Mommies and daddies instinctively know that their baby will learn through entertainment. They sing songs and play hand games to teach the baby. Then the baby grows up enough to watch television, and television also educates the child through entertainment. They are taught to count, recognize letters and name colors.
Did you think that education as entertainment stopped when the kids turned off "Sesame Street" and turned on "American Idol"? You're wrong. Education in the form of entertainment is in almost any television program that you can think of. Television programming constantly addresses social issues and health concerns. Almost all television is educational on some level.
There are even several names that are used to describe educational entertainment: enter-educate, edutainment, or infotainment.
There's no prescribed way in which educational social or health messages get into television scripts. Producers and writers can "push" a social or health issue because of a personnel connection to it. Script consultants can do the same thing by suggesting ways in which story lines or characters can become more interesting or appealing to the audience. Sometimes health organizations or groups that are committed to a specific issue will contact television stations or television production companies and request that a particular issue be included in entertainment programming.
Points of view on issues as different as race relations, reading, smoking cigarettes, politics, and abortion have been included in some of your favorite television programs. Even back in the 1970s, education through entertainment was common practice in the entertainment industry. In one episode of the hit series "Happy Days," the Fonz goes to the library for the purpose of picking up girls and ends up getting a library card. That one episode resulted in an explosion of teenagers getting library cards.
The bottom line is that entertainment more often happens in front of the television set than in the classroom.
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