Kids These Days:

Last week, Costa Mesa Mayor Eric Bever asked the city staff to draft a letter inviting telecommunications providers to do business with the city. The letter was the response to the high number of complaints about Time-Warner, the city’s major provider of cable television services.

I am a very satisfied Time-Warner customer and have been for about four years. Great service, no problems.

Oh, wait — I use them for cable Internet service, not cable television.

The cable TV controversy is a hoot. While I’m reading all of the hard-luck stories of the dissatisfied Time-Warner customers, I’m reviewing one option that is unthinkable to them: Turn off the tube.

Sitting on the sidelines reading the stories of the junkies who can’t get their TV fix provides me with a rare perspective. What I see are many TV viewers who complain about the garbage on television, then complain that they can’t get good service to watch it.

Make up your minds, people.

Actually, I don’t really care a whit whether an adult watches television. Grown-ups, knock yourselves out.

But television is bad for kids. Even the American Pediatric Assn. says so.

So here I am again, trying in vain to get our school board to get their arms around a full-blown, no-TV campaign in our schools. This year, TV Turnoff Week is April 21-27.

The Newport-Mesa school board is in good company. Most of the school boards in the state are also ignoring the positive benefits of having kids turn off the tube.

School boards that whine about budget cuts remind me of Time-Warner customers: The boards complain the reductions will affect the quality of education in their districts but fail to take one of the key actions that has proven to improve both grades and test scores; one that costs so little money to implement, it’s scary.

So, I don’t feel sorry for any of them.

School board member Dave Brooks has had some experience with turning off the tube. “Our family has gone through no-TV phases from time to time,” said Brooks. “But after awhile we realized that there were some things that we enjoyed watching together, such as sporting events.”

Brooks has a good point, namely, that used in moderation, television can be a nice diversion, even educational.

But many homes do not have the parental involvement of the Brookses and the Smiths. That involvement decreases dramatically when the home has only one parent, and there are plenty of those in Newport-Mesa.