President Barack Obama, who is spending billions of dollars to overhaul the U.S. public education system, says there's one sure thing parents can do to help their kids learn, regardless of financial means: forbid them from watching television on school nights, according to an Associated Press report.Of his own daughters, Malia, 11, and Sasha, 8, Obama told Essence magazine: "The girls don't watch TV during the week. Period. The first thing they do after school is homework. If they haven't finished by dinnertime, around 6:30 p.m., they pick up where they left off after the meal. And after that, they can read until they hit the sack. Malia's bedtime is 9 p.m.; Sasha's lights go out a half hour earlier," he said.

The president discussed his daughters in response to a question about what parents can do to help foster learning. Obama, who said he hasn't missed a parent-teacher conference since taking office, said parents can stay in touch with their children's teachers.

"Very early on, we set expectations for Malia and Sasha, in terms of them taking responsibility for their own education," Obama said. They got alarm clocks at age 4 to begin waking themselves up, making their own beds and getting themselves ready to get to school on time. "We monitor them. But they are expected to be prepared to learn when they go to school," he said.

As a child growing up in the '70s, our parents did not own a television. When they finally bought a television-first a black-and-white one, and finally a color one around the same time that Ronald Reagan was shot-we still didn't watch much television--mostly because there wasn't much to choose from. This was the pre-cable, 500-channel era, and our choices were limited. Still, we seemed to have a wider selection of quality programming-children's shows and cartoons, sitcoms-"What's Happening," "Good Times"-and even news programming was more substantial. My own children are only allowed to watch television on Friday nights-primarily because there isn't much good for them to watch, and today's children live a far more sedentary lifestyle than we did with texting, computers and video games.

The ironic thing is that sometimes they say things or use vocabulary words that they tell me they have learned from television. Activity television teaches them arts and crafts, so to some extent, they do learn from television. And there's a certain socialization that comes from going to school and being able to share and talk about your favorite show with your friends. Is only allowing one night of television per week too harsh? Does it really affect how children perform in school? What are ways to improve children's commitment to their own education? What do you think?