It was filled with weird humor and great songs. And it was filled with an endless sense of possibility, with the idea that just about anybody — from a giant talking bird to the first lady — could come around the corner and feel at home within its environment.
The television world of wasn't great. Newton Minow's famous description of TV as a "vast wasteland" actually occurred in when he was jumping the gun just a bit, but the reason it resonated was because it quickly came to seem prophetic in an era when Petticoat Junction and Gomer Pyle USMC could become massive hits.
And yet here was Sesame Street , obviously made with craft and care, directed at helping the most vulnerable members of society get something out of TV. It was greeted with fantastic reviews, and more than a little grousing about how adults didn't have anything this good to watch.
But what's often forgotten about this era is that one of the foremost drivers of quality TV at the time was PBS, which imported some of the best British dramas of the era — particularly Upstairs Downstairs — and proved TV drama didn't have to be an endless series of episodic detective dramas.
The former continues to run, while new programming from the production company behind Neighborhood does well for the current PBS Kids. For all of the quality primetime programming PBS has offered over the years, the shorthand for the network still comes from its kids programming, and whenever threats are made to pull government funding from PBS, the quickest way to fight back against them is to suggest that those responsible are coming for Big Bird.
The irony is that Sesame Street is mostly self-sufficient, thanks to merchandising fees and other revenue sources. But the platform it airs on continues to be available throughout the country because the show is seen almost as a public good. But it did, and Sesame Street was a big part of that. Sesame Street 's stated mission was to help preschool kids, often kids in the inner city who watched lots and lots of TV, learn the most basic things they would need to know — letters and numbers and colors and such.
There have been thousands of studies indicating that the show was successful at this, that it was able to convey those concepts to kids who paid attention — and even those who half-paid attention.
The amount preschool kids could learn, as it turned out, was potentially huge. But what was most notable about the show's focus was that it was aimed at preschool children, who weren't necessarily seen as capable of absorbing much in the way of information.
Instead, kids quickly proved they could learn how to count and what the letters were, thereby pushing kindergartens to teach more and more advanced concepts. And Sesame Street was a big reason anyone came to know that. Wrote Lisa Guernsey in Newsweek on the event of the show's 40th anniversary:. When people think of Sesame Street as the essence of educational television, what they don't realize is how much the show has educated the educators.
One study, in , revealed that the show's positive effects on reading and achievement lasted through high school. Sesame Street was different. In the world of the show, people were diverse, because they were diverse in the world outside of television screens. The show has always done its level best to have characters — human or Muppet — who reflected any kids who might be watching at home, and in so doing, it opened television up to the kind of casual diversity many shows embrace today.
The only other program of the era to be as significant in this regard was Star Trek. But Sesame Street also diversified television's storytelling options. Jill Biden , the special dives into some of the challenging topics that "Sesame Street" has tackled, including racism, health issues, divorce, houselessness and death, as well as the ways its consistently strived to make all its viewers feel included.
Since its inception, "Sesame Street" has been rooted in African American culture , more specifically the historically Black community of Harlem. This was apparent from the set design , to much of the show's music, to the diversity of its human cast — which was especially uncommon on children's television when "Sesame Street" first debuted in Throughout the show's run, there have always been lessons about diversity, but the series' current writers determined that, in light of our current reality, they needed to more clearly educate children about racism.
As author Jelani Memory said, presenting a plot point about blue and red monsters disliking each other based on fur color — and hoping that kids, in turn, would extrapolate from that that racism is bad — was no longer sufficient. In recent years, "Sesame Street" has included stories about discrimination, like when Rosita, a fuzzy blue puppet, was playing "Veo, veo" or "I spy" at the grocery store with her mother when a customer told them to stop speakinrg Spanish.
This made Rosita feel ashamed until one of the cast members informed her that speaking multiple languages is a beautiful superpower.
She later provided an update that her mother called the store to discuss the incident and the manager had placed a sign in the window that said: "All people and languages welcome. There was an episode that aired during last summer's nationwide Black Lives Matter protests in which Elmo's dad, Louie, teaches Elmo about protest and racism, explaining that "not all streets are like Sesame Street.
And this year, "Sesame Street" debuted two new Black puppets. There's 5-year-old Wes, who loves reading and architecture, and his father, Elijah, who is a year-old meteorologist who enjoys movies and cooking for his family. The puppet for Elijah's wife, Naomi, is still in development, but in "50 Years of Sunny Days," it was revealed that she is originally from the Carribean, went to Howard University to become a social worker and loves living room dance parties.
It was the first show that said "it was okay to make kids sad" when discussing tough topics. The series has consistently given a space for children to process some of the hard, real-life topics that they are dealing with on a day-to-day basis. One of the most memorable segments is when Will Lee, the actor who played the beloved Mr. Hooper, died in The show decided to dedicate an episode segment to commemorating his death. There was debate about whether kids could even learn from a TV show.
What was she thinking? Rosemarie Truglio: Well, Sesame Street is a product of the civil rights movement. In the mids, Joan Ganz Cooney was a very young producer who was trying to level the playing field, trying to help all children get ready for school—not just the kids who had more advantages and may even have had an opportunity to attend preschool.
The only show before us was Mister Rogers , but his focus was very different. His focus was on the social-emotional skills. And Joan was really focusing on the academic skills.
Later, when she determined that children can learn from television shows like Sesame Street , that it can have an educational impact, she started addressing what we call this whole-child, comprehensive school-readiness curriculum.
Producers, writers, animators, musicians, directors—all working hand-in-hand with the educators to design curriculum that is appropriate for the target audience, which was 4-year-olds.
And from the start Joan wanted to make sure parents were watching too. It was a different era. Entire families were gathering around the television set.
Truglio: Think about the set. Think about how Sesame Street was created. And from the very beginning, it was about diversity and inclusion, so there are many life lessons in addition to your more academic skills. Why Grover? And what are kids supposed to learn from Grover? I really, truly do.
Truglio: Grover has this innocence and this aptitude for nurturing and caring, but in his attempt to help he often messes up. He learns and he perseveres. In season 50, Sesame Street is focused on providing kids with a toolbox that helps them manage their emotions, keeps them curious and filled with wonder, and makes them want to keep trying and learning from mistakes and to iterate through trial and error.
I never thought about this until just talking with you, but Grover is really a role model for perseverance. Merrill: You can really hear the pedagogy underneath the characters when you talk, and how much research and thought goes into them.
0コメント