The weekly TV Smarts programs published on this web site are based on the insights gained during 15 years of publishing of weekly television viewing recommendations parents with children of elementary, middle and high school age.

The standards and curricula we use for reference are those compiled and published online by State education authorities.

California, New York and the District of Columbia have the strictest standards, widely copied in other states.

Educational programming can be selected the same way a sports coach chooses food for the training diet for his or her team during the sports season. Some foods have valuable contents you can load up on when you are off the field – so you will perform well when you’re on the field. Those things go on the list.

So I prepare a weekly home viewing menu of upcoming broadcast and cable programs containing valuable material (food for the mind if you will) that can be useful in class and competitive exams (such as high school exit and college entrance exams).

Almost everybody has TV, and there are a lot of valuable and interesting programs available. The range is as broad as the alphabet… astronomy, biology, chemistry, foreign language, geography, and history all the way to zoology. I put together a menu of suggestions by checking out what’s included on state and national school curriculums which are available on the internet and also checking out what kids and teachers tell us about information they wish had been available when competitive exams were recently administered in their schools.

These State and National exams tests come almost monthly in the U.S. – separately from regular class tests. Schools now devote a lot of time teaching about competitive test-taking techniques. What’s on the test and what’s in the curriculum is not always the same. It’s like finding out, in the middle of a sports game, that you have to throw out the regular plays and improvise new ones, making you wish out had looked into a range of alternatives just in case.

Recent research about the learning habits of children points out two hours of television or other video-based material should be the daily maximum. Mental and physical health can be negatively affected by exposure beyond that level. As in studies into children’s food consumption, too much, and particularly too much of the wrong kinds of food, harms the child’s mental and physical health.

So, given the two hours of daily television viewing, what should you choose to get the best value for time spent? Finding programs to list involves checking the media schedules to find out what is available, what will air, come on the web or be released on video or in theatres in the coming week. Many programs of value are repeated several times after they first air, so children will have the opportunity to construct their viewing week to take maximum advantage of each day’s program list.

What we do can be an example for teachers. On their own they could mark their own TV guides and provide a rich content environment for their students – based on what they know about each student. TV programs viewed at home do not replace classroom teaching, but rather stimulate it. TV can provide background information about classroom subjects presented in ways expanding the child’s understanding.

The importance of such background knowledge has been documented by educational researcher Robert J. Marzano. In his 2004 book “Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement: Research On What Works In Schools” he found,” The research literature supports one compelling fact: what students already know about the content is one of the strongest indicators of how well they will learn new information relative to the content.”