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How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

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Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#121

Post by DrScump »

austenallred wrote: post #10

There is no substance on earth more addictive than Elmo is to a two year old. In most television shows and movies what people are looking for is somebody that represents them - call it an "avatar" if you must. When kids watch Sesame Street they relate directly to Elmo. He's younger, smaller, has an insatiable curiosity, and is in a permanent mode of questioning and discovery. He even has similar mannerisms to childre…

  Sesame Street was created for two-year-olds, not bitter Internet pundits.
Well, then it's high time we bitter Internet pundits did get programming created for us, isn't it? Max Headroom only lasted a season.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#122

Post by ideonexus »

KirinDave wrote: post #68

The number of people who are quick to jump unquestioningly on this and say, "It was better before" are... well it bums me out. Sesame Street's role in child development has changed radically as the general opinion on how TV should interact with kids has changed. These kids shows have been pushed down the age bracket, appealing to younger markets where demand is a lot greater for the content. Older kids shows? They ex…

> "I see so much of these kinds of articles. All I can do is despair as my generation begins to make the exact same mistake as our outrageous parents who had very similar things to say about childhood programming which we all wax nostalgically on now."

Thank you so much for this insightful post. As the parent of a two and four-year-old, reading this article all I could think was, "But Sesame Street is not for you!!! Who cares if your adult-self doesn't like Elmo?"

People don't seem to understand that Sesame Street was established on and heavily influenced by hard scientific research [1], and that research has found letting your children watch the show gives them a head-start on learning before they enter public school. When the show changes, science informs those changes.

And I can see it with my boys. Elmo youtube videos taught my two-year-old the alphabet, his shapes, and counting to 10, which blows his daycare teachers away. My four-year-old got the same jump on these concepts from Elmo. Funny enough, he seems to have outgrown the character and has moved onto Team Umizoomi [2] where he enjoys problem-based learning for math and patterns. It's best to watch these shows with the kids, engage the learning with them as they watch, and also make references to the characters and events to reinforce the learning away from the television.

I also find all the "get off my lawn" comments in this thread and in these kinds of articles disheartening. I agree that it seems like my generation is just adopting the cycle of knee-jerk cynicism to change to which our elders subjected us.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_Street_research [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Umizoomi

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#123

Post by snowwrestler »

douche wrote: post #102
KirinDave wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I remember MRN fondly, it was as complete mess compared to what we have now. We need to accept that there was almost no actual rigor put into the creation of our kids shows, at their genesis. I remember them fondly and praise them regularly, but I try to keep this in mind. Modern kids shows are optimized for kids. Even Dora is specifically optimized for very young children. It appears insipid because it's repet…

It's a little disturbing to hear all of this praise of a model of children's television that's A/B tested to hell and back and engineered for children. Then again, I grew up watching (and loving) Loony Tunes. There's a depth there that this modern-day pap doesn't possess. The Teletubies never did Wagner or the Barber of Seville; Bugs Bunny did.

"Engineered for children" is a good thing if it means that the show producers have incorporated recent research into early childhood development when designing the show. This is true of shows like Daniel Tiger, Dora, and (although not mentioned in this thread) Blue's Clues.

The brains of little kids do not work the same way that adult brains do, so shows really do need to be constructed differently. Mr. Rogers knew this--it was a big part of the success of his show--but both research and TV technology have come a long way since he started his show.

It would be bad if a show was simply A/B tested for stickyness, but that's not the story with the shows I mentioned above.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#125

Post by pbhjpbhj »

DanBC wrote: post #49
brandonmenc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother claims I sat in front of the TV utterly hypnotized by the "phonetics shadows," and that it's how I learned to read. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfQseUDQB2o Is there anything like this available for kids now? It's so stripped down and catchy that, even as an adult, I could watch these all day long.

There's AlphaBlocks from the BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/alphablocks That's a more rigid synthetic phonics approach (although some people claim they're saying the sounds wrong) and it's short (5 minutes?) animated stories rather than the more abstract thing you linked to. I'm English, I've never seen that before, it looks good and I wish there was more like it around at the moment. There is way too much…

Alphablocks and Numberjacks are both great IMO; I think the kids like(d) it too.

The last couple of years of Christmas lectures have been really good family viewing (for our family!), as were the RSC lecture series last year.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#126

Post by throwavay_java »

bitwize wrote: post #88
JeremyNT wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood is an astoundingly well envisioned show, and I'm really disappointed that the top comment here speaks ill of it. It expands upon the core of what Rogers was trying to teach and I find it to be a wonderfully fitting, modern successor. One of the joys I've experienced as a parent is in observing how well crafted and thoughtful DTN (and some other notable shows on PBS) have become, and how my…

I don't think DTN is necessarily bad on its own merits at all. Certainly there is much worse: Dora, Barney, Caillou, to name three. But compared to its predecessor it pales, significantly.

Dora is kind of good for little kids. They learn some problem solving, get introduced to Spanish.

But for goodness sake, all of the programmes talked about here are ENTERTAINMENT.

While I certainly enjoyed the shows I saw as a kid, the current crop seem more suitable for kids to me (ie, more balanced in terms of gender issues, racism and violence). I would rather my kids watched what is available now, than what I watched 30 years ago.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#127

Post by throwavay_java »

Amezarak wrote: post #111
DanBC wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teletubbies is aimed at children young enough to not be speaking yet - 6 months to 2 years old.

Children under two aren't even supposed to watch television. > Television and other entertainment media should be avoided for infants and children under age 2. A child's brain develops rapidly during these first years, and young children learn best by interacting with people, not screens. https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-ini...

yeah.

And as a parent who has held back normal bodily functions for an entire day while they did all the "right" things for their kids, sometimes the safest and best thing for everyone involved is to sit the kids in front of TV and know they will stay put for 15 minutes, so you can go to the toilet and then cook their dinner.

Also, the other day our 4 year old told me he wanted to be a paleontologist so he can find bones and coprolite. He didn't learn those words from me.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#128

Post by delecti »

grogenaut wrote: post #87

Summary: These things I loved as a kid are now slightly different and therefor RUINED. In an unrelated note, get off of my lawn you damned kids. Seriously, more hard hitting journalism by the folks that brought us "Snaktaku reviews the Big Mac" and "We really pissed off some game devs and had to buy our own copy of games" authors.

I admit to having never watched much Sesame Street, but I think that's a pretty inaccurate characterization of the article. There are several convincing examples of the point the author's trying to make.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#129

Post by lmm »

WalterBright wrote: post #107
bitwize wrote: post #52

I'd rather a million Elmo-centric Sesame Street episodes than even one episode of Barney or Caillou. That said, every kid needs some old-school, Elmo-free Sesame Street and Mister Rogers. (No, "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood" is not the same; it's insipid and dumb by comparison.) Also, back in the day, Square One TV had a police-procedural parody called Mathnet that was still loads better than network TV's attempt at a…

> It literally couldn't get any better for a kid than PBS in the 70s or 80s. As a kid in the 60s, we spent most of our time unsupervised roaming the countryside. The 60s Superman comics were the best, and for TV we had Bugs Bunny on Saturday mornings. Chemistry sets weren't yet emasculated. Somehow we learned to read without SS :-)

> Somehow we learned to read without SS :-)

But statistically speaking less of you learned to read, and those that did learned to read less well. The effects of Sesame Street were studied very thoroughly.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#130

Post by rjbwork »

A great article, but why is this on Kotaku? I thought they were a video game/geek culture publication. It seems to have far more depth and thought put into it than most of their tripe as well.
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