The Key Sesame Street Harm

In the 70's Sesame Street was the best known and highly acclaimed television show for childhood learning. The accessibility tended to reach across regions and various cross sections of people. It focused on a core set of concepts. It is even praised in-house today (Truglio & Nash) as well as outside the Sesame Street. It was guided by education experts. The way many people think about education has been influenced by Sesame Street. Its influence continues. The idea of children being prepared for school is important to people.

However, the Sesame Street approach has important flaws. Moreover, it has harmed critical thinking, breadth learning and our community cognition.

Blasphemy!

Perhaps you responded that way. I understand. This musing is short; hear me out. It is just a five-minute read, total.

I will only touch on a few of these flaws, and some of those have not been given my consideration as much as they deserve. My focus here is on what I consider the key flaw.

Flaws in General

The Sesame Street approach is not based on studies in child cognition and development. It is not guided by a wide assortment of wise people. Instead it is guided by what teachers said they wanted in incoming students.

Stay in Line

The vast amount of foundational studies and even research in the TV segments and their evolution had nothing to do with fundamentals such prerequisites and supporting concepts, but on keeping kids in line. Yes. That is right. This makes sense when you want to be a popular education source; kids need to keep watching (and, as a byproduct, keeping focused, can mean learning the core concepts). Teachers want children to learn, but feel that an orderly classroom is important to that. Children must learn to ignore interesting things going on outside the window. And contrary to the claims of Truglio and Nash, this process discourages creativity and undermines a welcoming of diversity. The primary focus of Sesame Street promotes legalism, intolerance, and tribalism.

Learn to TAKE TESTS

Emphasis in Sesame Street is on getting the right answer. How to answer a multiple-choice question. How to label the correct word to something where that word is taken from a narrow list. This has a benefit in that it allows self assessment. A kid can think, "I measure up; I am ready for school." This is an important predictor for performance in school. However, this discourages thinking, whether "out of the box" or in exploration. This handicaps subsequent reading. In this progression, one can read a book, but the student is not able to generate new ideas from it. There are exceptions, of course, those who can dance even with weights and bindings. But, why handicap not one but several generations. The student knows the title, the author, the front-middle-end, some key aspect the teacher mentioned. For more on reading, look at the classic, How to Read a Book, or the modern research-based How to make it Stick. I think that's the title.

Social Interaction Model

In social interaction it might be useful to compare Sesame Street with Mr. Roger's Neighborhood.

The Sesame Street model of cooperation is narrow; it focuses on greater good and authoritative goals and guidelines. It instills good citizenship. In contrast Mr. Roger's Neighborhood did not rely on handed-down goals. It focused on relationships and similarities, which can be associated with key concepts in theology, natural law, mathematics and even economics. We see examples in service, trade and friendship. The key is in the name, "neighbor".

One of these is Not like the Other

As you know, I promote fruitful dialog. From that view, I see this core theme of Sesame Street to be the most damaging to individuals and their emergent society.

This is by far the number one most used cookie cutter in Sesame Street. Four images are presented. A popular character or a chorus sings, "One of these things is not like the others, one of these things does not belong." Does not belong. Does not belong.

Of course, this kind of skill is important in classification and diagnosis. But it's emphasis exposed more of the underlying themes of Sesame Street.

"One of these is Not" first appeared in the very first episode and was used many more times than all of these:

• Three of these things
• Here are these things
• Enumeration song
• Same/Different song
• Multiple classification song (used only once)

Fitting the Multiple Choice Question

The neatness of "One of these is Not" allows a simple 4-choice multiple choice question on tests. Such questions constrain any answer. Even then, the test taker might not select an interesting distinction but ponder this: What answer does the teacher want? If presented are three teacups and a donut, the donut must be the answer. But wait. One of the tea cups has no handle. Maybe the lack of the whole makes a difference. The child must make an effort. What is the RIGHT answer? The RIGHT answer is that which puts the child in line with authority. The right answer provides the highest grade.

An encouraging teacher might ask a class, "In what way are these four alike?" This can lead to active discussion—sometimes goofy. Children can come up with their own answers using their words and might even notice ways the teacher did not expect.

How do you put that on a test. Have to have tests. Maybe it is a blank that the student can fill in. Arg; can't give grading to an assistant. The question evolves to a multiple choice question: Which way are these shapes the same? (Notice the "which"; the question is designed to have only one answer. The choices might be color, number of edges, plus two more. The student can't say they are all poorly drawn. The appearance of choice is a lie.

The Promotion of Exclusion

This theme promotes the exclusion of ideas, things and even persons. This makes it hard to learn how to talk with others who disagree. Persons will tend to be tribal and will likely be confused about words. Rather than looking at how two concepts share attributes, we see one as belonging to the good and the same as our good ideas, and the other concept as not belonging.

This also applies to proponents of ideas. That person does not belong.

Finding Common Ground in Taxonomy

Is taxonomy too big of a word? Does it bring in headaches from math or biology? Well, we can skip it and can explore it later. Besides, I promised to keep this short.

To find the core common aspect of two ideas, we have to strip away attributes and axioms until we have the same thing. That same thing might even be an idea that two people like. This naked shared notion can have features added on to form the different ideas. The two in discussion now have a better idea of the two notions, regardless of whether each thinks the other is labeling the two notions wrong.

And this becomes important for persons. What do they have in common? Start with the goofy such as "They both have left hands." Move to "They both like dancing." That can lead to something important, "They both want to promote joy."

Successful fruitful dialog might mean our learning to understand what many humans have been been going through in the learning process, the Sesame Street regime. We can recognize this in ourselves.