Sesame Street, the real danger to our children. Are you serious? Part 3

Concluded from Sesame Street, the real danger to our children. Are you serious? Part 2...



Hmmm… Learning the alphabet, with humor. Expressing love and presenting diversity and tolerance. Compassion. Patience. Are all these qualities we want our kids to avoid today?

Yes life is jaded today. Today we teach kids to fear strangers, family members and television shows. There aren’t just monsters under the bed; they are everywhere the child goes. Kids don’t go outside and play, burning off the cookie or 3 they just had as a snack, anymore. They sit and play video games, surf the net, and listen to iPods while eating a box of whatever Sugar Bomb Pops is handy, washing it down with a liter of some name brand soda.

Kids get to watch cartoons 24/7 now. There is no mere 3 hours of animated shows after school ends and just 5 hours on Saturday morning. No kids today don’t have to wait. They have it all the time on demand. Screw patience and learning time management skills, they have 500 channels of HDTV, Tivo, DVD’s, and YouTube. Why bother going outside and interacting with others building social networks and skills. They can text message or IM people they know and don’t know.

Diversity? If you mean being able to get in touch with masses of unseen, unknown people separated merely by screen names, in a cold and emotionless medium that conveys little to no context, then I suppose they get more now.

Seriously, the issue is not that Sesame Street is fictional or filled with “limited possibilities and fixed identities”. The issue is that some are so obsessed with seeking out flaws, resolving issues with drugs (like Prozac), and avoiding the fact that kids are not miniature adults that they miss the point. Life between 2-5 should be simple and filled with love and care. It isn’t always, but do we really need to force that reality on minds that are still trying to learn the alphabet and 2+2=4?

Sesame Street, the real danger to our children. Are you serious? Part 2

Continued from Sesame Street, the real danger to our children. Are you serious? Part 1...

I have to pause to give an example of the ‘junkie’ Cookie Monster in action. I use this video clip specifically because when I spoke with a friend of mine about this article, the song C is for Cookie was mentioned. Without pause or thought, I rattled of the main chorus of the song perfectly.



Now I wonder, how terrible is Cookie Monster? In using a snack that all young children are familiar with, presented by an obviously non-human fuzzy creature more reminiscent of a Teddy bear than a monster, he helps kids learn letters in the alphabet, introduces the concept of planets and astronomy (i.e. the moon), provide the thought of equality and diversity (the monsters in the chorus in the background), spatial geometry (the similar shapes), and the benefit of having an imagination. And he then eats a cookie. Then again he is a cookie monster. The horror. You just can’t let kids see that.

But that is not the only problem with Sesame Street according to this article.

“People on “Sesame Street” had limited possibilities and fixed identities, and (the best part) you weren’t expected to change much. The harshness of existence was a given, and no one was proposing that numbers and letters would lead you “out” of your inner city to Elysian suburbs. Instead, “Sesame Street” suggested that learning might merely make our days more bearable, more interesting, funnier. It encouraged us, above all, to be nice to our neighbors and to cultivate the safer pleasures that take the edge off — taking baths, eating cookies, reading. Don’t tell the kids.”

Let me show you a common example of the “harshness of existence” exemplified on this television program that I recall from my early years.

Concluded in part 3...

Sesame Street, the real danger to our children. Are you serious?

America we are in trouble. I mean serious and deep trouble. It’s not because of an eventual attack from fanatical extremists, or the potential of duplicitous individuals being elected to political office. It has nothing to do with the definite problems to the economy that are fueled by growing costs for oil and the expanding number of homes being foreclosed. No, this insidious virus comes from a small place in America, called Sesame Street. At least that’s what some would like you to believe.

This is incredulous. The degree of idiocy that causes some to propose that the early programs of Sesame Street are ‘inappropriate’ for children and that it should be ‘adults-only’ staggers my mind. In my opinion, anyone that could hold such a view first has never seen the show as a child and second has serious issues.

Of the programs on television in my lifetime, if not before it as well, I think only the Electric Company and the animated Charlie Brown and Dr. Seuss specials match the quality and sincerity found at Sesame Street. No violence, no bad language, real people (mostly but quite a few monsters that are as scary as Teddy bears), adults that are involved and not stupid, a diversity of cultures races and ethnicities that is unmatched anywhere in the real world. A dedication to provide kids with an interest in education, and helping them with the building blocks. And above all an understanding that children are not dumb or mindless and treats them with respect.

But for all that, and the millions that watched Sesame Street we now have what I would call ‘idiots with titles’ trying to keep the show from our children.

Virginia Heffernan wrote a piece on the Sesame Street DVD that is now available. Initially I thought this was a satirical commentary. I hope that I have misread her context. But you can decide for your self.

“What they did to us was hard-core. Man, was that scene rough. The masonry on the dingy brownstone at 123 Sesame Street, where the closeted Ernie and Bert shared a dismal basement apartment, was deteriorating. Cookie Monster was on a fast track to diabetes. Oscar’s depression was untreated. Prozacky Elmo didn’t exist.”

Sounds sarcastic right? But she goes on to say

“Originally designed by Jim Henson for use in commercials for General Foods International and Frito-Lay, Cookie Monster was never a righteous figure. His controversial conversion to a more diverse diet wouldn’t come until 2005, and in the early seasons he comes across a Child’s First Addict.”

Now if I read that second quote correctly Cookie Monster was just called a junkie. Hell, how did everyone from 45 to 22 not become a crack addict? Well maybe not everyone since according to the 1979 New York Times the program was targeted to, shudder at the thought, “4-year-old inner-city black youngster[s]”.

Continued in Part 2...