Schools turn off the TV and like what they see

Escanaba, Mich. — PRINCIPAL Mike Smajda was horrified to learn that one of his first-grade pupils at Lemmer Elementary School had watched “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

Not long afterward, the boy was playing in a leaf pile with a girl when he suddenly began kicking her in the head. Another boy joined in.

Smajda can’t prove the R-rated slasher movie provoked the child. But the November 2004 incident reinforced his commitment to an anti-violence program getting underway at his school.

It challenged students to do without TV and all other screen entertainment for 10 days, then limit themselves to just seven hours a week. The district’s other schools joined in over the next year.

Administrators and teachers say short-term results were striking: less aggressive behavior and, in some cases, better standardized test scores.

Officials in the Delta-Schoolcraft Intermediate School District in Michigan’s rural Upper Peninsula are so enthusiastic about the program that they sponsored a national conference last spring and plan another for April.

Designed by child health specialists at Stanford University, the program was intended for third- and fourth-graders, but Delta-Schoolcraft tailored it for kindergarten through eighth grade.