Teaching Material

I know this sounds weird, but people like the good doctor were actually used as teaching material while I was growing up in school. It was pretty common for teachers to watch shows like his, tape them, and use some of it as relevant material for the lesson.

When I was taking Psych 101 at college, my prof used a clip from one of Dr. Phil's episodes. See, we were studying the Adolescence portion of the material, and we'd gotten to the part about how people's minds develop and mature when reaching puberty. Our prof used a recorded portion of Dr. Phil's episode that was about a 13-year-old girl and her mother. He was using the clip to demonstrate to us how teenagers don't have the brain development or life experiences yet to think very far ahead, or very much about the consequences of their actions. I'd say he probably was also gauging our reactions to the girl in the show.

Basically, this girl was a stupid, trashy, idiotic slut who dressed like an 18-year-old, who was having unprotected sex, and actually had some ridiculous plans on what she was gonna do if she got pregnant from the activity. She actually planned on moving out (having no idea where she was gonna live), and was gonna support herself and the hypothetical baby by working at the zoo. The mother didn't approve of any of it, but she apparently was too weak to stop her daughter from doing what she was doing (so we know who was to partially blame for this whole setup). It's times like that when it's satisfying to see Dr. Phil point out just how stupid, irresponsible, or foolish the guests are on his show.

I was pretty quiet while watching, but the reactions from my classmates was interesting. Most of them thought the girl and her mother were both being pretty stupid, but more people commented on the girl's "weird eyes," which were almond-shaped, despite both her and her mom being white.

When I took Child Psychology and Parenting later on (which was also taught by the same prof), he used Dr. Phil again in another class. That time we were discussing nursing and the controversies our society had about it. The biggest question we were all discussing was, when was it an appropriate time to stop and get the kid on the bottle?

The prof played a Dr. Phil clip about one of the world's most weak-willed moms when it came to nursing. This was a mom who still let her two daughters (who were 8 and 10 at time) to feed from her. She just couldn't bear to make her daughters feel bad if she said "no." Pretty much, this idiot was letting her kids manipulate her into having what they wanted, not realizing the damage she was doing in letting them drink human milk at such a late age. Seriously, it is not healthy for kids after a certain age to be drinking breast milk. Studies have been done about that.

After watching that clip and discussing some more, the entire class agreed that 6 months should be the minimum age for an infant to stop nursing and switch over to the bottle.