What's everyone else's thoughts about this? When I was a kid there was actually some attempt made to have the kids on TV shows and movies appear somewhat intelligent: in one episode of Kenan and Kel, Kenan who was 15 was reading on Ernest Hemingway, there's something you'll never hear on a kids' show today. Of course Kel was the idiotic sidekick opposite, but that's a different story.
Another example would be in the movie Dennis the Menace, these 5 year olds were NOT being babysat all day and being told 'believe in yourself and you can do it' like in Daddy Daycamp or whatever, these kids were going off into the woods by themselves and restoring a tree house, using hammers and nails and paint, with NOBODY knowing about it.
And of course, who could forget Home Alone? Man, my brother and I when we were 8, we thought that was so cool, we wanted to be able to do that if anybody broke into the house, and at 8 years old we had figured we were old enough to do things on our own and be able to go off by ourselves because Kevin was.
But anymore it seems like all the kids on TV are contestants for the Idiot of the Year award, otherwise they are the extremist geniuses that know things no kid would, like Franklin on My Wife and Kids, that's like taking T.J. Henderson from Smart Guy and all his know-how, and trying to increase it by 250% in a package half the size. Nobody of a 'normal' intelligence anymore, or even slightly above normal.
Personally, I would like to see more kids on screen who seem to have an IQ above 20, who actually have some general knowledge, instead of like some more recent examples, think 'f-a-u-x' spells fox, think being bitten by a spider gives them spidey powers, etc.
And, for once, like we saw in the Little girl Who Lives Down the Lane (maybe a bad example to use here but I digress), I'd like to see something that gives you a kid of normal intelligence and know-how and one of more advanced adult intelligence and know-how, and the question is posed why are expectations set so low just because you're a kid, as though you're too stupid to know anything?
And actually, in my own way of resolving issues, I'm writing a story that deals with this subject, only set in a more adventurous action-packed environment where being intelligent and what you know can also be a matter of life and death. And I think I've come up with one good line for it so far, the abnormal child in question is a 13 year old girl who is friends with two more normal boys, and she hates being patronized by adults and she says to them 'geez, people find out you never went to school a day in your life, and SUDDENLY everybody thinks you're an idiot! What's wrong with these people?!'
But that's just me...and I don't count it when there's a kid who knows how to do everything on a computer or some other piece of technology like is done in a lot of movies, that's nice but I'm not impressed, because I've known a few kids who are great with electronics but you make them actually spell a word or read the instructions on a tube of cookies, and they're as dumb as a brick. But what's everybody else's thoughts on the matter?
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