Comments on: Did Children’s Programming Ruin my Life?

By: Lorelei

Lorelei — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 06:56:26 +0000

My oldest wouldn’t to his ABC’s for me, but he would for Sesame Street

I notice no one is complaining about Captain Kangaroo, but he was right there with Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street (who had black people on during segregation, and taught many Southern children to not hate because of color).

Personally, I think our shows were better then stuff like the Teletubby crap on now. I always referred to them as stoned babies and refused to let my kids watch it.

By: Kosmo

Kosmo — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:07:06 +0000

I blame Elmo for the poor test scores of today. That little muppet has led to a dumbing-down of Sesame Street and many other shows followed suit.

By: Lelah

Lelah — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:28:37 +0000

LOL. Mr. Rogers made me interested in the world around me with all his field trips, and inspired me to try things that were new to me. Sesame Street aided my pre-reading experience by making letters and sounds memorable.

If you go and find the post on here about the passing of Mr. Rogers, you will see hundreds of comments regarding the positive effects Mr. Rogers had on children from many decades. Someone should send that link to that LSU professor.

By: Bugs

Bugs — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:17:10 +0000

I watched darn near every kids show and cartoon out there. I learned a little [both good and bad] from them all. But like they say in school “The teacher is a road map, the parents are the drivers.”

By: Kim

Kim — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:39:45 +0000

I think Mr. Rogers is more of an example of the problem, not the cause. The problem I have seen, as a child of baby boomers, is that their entire parenting idea revolves around giving their kids the things they never had as kids. Well that’s great, but now they have realized too late that it just produced a generation of young adults who do not take any personal responsibility and expect everything to be handed to them. People my age drive me crazy!!

By: Beth

Beth — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:31:42 +0000

fraggle rock made me scared to go down tot he basement of my house

By: BassMan

BassMan — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:34:47 +0000

What Jen said.

Blaming Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street, whatever, for short attention spans, etc., is just sympomatic of a victim mentality. So many of us our unwilling to take responsibility for our actions and this trend is promoted by all media and is firmly linked to cortporate capitalism.

By: Jen

Jen — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:53:19 +0000

I watched all these shows when I was a kid. I don’t have ADD, I work hard for the things I want and that includes cold hard cash. I also had parents who didn’t talk down to me, made me understand that while I AM special so is everyone else in their own way and that doesn’t entitle me to special treatment and made me do chores to earn an allowance. Sure, television can influence anyone, especially young people. But I think the problem hits when television is the only influence.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:02:32 +0000

I just saw the Jim Hensen exhibit in DC and in a video he said he got the idea for the short clips on Sesame Street from commercials. Apparently there was a study at the time showing that small children’s attention spans were perfect for commercials so he based the whole show on that concept. At least they weren’t trying to sell us anything. I wish I could still stay home and watch Sesame Street!

By: Cory

Cory — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 22:17:35 +0000

Aren’t we supposed to distrust corporations? I mean about ninety nine percent of them do actually make profits from just dumping all over the Earth. I was under the strict impression that they pretty much are all as evil as that silly cartoon portrayed.