A call to citizens, parents, educators, pupils and students, as well as to

the President of the Republic and to the National Assembly

In Europe, “between one and two thirds of the infant population have TV in their bedrooms, depending on the country and the social status (almost 75% in among the lower social levels in England). These figures apply to infants between the ages of one and three.” (Children and young people in their changing media environment, edited by Sonia Livingstone and Moira Bovill, Erlbaum editions, Mahwah, New Jersey and London, 2001)
In the United States 40% of three month old infant are already watching television, DVD’s and video recordings. When they have reached the age of two, the percentage of the infant population has swollen to 90% : these are the results of a study conducted by Frederic Zimmerman, published in May 2007 in Psychiatrics, results which confirm those of a 2004 study showing that infants exposed between the ages of one and three to television programs are more exposed to the risk of developing attention deficit disorder when they have reached the age of reason
Almost two ago (in September 2005), INSERM came out in a French publication with the results of a study on attention disorders, and the resulting disorders in behaviour. Now absolutely no attention was given to the disastrous effects of the television and audiovisual industries on these youthful minds. These causes, social and cultural in nature, were put down to genetic causes by the INSERM researchers. This led to the recommendation of running prognostic tests on children from three up for so-called predispositions to anti-social behaviour.

The survey published in Psychiatrics confirms that the anti-social behaviour due to attention deficit are to a considerable degree due to an organisation of society now deleterious for the life of the spirit because it maims minds, and especially young and therefore fragile minds: those specifically that must be nurtured, those that require the greatest attention through what is still called education. This study concludes that the television industries destroy education.

Attention is not only a psychological faculty: it is a social skill that must be acquired, and educators (parents as well as professionals) must foster this skill. From Jules Ferry on down, the school system has been called upon by the nation-state to foster attention, especially in the guise of the acquisition of disciplines of the mind attentive to its objects following the rules of knowledge elaborated and transmitted from generation to generation.
However, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the educational system and the audiovisual media became competitors for the attention of future generations. By the end of the twentieth century, this competition has become, under the pressure of marketing techniques, a full-fledged conflict whose result today is a psychological, affective, cultural economic and social disaster. And there is no doubt about the link between attention disorders provoked by the audiovidual capitation of attention, and the fragilization of social bonds resulting in turn in generalized insecurity.
Dr. Zimmerman’s study shows that the capitation of attention by audiovisual technologies leads to the destruction of this attention. On the one hand, we have the work of the family and our schools entrusted with the mission of fostering attention both psychologically (as the faculty of concentration) and socially (as the capacity of caring for oneself, for others and for the world in which life together is possible only providing such attention and care take pride of place), but on the other we have the audiovisual media deforming it and sometimes eradicating it – with the corresponding risk that they eradicate themselves, for zapping signs their end, just as it signs the end of all self-esteem and all human dignity.
That which parents and educators form patiently, slowly, from birth, and thus forming a chain year in and year out of what civilization has accumulated down through the generations, the audiovisual industries sunder this chain with systematic and daily “care” that is, with the most brutal and the most vulgar of techniques, while placing responsibility for this destruction in families and the educational system.
This is the rottenness which is the main cause of the extremely poor shape of our educational establishments as well as of the sorry shape of the family circle. In a context of “available brain time” having become a commodity, educational establishments and educational structures, one after the other, one by one across the board loose their cohesive power and disintegrate. On this road the world itself would soon follow suit.

On election night, May 6th 2007, the new President of the French Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, declared in his acceptance speech that France would make its top priority the safeguard of the planet confronted with global warming. We are overjoyed at this, and express our gratitude to the President. But we would like to call to his attention, as well as that of the population and the new government authorities, that the only possible way of changing the way things are going (the coming catastrophe caused by the excessive production of carbon dioxide) is by changing individual and collective behaviour, and by inventing a new way of life as well as a new organisation of the industrial economy.
Al Gore, the former Vice-President of the United States of America, has recently stated in the pages of Time magazine, that “American democracy is now in danger – not from any one set of ideas, but from unprecedented changes in the environment within which ideas either live and spread, or wither and die. I do not mean the physical environment; I mean what is called the public sphere, or the marketplace of ideas. … The Republic of letters has been invaded and occupied by the empire of television. Radio, the Internet, movies, cell phones, ipods, computers, instant messaging, video games and personal digital assistants all now vie for our attention – but it is television that still dominates the flow of information.” Changing behaviour so as to reduce the production of carbon dioxide is only possible assuming a spectacular re-evaluation of the formation of attention. From ancient Greece to our industrial societies, education – in the case of France mandatory education implemented by Jules Ferry – has been the corner-stone and the guarantee of this formation. The new industrial model required by the struggle against global warning is obviously a question of investment in industrial research and innovation, as well as one of revised fiscal policies. But such measures will never replace the formation of a greater attention and care for the world which is their pre-requisite – including everything required to bolster the markets of the new economy.
Environmental questions, an industrial politics, a politics of education, rules for the mass media and a politics for the new media: this is finally the same question. Therefore we believe that a large debate should be held on the basis of these perspectives, opening onto a new project for an industrial society, centred on the question of the formation, the protection and the development of attention in a society of global risks. This debate should take place immediately, in all countries, and especially in the electoral context in France prior to the legislative elections and, in the fall, under the authority of the new government.
Such a debate should help to garner elements in view of deciding the following issues:

• the missions to assign to the media, in particular in a context obliging them to consent to profound transformations brought on by digitization, so as to foster the reconstruction of attention and to put a stop to their deleterious effects on the missions of education,


• the relations that must be created by public authorities between education and the media with their respective missions set out in clear specifications,


• the new missions to be assigned to the educational system so that the media will no longer be their adversaries but their instruments of research – just as school publishing was for so long a time the fundamental instrument and means of unification of the education in the nation-state, and just as book and press publications have always played a key role in the knowledge of those we name scholars – in our sense all those who are not illiterate,


• the activities in fundamental research that must be undertaken on all these subjects, and the corresponding mission to be assigned to universities and research organisations in these fields,


• the research funds to be voted for the technological and industrial development necessary for a proper industry of knowledge in France and Europe.

There is no doubt that we need to reform our educational systems. But such a reform can only be thought on the basis of a reform of program industries which alone can make it happen. This is all the more necessary and urgent in view of the mutation they are undergoing due to the digital networks.
In such a context, the administrations in charge of national education as well as of the regulation of the program industries today have a golden opportunity to drive this mutation in the direction of the reconstitution of attention shaped and fostered by education.
We have a new President in France, who has clearly stated his intention of creating of ministry for sustainable development. A new national assembly will soon convene. In July 2008, France will assume the presidency of the European Union. We call on these new actors to organise urgently, in relation with all European Union members, a public debate with no holes barred on the stakes of the destruction of attention brought about by the constant development of constantly mutating audiovisual industries. This debate is all the more urgent given the fact that the implementation of an industrial politics of knowledge technologies is a key element in the Lisbon strategy as set out by José Barroso, president of the European Commission.




We therefore call the French population, the European population and international public opinion, and in particular parents, educators and the specialists in health care and youth activities, to sign (and have signed) this call to action.