Means of Educating Children on the Fundamentals of Life (Sesame Street)

 

Soo, I was going through the Recent Updates on my bbm (blackberry messenger) and noticed a friend's update: "Sunny day sweeping the clouds away...on my way to where the air is sweet....can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street..."

Couldn't help but get a bit nostalgic...those were good ol' times when we were kids and had no worries. But thinking about it, what exactly made Sesame Street such a huge hit for us?

Sesame Street ran like this: it first introduced a situation story that would take the whole hour time slot to solve, and every now and then the story would cut to an animated alphabet or counting lesson, a humorous skit from Grover, Bert and Ernie, Cookie Monster, what-have-you. Who can forget "1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12" with the pinball machine? They used to count up to twenty. I even remember one segment where they went up to 40! I miss Mumford the Magician(aka peanut butter sandwiches!) and the honkers. These days they sometimes go past ten.... SMH
 
Sesame Street dealt with such issues as the death of a loved one. Goodbye, Mr. Hooper was one of the most amazing episodes of children's television ever broadcast because it made an effort to try and teach children about something so difficult that even live adults are often no help with it.

Other brilliant aspects of the show included using monsters to portray certain feelings or behaviours that the audience might be conflicted about. They had  Cookie Monster to show what a negative (but highly funny the way they presented it) appearance gluttony can bring. They had a grouchy monster to show the effects of an anti-social mentality. More "cute" monsters such as Grover were used to show things like fear or sadness. There was a good reason for all of this. Negative feelings are difficult enough for a child to understand, so having puppets to thoroughly explain them was very educational.

During every episode I saw, even Goodbye, Mr. Hooper, the adults were never condescending or smug. They never acted as if they had every answer. Instead, they told the monster, other puppet, or child characters a few useful tidbits and let these characters work things out for themselves

Unfortunately when it comes to children's television, a certain adherence to marketing over education have crept in over recent years. The greatness of such characters as Oscar or Grover was that they could appeal to children without needing to be cutesy. Oscar was a grump who appeared to have worked too many night shifts, while Grover seemed to be just a fearful but friendly guy trying to make his way in the world. Perfectly normal, ordinary people wrapped up in some very bizarre-looking trimmings, in other words. Nowadays, characters like Elmo seem so awfully sugarcoated that it makes me wonder if his audience is going to encounter problems in later life when they learn they cannot get by simply on acting cute.

Now we have characters like Elmo and that other one who is a bear with the speech impediment who always says, "Baby Beaw, Baby Beaw". Elmo has kids trying to teach a fish how to ride a bicycle???!!!
It makes me long for the days of Big Bird and Bert and Ernie. They talked up to kids and really educated them and spoke perfectly. They actually TAUGHT kids how to act! The show is horribly taken over by Elmo and that Bear and it is just sad to see. Jim Henson would be horrified with what this show has become. Plus, the viewers who were 2-5 years, would outgrow them and there would always be a new audience. Back in the day, the parents would be entertained by this once great show. Not anymore. Elmo, that whiny lisp, hmmm.
Sad to say but it seems Sesame Street has become nothing but an infomercial for Elmo dolls.

In my opinion, there was no need to make drastic changes. IT WAS PERFECT! I don't know who pulls the strings on this show these days, but I would like to implore them for the sake of future generations.
I might not be part of the audience anymore, but I do have nieces, nephews and second cousins who are. 

So would you say that the old way of educating children about the fundamentals of life is a much better one? Should we go back to it?