有用
（二）
The family sphere(范围) used to be defined by its isolation from the public realm. There was
the public male realm（领域）of "rational accomplishment" and cruel competition, and the private
female and child-rearing sphere of home, intuition（直觉）and emotion. The private realm was
supposed to be isolated from the realities of adult life. For both better and worse, television and
other electronic media tend to break down the difference between those two worlds. The
membrane around the family sphere is much more permeable(可渗透的). TV takes public events
and transforms them into dramas that are played out in the privacy of our living rooms, kitchens
and bedrooms.
Parents used to be the channel through which children learned about the outside world. They
could decide what to tell their children and when to tell it to them. Since children learn to read in
stages, books provide a kind of natural screening process, where adults can decide what to tell and
not tell children of different reading abilities. Television destroyed the system that separated adult
from child knowledge and separated information into year-by-year slices for children of different
ages. Instead, it presents the same information directly to children of all ages, without going
through adult filters.
So television presents a real challenge to adults. While a parent can read a newspaper without
sharing it with children in the same room, television is accessible to everyone in that space. And
unlike books, television doesn't allow us to flip（翻转）through it and see what's coming up. We
may think we're giving our children a lesson in science by having them watch the Challenger take
off, and then suddenly they learn about death, disaster and adult mistakes.
Books allow adults to discuss privately what to tell or not tell children. This also allows
parents to keep adult material secret from children and keep their secret keeping secret. Take that
same material and put it on The Today Show and you have 800,000 children hearing the very