Issue38

38"In the age of television, reading books is not as important as it once was. People can learn as much by watching television as they can by reading books."
(567 words)
With the development of the science and technology, people tend to spend more time than ever to sit in soft sofa, watching something automatically active from a small box, which is called TV. When it comes to question: which is the best way to learn knowledge -- by the TV or by the books, they are always a pyramid of opinions held by different individuals from different areas. Admittedly, most people would consider that the TV is more appeal to the children more, while the experts may emphasize the books. In my point of view, there is no certain conclusion that who is the winner between TV and books, since all the factors affected are two-edged weapons, we need to discuss this questions under different circumstances.In the ancient China, the only way to evaluate whether a person is well-educated was to see how well his article or poem was. And if a person can pass all examinations in which one needed to do certain written works the government called for, he will get a governmental position, despite his poverty and the inferior class he came from. How could a person wrote a wonderful composition under regulated topic in constrained time? The only way is through reading. Only by reading books, could one write a gifted article, that was the reason why there were so many great authors appearing during the past 4000 years. The situation in foreign country was the same. For instance, Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, is a noted polymath. Named as a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat, he said during his autobiography that, "From my infancy I was passionately fond of reading, and all the money that came into my hands was laid out in the purchasing of books I was very fond of voyages. Reading was the only amusement I allowed myself." Rene Descartes also said, "The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest men of past centuries."When history comes to the modern world, TV began to appear and came into most of the family in the world, people, especially the children and housewives, were appealled by TV. They find it a more vivid way to get information, and this way help them to know more news more quickly than traditional ways -- books or chatting with people. Thus the time they spent on reading books shrank. However, in my viewpoint, even TV has such merits, it's a passive way to recieve information ultimately. We all have such experience -- a news was being reported on TV and the newsreportor mentioned a strange name of a person, or a place which we never heard of, we wanted to know what that name referred to, yet the reporter didn't say any word, and he turned to report other things immediately. Under such situation, if we still merely depend on TV, not the books, then maybe we will never know what that name meant.In sum, there are many ways to learn knowledge, TV and books have their advantadges seperately, as a person living in modern society, we should use all the things we can to acquire all the information we want. Just as Bacon said, "Reading make a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man."