1  Asssumptions    The Medium Is The Metaphor
FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS

1. Public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment.

2. Public discourse is the political, religious, educational, and commercial forms of conversation which characterize a culture.

3. Conversations refer to all techniques and technologies that people of a particular culture used to exchange messages.

4. The form of "conversation" (e.g. speech, print, television) influence the content of messages. 5. On television discourse is conducted primarily through visual imagery.

6. The shift from a print-based to a television-based culture have shifted the content and meaning of public discourse.

7. There is a relationship between forms of communication dominant within a culture and the nature and quality of the culture.

8,Mediumsofcommunicationfunctionlikemetaphorstoinfluenceourthinkingandinteractionwith others.

9 When our thinking and interaction our influenced there is the possibility for cultural change? 10. The metaphors we embrace influence the content of our culture.

CHAPTER 1 Discussion Questions The Medium Is The Metaphor

Discussion Questions

 1. It is suggested that all public discourse takes the form of entertainment? Agree/Disagree (p.3)

2. What is "form"? How it the term used here?

3. Does message form regulate or dictate message form or content?

4. How does the use of technology to move decontextualized information over vast spaces at incredible speed influence the chanceS of creating shared understanding?(p. 8)

5. Why can it be argued that the "news of the day" is a symbolic construction? (p. 8)

6. Speech defines what human means. Agree/Disagree

7. What is the relationship between language, thinking/perception, and action/communication?

8. How does the medium of communication which dominates a particular age influence how we think, how we communicate, and thus, influence our culture? (p. 10).

8. What did Marshall McCluhan mean when me said "the medium is the message? (p. 10)

9. How do technological mediums of communication move us father from reality? (p. 10)

10. What is meant when it is said that "the media create a second-hand reality"?

11. What is a metaphor? (p. 12)

12. What is your metaphor for intimate-romantic relationships?

13. How does the metaphor we use to talk about relationships influence how we think and communicate in relationships?

14. What are "media-metaphors"? What does it mean to say we no longer live in the age of typography or print but in the age of television or in the age of computers?

15. What does it mean to suggest that our "our metaphors", our media create the content of our culture"?

16. Postman argues we are amusing ourselves to death? What is dying?

Chapter 2  Assumptions Media As Epistemology

Fundamental Assumptions

1. Every medium of communication has "resonance".

2. Mediums of communication influence what "resonates" within a culture.

3. Epistemology is the study of how we come to know and understand what a culture believes to be "the truth".

4. The dominant mediums of communication within a culture influence our "definition of the situation", "our view of reality" what we consider to be "the truth".

5. A culture's beliefs (e.g. their "truth") is influenced by the available means of expression or communication.

6. The media of mass communication which carry public discourse are "truth tellers"? 7. Intelligence is the capacity to "grasp the truth of things".

8. Different mediums of communication demand or favor different cognitive and intellectual abilities.

9. A new medium of communication changes the form or structure of public discourse. 10. When the form or structure of public discourse is altered the content is altered.

11 When the form and content of our discourse is changed there is the possibility for cultural change.

12. A television-based epistemology is inferior to a print-based epistemology?

CHAPTER TWO  Discussion Questions  MEDIA AS EPISTEMOLOGY

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What is epistemology?

2. The content of much of our public discourse has become "dangerous nonsense". Agree/Disagree

 4. What is resonance? What use does Postman make of the concept?

5. What does Postman mean when he says "every medium of communication has resonance?

6. How does the dominant media prevailing in a particular culture influence how that culture defines intelligence? (24-26)

7. What is the relationship between a medium, the structure or public of discourse, definition of intelligence, and the substance and content of messages? (27).

8. What is public discourse? (p, 28)

9. In discussing the transition from a print to television based epistemology Postman uses the river as an analogy. How would you explain his use of this analogy? (p. 28)?

10. What are the upside and downsides of a television-based and/or print-based epistemology? (p. 28-29).

CHAPTER 3 AND CHAPTER 4 Assumptions

TYPOGRAPHIC AMERICA AND THE TYPOGRAPHIC MIND

(FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS)

 1. The influence of the printed word in every arena of public life in seventeenth and eighteenth century America because of the quantity of printed matter and because of its virtual monopoly as the only mass medium of communication.

2. During the seventeenth and eighteenth century public business was channeled into and expressed through print, which became the model, the metaphor, and the measure of all discourse.

3. A particularly form or structure of discourse rules out and insists upon certain types of content and inevitably a certain kind of audience.

4. Public discourse which is dominated by a typographic metaphor and an oratory based upon the printed work influence the content of messages, demands certain skills and capacities from the audience, and demands a certain types of intelligence.

5. Public discourse grounded in the written word substancelcontent, which require an "effort after meaning and demands certain intellectual capacities.

6. A discourse which has substance or propositional content has idea, claims, facts, and is biased toward rational arguments.

7. A print-based culture demands cognitive skills such as attention, organization, classification, to differentiate and so forth.

8. The influence a medium of communication has on a culture is reflected in the discussion in the rhetoric of a societies important institutions e.g. the church, the legal system, and commerce (the rhetoric of advertising.)

CHAPTER 3 AND CHAPTER 4 Discussion Questions

TYPOGRAPHIC MIND AND TYPOGRAPHIC AMERICA

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What are some of the factors which accounted for print being a pervasive and dominant medium of communication in seventeenth and eighteenth century America?

2. How did the form of discourse dominant during colonial American influence the content of discourse? Why did the domination of print tend to encourage "rationality"?

3. In the age of print why did public discourse tend to be characterized by a coherent and orderly arrangement of facts and ideas? pp. 50-51)

4. What cognitive or intellectual capacities or skills are required of print which may not be required of a visual medium of communication such as film or television?

 CHAPTER 5 Assumptions THE PEEK-A-BOO WORLD

FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS

1. The merging of the telegraph and the photograph furnished the watershed between the age of mass communication and the age of television.

2. The telegraph redefined what information was and began to create a decontextualized communication environment.

3. The telegraphy increased the quantity of information available and altered the quality of information.

4. Information became decontextualized, meaning that information was not directly relevant or salient to individuals, it was connected to the past or anticipated future, and it was transient and short-lived.

5. The merging of the telegraphy and the photograph began the creation of a new metaphor of public discourse i.e. began to change the way we come to know and understand the world around us - seeing rather than reading became the basis for believing.

6. Telegraphy and photography were the harbinger of a new media-metaphor, which did was not fully realized until television came to dominate our communication environment.

7. Our understanding of news, politics, education, sports, science, is always to a certain extent influenced by the biases of television.

8. The way in which television influences how we come to know and understand our world is largely invisible.

9. The bias toward the emotional management/entertainment function of communication is most significant way in which television influences public discourse.

10. Many of our institutions e.g. politics, education are being influenced by the way in which television furnishes a template defining truth, knowledge, and reality.

CHAPTER 5  Discussion Questions THE PEEK-A-BOO WORLD

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What two key developments ushered in the age of mass communication? 

2. What were the upside and downsides of the telegraph?

3. How and in what way did the telegraph alter the prevailing definition of information?

4. How and in what way did the telegraphy alter the information-action ratio?

5. What is meant when it is suggested that the telegraph "dignified irrelevance" and "amplified impotence".

6. How did the telegraph begin to alter the quantity of information available, the quality of information, and the level or degree to which information was contextualized? (70-71).

7. How did the electronic dissemination of information begin to alter the "the information-action ratio" (68-69).

8. What does it mean to say that information is contextualized or decontextualized? (71)

9. What is the primary difference between the linguistic(verbal) and visual depiction of reality?

10. How does reliance on words as a means for constructing, testing, and understanding reality differ from the use of photographs?

11. Why do we live in a "peak-a-boo" world?

12. How is our understanding or the news, politics, education, sports shaped or influenced by the biases of television?

13. Is television's bias toward the entertainment function of communication reflected in our major institutions education, politics, the news, sports, the family?

CHAPTER 6 Assumptions THE AGE OF SHOW BUSINESS

FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS

1. A now technology or medium of communication is never simply an extension or a previous technology -an automobile is not a fast horse, television is not must moving pictures.

2. A technology is a too[ or machine. A medium is the social and intellectual environment the machine creates.

3. The dominant goal of television is to furnish entertainment.

4. Entertainment is the "supra-ideology" for all discourse on television.

5. A news show is framed by this "supra-ideology" meaning the form "the news" on television takes is one consistent with the goals of entertainment.

6. Even "serious" television is a performance which is meant to entertain not to educate, to garner applause, not to foster reflection.

7. Television is the principle medium coming to know and understand our culture.

8. Because television in the primary medium for communicating culture, other institutions accommodate to and our influenced by the biases of television e.g. education and politics.

9. The demarcation between show business and politics, education, religion has become blurred.

CHAPTER 6 Discussion Questions THE AGE OF SHOW BUSINESS

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1 - What is television? What kind of conversations does it permit? What are the intellectual tendencies it encourages? What sort of culture does it produce? (84)

2. What is the difference between a technology and a medium?

3. What is the dominant goal of television?

4. How does an "entertainment frame" influence the presentation and content of "the news"?

5. What does Postman mean when he suggests that "it is not merely that on television entertainment is the metaphor for all discourse, it is that off the screen the same metaphor prevails?"

6. How has the ideology of entertainment influenced public discourse in the areas of education, religion, and politics?

CHAPTER 7  Assumptions "NOW THIS….."

FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS

1. Television news presents a de-contextualized view of reality where the conjunction "now this" is used to create the illusion that the stream of discourse is orderly, coherent, and understandable.

2. On television whether the audience perceives the presenter of the news to be attractive, sincere, congenial, vulnerable and so forth is more important as a basis for judgment that the truth or falsity or the substance of the message?

3. Televised "news" is a stylized dramatic performance whose content has been staged largely to entertain.

4. Television is altering our "sense of what it means to be well informed".

5. If "all understanding begins with our not understanding the world as it appears" than finding and uncovering contradiction is a key to understanding?

6. To discover contradiction one must have a understanding of the context of the message.

7. In the discontinuous decontextualized view of reality offered by television contradiction can not be used as a criteria for judging the truth, validity, or merit of a message.

8. The epistemology of television foster a audience which "knows of the world" but knows little "about the world".

9. The "supra-ideology" which governs television influenced mother modes of public discourse thus creating a new media-metaphor for the age -the age of entertain.

10. Americans are among the most ill-informed people in the world, to be sure we know of many things,but we know about very little.

CHAPTER 7 Discussion Questions "NOW THIS ... "

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What is "now this" world view?

2. What does it mean to say that television news is de-contextualized?

3. How does audiences impression of the person presenting the news Influence their impressions of the news?

4. It is suggested that "on television credibility replaces reality as the decisive test-of truth-telling". What does that mean?

5. What is meant by the credibility of a newspresenter?

6. You are the producer of a television news show how would you manage the form and content of the news in order to attract and keep viewers?

7. You are the producer of a television news show, how would you manage the form and content of the news in order to foster understanding, reflection and insight?

8. It is suggested that television news shows entertain but they do not inform, what does it mean to be "informed"?

9. What is the relationship between understanding and contradiction, between context and contraction, between television and context, and therefore, between understanding and television?

10. In what way does the form of television influence the form and content of other mediums of communication such as newspapers, magazines, and public discourse on radio?

11. What is an information environment called "trivial pursuit" and how does television news contribute to this environment?

12. Americans may be increasingly relying on newsmagazines and mini-series for their current and historical information about the world. In defending the historical inaccuracies in a mini-series an writer remarked "it is better for audiences to learn something that is untrue, if it is entertaining, than not to learn anything at all." Agree/Disagree

CHAPTER 8 Assumptions SHUFFLE OFF TO BETHLEHEM

FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS

1. On television religion is presented as entertainment.

2. Not all forms of discourse can be converted from one medium to another.

3. What is televised is transformed from what it was to something else, which may or may not preserve its former essence.

4. There are several characteristics of television which converge to make authentic religious experience on television impossible.

5. The essential requirement for religious experience are; 1) a sacred place of ritual enactment; 2)a form of worship grounded in the traditions of a particular religion; 3)a message telling people what they need not merely what they want; 4) it must be god-centered not preacher-centered.

6. Television is so associated with a secular world it cannot furnish an appropriate frame for religious experience.

7. The form of worship in the "electric church" is based on other television program not on other religious experiences or traditions)

8. Attracting an audience is the primary goal of televised religion.

9. Unlike televised religion the "flash and sizzle" in many traditional forms or worship are grounded in the history and doctrine of the religion itself.

10.Television strongest points is that it brings personalities into our hearts, not abstractions into our heads.

CHAPTER 8    Discussion Questions   SHUFFLE OFF TO BETHLEHEM

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Television favors moods of conciliation and is at its' best when substance of any kind is muted. Agree/Disagree

2. What elements of traditional religion are lost when we "shuffle off to Bethlehem"?

3. Who is the star of televised religious-oriented entertainment?

4. How does changing the form of discourse/medium of discourse change the meaning of the message?

5. Is there a difference comforting one in person or sending a greeting cards, telling a person you love them or sending flowers, learning from a teacher or learning from a micro-computer?

6. How does moving from the pulpit to the "tube" influence the meaning, texture, and value of religion?

7. If you change the channel by which a message is delivered do you change the meaning of the message?

8. Does changing the context in which a message is communicated change the way in which the message is interpreted and given meaning?

9. Calling a "place" a "place of worship" makes it a "place of worship"? Agree/Disagree

10. What are the criteria Postman offers which are required to have a sacred expereince?
       Is it possible to have a sacred expereince watching religion on television?

10. Do most people understand the symbolic meaning of the spectacle in their form or worship?

11. Is there a difference between "entertainment" and "enchantment"?

12. Televised religion is blasphemous. Agree/Disagree.

13. The danger is not that religion has become the content of television shows but that television shows may become the content of religion.

14. "You can get your share of the audience only by offering them something they want." Should our news, our educators, our politicians, and our spiritual leaders follow this directive. What happens to a culture when it gets only what it wants? Should teachers furnish what they think students need or only what students want?

CHAPTER 9 Assumptions  REACH OUT AND ELECT SOMEONE

FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS

1. In America the fundamental metaphor for political discourse is the television commercial. (p.126)

2. The television commercial has become a paradigm for the structure of every type of public discourse. (126)

3. The television commercial does not belong in the domain of rational discourse.

4. The evolution of the commercial has made linguistic discourse obsolete as the basis for product decisions.

5. Televised advertising is not grounded in rational argument, but rather used images to appeal to emotions.

6. Most television commercials so not make claims whose truth or falsity can be argued about.

7. Most television commercials are designed for the audience to make inferences about the products and about the persons who purchase or who fail to purchase products.

8. Television commercials function as therapy. They are addressed to the psychological, emotional, and motivational needs of the audience.

8. The television commercial is primary instrument of political discourse;

9. The television commercial influences political discourse by 1) imposing the form of the commercial on political discourse; and 2) promoting acceptability of this form of communication as an acceptable mods of communicating about politics.

10. Television commercials have embedded in them certain assumptions about the nature of communication that run counter to those of other media, especially print.

11. Adopting the television commercial as a primary mode of discourse has altered the basis on which we judge political candidates.

12. Reliance on the television commercial as a dominant form of communication results in political discourse which is de-contextualized and a historical.

13. As our knowledge of politics becomes de-contextualized and ahistorical our capacity to acquire knowledge about politics is eroded and diminished.

14. Censorship becomes irrelevant when political discourse takes the form of entertainment

CHAPTER 9 Discussion Questions  REACH OUT AND ELECT SOMEONE

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1 .If politics is like show business what function of communication becomes elevated to central importance?

2. Why can it be argued that the fundamental metaphor for political discourse is the television commercial?

3. Can one in engage in rational discourse using visual imagery?

4. Why it is difficult to evaluate the truth or falsity of a McDonald's commercial?

5. On what basis to most television commercial invite you to make product decisions?

6. "What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right with the product but what is wrong with the buyer." What does that mean?

7. What are the limitations of the television commercial as a form for carrying political discourse?

8. What assumptions about the nature of communication are implicitly embedded in the form of the television commercial?

9. Why can it be said that many commercials adopt form of the parable or "pseudo-parable"

10. "On television the politician does not so much offer an image of himself, as an image of the audience,television commercials create for viewers a comprehensive and compelling images of themselves." What does that mean?

11. Why are television commercials and image politics a form of therapy?

12. When political discourse comes in the form of the commercial is tends to be ahistorical. What does that mean?

CHAPTER 10 Assumptions  TEACHING AS AN AMUSING ACTIVITY

FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS

1. Television impairs a person's freedom to read, not by banning books but displacing them.

2. Book learning and traditional classroom learning is different from television learning.

3. What one learns is equally important as how one learns i.e. learning how to learn.

4. The educational philosophy embraced by television is self-contained,

5. The educational methodology embraced by television suggests that educators must tell stories, use visual imagery, and music .

6. The educational philosophy embraced by television eschews argument, discussion, reasoning, refutation, and the tools of rational discourse.

7. Teaching and learning are often intended to be amusing activities

8. Instructional development is often drive by the question why is television good for rather than what is education good for?

9. Thought the use of multi-media curriculum students may learn that learning should and ought to take the form of entertainment.

CHAPTER 10  Discussion Questions     TEACHING AS AN AMUSING ACTIVITY

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1 .How is the orientation to learning promoted by the traditional classroom similar to and different from that promoted by television?

2. What is collateral learning?

3. How does an educational system based on the visual image be similar and different from a educational system based an the printed word?

4. Why can television be called a curriculum?

5. If television does embrace a philosophy of education what are the assumptions on which this philosophy are based?

6. Why is exposition? Why is it argued that television@as a educational methodology discourages exposition?

7. To what extent is the content of elementary and secondary school curriculum being influenced by television?

8. To what extent are methods employed in elementary and secondary school curriculum being influenced by television?

9. Does television carry its cognitive biases and social effects into the classroom?

10. Can the nature of television influence how we learn, what he think it is important to learn, and our expectations regarding what constitutes competent instruction.

CHAPTER 11 Fundamental Assumptions  HUXLEYAN WARNING

FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS

1. Television now controls the flow of public discourse in our country.

2. In the Age Of Television our information environment is completely different that in was in colonial America.

3. Television presents information in a form which renders in simplistic, non-substantive, non-historical, and non-contextual.

4. In our culture we are never denied the opportunity to amuse ourselves. The television screen always wants you to remember that it's imagery is always available for your amusement and pleasure.

5. Cultural life is slowing being redefined as a perpetual round of entertainment.

6. Technology has both benefits and costs for a culture.

7. New technology has the capacity to alter a culture's news, politics, social relations, commerce,, and religion

8. Television serves us quite usefully when providing pure entertainment.

9. It is a threat to culture when it turns serious modes of discourse e.g. news, education, and religion into forms of entertainment.

10. To combat the potential negative influence of television we need to educate people about the way in which a technology functions as a medium of communication and influence the nature, role, and function of information in a culture.

11. Only through an awareness of the structure and effects of television, through a demystification of media, will we be able to gain some measure of control over mediums of communication e.g. television, the computer, electronic mail, interactive video and so forth.

14. We need to become more media-conscious.

15. How can we use education to control our technological mediums of communication?

16. American television limits freedom of expression and choice because its only criterion for merit and significance is popularity.