Misses Janet Beavan was now 74 years old, a teacher of the second grade at the local elementary school. While she should have retired long ago, the economy, as well as a need to keep going kept her at the classroom, teaching new minds every year. Until recently, she had no issues with her job, and the grey-haired woman enjoyed it. It the recent years, she noticed what she could only describe at first as a peculiar trend, to a horrifying realization. In her first years of teaching, the children would get 30 minutes to draw whatever they would like, and the results were beautiful. Young creative minds putting onto paper dinosaurs, landscapes, rainbows, animals, every sort of thing you could expect of a child. As the years progressed she would get these same pictures, but of a lesser quality. It wasn't the result of talent, she would find out, but the result of apathy. It wouldn't be until the end she would find out where this apathy came from. As these pictures progressively declined, she would worry for these children. As the years progressed, she was eventually not surprised at all with the declining quality, but was caught off guard when a child handed in a piece of paper, completely blacked with a crayon. Mrs. Beaven asked the child "What is this, dear?"

To which the boy answered "It's in my house."

Shaken, but deciding to leave the incident behind, she kept on with her day. The next day, the boy turned in the same work, and gave the same answer. Soon, more would join in. By the end of three years, every child in her classroom was giving her a plain, black sheet. She never got a clear answer from any child about why their drawings were like this, but eventually she had had enough with this strange phenomenon occurring every day of every year for the past years. Using teacher home visits as an excuse to see what her students home lives were like, the first time she visited a home explained to her, without words, what was going on. 

She entered the home of a girl named Ethel Stoker, and her parents led her to the living room. In the living, in front of the television sat Ethel, and she was unfazed by the presence of anyone in the room. Mrs. Beaven said "hello", but got no response. After looking around during a quick tour of the home, Mrs. Beaven noticed something that explained it all. There were no books, no sort of entertainment beyond that square on the wall that projected preconceived ideas into the minds of children, dulling them of any creativity. All the furniture was pointed towards the television, and their lives seemed to revolve around it. Mrs. Beaven, after leaving, went to visit home after home, finding the same situation in each. The creativity of the children was being drained by the television, and Mrs. Beaven could do nothing to stop it.