It looks like we will be buying TVs with a V-chip in the near future.

In theory, this little item will block out any program that has been rated as being for adults only, such as “NYPD Blue,” certain episodes of “The X-Files” or any post-game interview with an NFL linebacker.

Parents will be able to program the chip with a code that will activate or deactivate the block. The plan is for the television industry to police itself and rate their shows accordingly.

Proponents say that the V-chip, or whatever it is eventually called, will shield our nation’s children from all the bad, nasty stuff they shouldn’t see on television. Actually, there are already a couple of effective devices to screen out such programs. One is the power switch, and another is the channel selector. But for those to be used effectively, a couple of factors must be present.

First, the child, if alone, must have an incredible desire to watch only shows which are educational or healthy for his or her young mind. “Naturally, I would rather watch ‘Biography’ than ‘Baywatch’!”

Or the kid must want to pick up a book rather than watch Pamela Anderson’s, uhh, enhancements grace the screen. Is this likely for the majority of 10-year-old boys? Not that I can remember.

The V-chip is not the first attempt to use technology other than the simple on/off switch and channel selector to keep kids from watching violence and smut and polluting their minds.

Does anyone remember the pay-channel lock box? Back in the dawn of pay-cable services, cable subscribers could order a channel selector box with a switch to activate their pay channels, which then showed mostly soft-core porno. An actual key had to be inserted into the box to release the pay-channel switch.

Did these boxes work? Not one child whose parents had one of those boxes did not know where the key was hidden or how to pick the release lock. As soon as the parents were upstairs and asleep, it was showtime.

The whole point of spending the night at a friend’s house at Loring Air Force Base in 1981 was because Alien or some European soft-core epic was on cable that night.

Will the V-chip be any different? Hell, no. Kids are smarter than the V-chip developers are giving them credit for, and the easily rememberable code that parents will assign to the chip will be discovered or broken by some enterprising child who will probably work for the NSA when he or she grows up.

Parents will probably assign mom’s birthday or the first four digits of her Social Security number for their V-chip code, something easily found and obvious.

Or, mom and dad won’t understand this new technology and just not use the chip. We are a nation of people whose VCR clocks keep blinking 12:00; why should parents understand the V-chip’s operation?

Second, parental supervision and guidance must be in place. To keep little Johnny from watching lingering, slow-motion shots of Anderson’s implants, it helps to have a responsible parent in the vicinity.

And that is the key to the whole push to get the V-chip into the idiot box. It is said that parents today cannot effectively police their kids. With many families requiring two incomes, in many cases neither parent is home for hours while the child is left unsupervised. Sitters are too expensive and good ones are scarce.

There are too many bad influences on television these days, and if we can block them out, we can help keep our kids safe from society’s dark side and bring them up right.

What a crock. Children are and always have been bombarded by bad influences and trouble every day outside of their homes, and blocking out the evil on TV isn’t going to make a dent.

I grew up in a safe, stable home either on air force bases or in suburban Omaha, and I still had to deal with drugs and violence and other ugliness on a daily basis.

But it was my parents, through their examples and actions, who kept me from following the wrong path in life, not some technological wonder. I hesitate to think what it must be like to grow up in a less-advantaged environment, with parents who aren’t around or where crime is rampant. The V-chip isn’t going to help those kids one bit, and since it will be installed in new TVs, their parents probably won’t be able to afford one and use its dubious benefits anyway.

The whole V-chip debate is an excuse for one thing — bad parenting. But that’s another topic for another day.

Kevin S. Kirby is a senior in journalism mass communication from Louisville. He has a B.A. in political science from the University of Wyoming.