Lets play a game; I say owl and what is the first thing that you think of? Here let me guess, you thought of the typical owl; stuffed animal size, big all seeing eyes full of wisdom in a nice round head, on a cute fuzzy body. Maybe you think that they will wear glasses when no one looks, maybe even ask you how many licks to the center of the Tootsie Pop. But in all reality owls aren’t all that they appear, people in this country think that they are so wise and all knowing. The media has totally changed the way that we see owls; how they have reproduced the owl (folders, notebooks, etc.) to Disney movies and how they make them look. And this can be attributed to how we consume media, mostly when we are younger but as well as when we grow older. When we get older when never learn otherwise either because no one knows that the information is wrong. Most don’t even know that we have learned false information. But I know that not everything from the media is bad, but we need to get the false pretenses out of the way. Owls are birds of prey, not a cuddly stuffed animal with bulging eyes. The media portrays them in a way that makes them something that they are not. Media in general can skew a persons view on anything, and with the owl this is the case. The almost universal belief that owls are wise creatures has been deeply rooted in our culture, from bedtime stories to the owl always being portrayed with Athena the goddess of wisdom. When your mother tells you about the wise old owl, why would you doubt her? That’s your mother and she is always right, even when she’s not. So when you watched Winnie the Pooh with her and read the books and saw how smart Owl is, what in your mind would doubt any of that, I mean your mother was raised the same way and she turned out fine. There are so many other factors that make up the owl; how they have been portrayed in ancient religions, how the media portrays them, and the actual facts about owl as a species. People will question others strange beliefs like Big Foot or the Loch Ness monster, but no one questions the belief or wonders why people think that the owl is a wise creature. It is taken like a proven scientific fact of some sort, but when really the owl doesn’t know the secrets of the universe or can teach you about love, or ask you how many licks it takes to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the most it can do is kill a mouse for you. Take a second to think about all the media you have consumed so far, or more specifically television. Since the invention of the television in the nineteen twenties it is in almost every house in America. Since a young age, almost everyone has been put in front of one, fully absorbed in what they’re watching. The thing is you have to be careful of what they are watching because it can affect how they think later on. Jeanette Gosling and Mike Richards explain, “Young children begin to organize the world of television at an early age, an important aspect of which is reality status, that is, how like their own world is the world depicted on television.” At a young age they start to decipher what is real and what is not, essentially if it is true to life or if it is not. “By the age of five or six they can identify jointly occurring aspects of form and context which allows them to distinguish between genres, and once this understanding is established, their evaluations of reality on television are based on solid foundations.” Yes, they will figure out that Tom and Jerry couldn’t have possibly survived as long as they have because they smash each other with various household objects and occasionally get run over flat. Also they figure out the different genres, for example they will figure out that Tom and Jerry can’t really do that in real life. But just how much do youngsters take from cartoons, by that I mean what part of reality are they associating with it. Yes, they will get the obvious stuff; but will they understand that any type of violence isn’t okay. Also will they understand that high school isn’t like how it is pictured in High School Musical, there are much bigger cultural differences than having conflicting interests. In fact Disney can bury the problems that kids have to face by selling them the wrong thing. (Henry Giroux and Grace Pollock, pg. 90). On the other hand there are educational shows; for instance learning from Mr.Rogers’ Neighborhood, there are so many valuable lessons that you can take away from that show and it will teach children many things. When children watch these shows they don’t have to work as hard differentiating fact from fiction. But there are the instances where children can’t differentiate the cartoon to reality. Take Disney; they can teach many valuable lessons, but also can make you believe very untrue stereotypes, like the prince charming that is coming to take them away or how forests and jungles work. Most little girls love the Disney princess movies (I know that