Learning the Lessons of Sesame Street
For 40 years it has taught children diversity and the alphabet, but what else should we be teaching them?
Sesame Street was never meant to be revolutionary. But it did aim to be different than anything else on TV. It came along at a time—40 years ago this month—when "it was sort of in the air that the world was going to change," recalls Sonia Manzano, who joined the cast as Maria in 1971. Sesame Street aspired to be a part of that change. (Click here to follow Ellis Cose).
Manzano, then a 21-year-old daughter of the South Bronx, had grown up watching Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best in an era when dark-skinned people of Puerto Rican descent were never seen on TV. Though she had enjoyed a star turn in the off-Broadway production of Godspell, she was unsure where she would fit in "this world that doesn't see me." Then Sesame came along, with its multicultural cast and its culture of inclusion, and she knew she was home. She was nonetheless a bit baffled when Matt Robinson, who played the avuncular Gordon, told her she was responsible for making sure the show reflected Latinos responsibly. Manzano soon realized a large part of doing that was simply being herself: an intelligent, supportive Latina woman who sometimes spoke Spanglish. (Article continued below...)
The program was a huge and immediate success. Its message of tolerance has become de rigueur in America. And it has spawned coproductions in Australia, Brazil, Palestine, South Africa, and elsewhere around the globe. The formula, tweaked to conform to local sensibilities, remains largely the same: entertainment and education, with a dollop of cultural relevance thrown in. In South Africa, children might see Archbishop Desmond Tutu or former president Nelson Mandela conversing with Kami, a Muppet who is HIV-positive. In Bangladesh, Bangla-speaking Muppets instruct children on the importance of politeness, washing their hands, and eating vegetables. Michelle Obama delivered a similar message in her Sesame Street appearance earlier this month, promoting the virtues of exercise and healthy eating.
Sesame Street has always had its critics. Some consider its educational philosophy old-fashioned. Others find it too political. And as the program has expanded globally, some have accused it of cultural imperialism. Sesame also has plenty of competitors these days, from Dora the Explorer to Spongebob Squarepants. But it remains in a category all its own. It has a seriousness that is evident, despite the silliness it uses to sell itself. As my 7-year-old daughter, Elisa, put it, Sesame Street is not quite as "babyish" as many other shows aimed at young kids.
But even the best children's television programs fall short of delivering what many of us would like. In an article published in The Atlantic shortly after Sesame's launch, John Holt pronounced the program insufficiently ambitious. He argued that television, in some respects, could do a better job of educating young children than schools, and urged Sesame to rise to the challenge. It's an intriguing notion. The typical preschooler, after all, spends nearly 30 hours a week in front of the set, more time than many spend with parents. It would be wonderful if all that time staring at the tube resulted in a great education.
Television programs are limited by the medium in which they exist. Television's main job, after all, is to entertain in bitesize bits, while encouraging consumption. That mission creates a culture of TV that no show seeking a broad audience (including those on public television) can really ignore. So for every second spent on teaching serious skills, there is another spent on either marketing or pure daffiness (say, Kermit singing about a disco frog). Then there is the fact that TV is not truly interactive—no matter how vigorously Dora and other characters encourage kids to shout at the screen. The learning that can take place on such a one-way medium is necessarily limited, which is not to say that there is anything wrong with launching a dialogue about making children's TV better.
But the more important national discussion that needs to take place is not about television but about early education, period. For years, researchers have cranked out data proving beyond any reasonable doubt that children who receive a high-quality preschool education have a great start in life. They are less likely to end up in special-education programs, less likely to need remedial help, and much more likely, in every measurable way, to be a success.
The hoopla over Sesame Street and its 40th anniversary is well deserved. But it would be great to see this attention to landmark TV shows morph into attention to one of the great social issues of the day: how do we begin to lay the groundwork for a system of universal, high-quality preschool education that could transform lives that no TV show can fundamentally change?
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Ellis Cose, author, columnist and contributing editor (since 1993) for Newsweek magazine and former chairman of the editorial board and editorial page editor of the New York Daily News, began his journalism career as a weekly columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times—becoming, at the age of 19, the youngest editorial page columnist ever employed by a major Chicago daily. Cose, who is also an independent radio producer, is a popular campus lecturer and public speaker.
In addition to serving as a columnist, editor and national correspondent for the Chicago Sun-Times, Cose has been a contributor and press critic for Time magazine, president and chief executive officer of the Institute for Journalism Education, chief writer on management and workplace issues for USA Today (where he has also served as an occasional columnist and member of the board of contributors) and a member of the editorial board of the Detroit Free Press. He has also been a fellow at the Gannett Center for Media Studies at Columbia University, at the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences, a senior fellow and director of energy policy studies at the Washington-based Joint Center for Political Studies, and a consultant to the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.
Cose's Bone to Pick: On Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Reparation and Revenge, was published by Atria (a Simon and Schuster imprint) in April 2004. The book is a wide-ranging look at a number of societies—the United States, Ghana, South Africa, East Timor, and Peru among them—and their ways of coping with cruelty and pain. The Washington Post had this to say: "The complex questions surrounding 'forgiveness, reconciliation, reparation, and revenge' probably require a scholarship of jurisprudence, philosophy, psychology, history and literature. This is the kind of ambitious enterprise that the world's great religions deal with. But Cose meets the challenge, and Bone to Pick ranges over centuries of contested histories, across five continents, spinning individual tragedies in and out of collective traumas, seeking the nature of 'forgiveness, albeit as a proxy for a larger set of values.' … The truth may be a prized (and politicized) commodity in the quest for social justice, but as Cose observes, quoting Czech novelist Milan Kundera, 'The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.' Bone to Pick is a timely reminder of that axiom and a useful addition to the canon of that struggle."
Cose's The Envy of the World, an in-depth essay on the state of black men in America, was published by Washington Square Press (an imprint of Simon and Schuster) in 2002 and has appeared on several best-seller lists, including the Essence magazine list, where it was number one. Newsweek featured the book on its cover and National Public Radio produced a special a program based on it. Kirkus Reviews called The Envy of the World, "A slender volume with a substantial and significant message." The Washington Post described it as "lucid, eloquent and deeply personal book." The Chicago Tribune called its author "a gifted, rhapsodic essayist." "Cose charts both an urgently argued history of black masculinity and a moving and nuanced snapshot of where it is now," declared Publishers' Weekly. The paperback edition was published in January 2003.
In May 2004 the Rockefeller Foundation issued Beyond Brown v. Board: The Final Battle for Excellence in American Education—a major report authored by Cose on the legacy of the historic Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision and the current challenges facing American educators. The report was the basis of a Newsweek cover feature and for a David Broder column and other stories in the national press. In November 2006, the Institute for Justice and Journalism at USC's Annenberg School published Cose's Killing Affirmative Action: Would ending it really result in a better, more perfect Union? That report, featured in several newspaper and in Newsweek magazine, examined California's 10-year experience living with Proposition 209, the measure that ended affirmative action in the public sector in California.
Cose's best-selling The Rage of a Privileged Class, a book-length essay on race in America, was published by HarperCollins in January 1994. It was featured as a Newsweek cover story and described by The New York Times Book Review as a "disciplined, graceful exposition of a neglected aspect of the subject of race in America." His A Man's World (published by HarperCollins in June 1995), was featured in a front page review in The New York Times Book Review. The Washington Post called it "a valuable, cogent and well-written contribution to an enormously complex subject."
Color-Blind: Seeing Beyond Race in a Race-Obsessed World (published in January 1997 and also excerpted in Newsweek) explored America's continuing obsession with race. The New York Times Book Review called it "a book this country desperately needs, one with genuine healing potential," and included Color-Blind among its best book of the year recommendations for 1997. Cose edited an essay collection entitled The Darden Dilemma published by HarperCollins in March 1997. His debut novel, The Best Defense, was published by HarperCollins in September 1998 ("a formidable first novel...crisp, fast-paced and engaging. In a genre glutted with lightweight fare, The Best Defense reaches higher"— The Seattle Times).
Cose is also the author of A Nation of Strangers, a history of American immigration, published by William Morrow and Co. in 1992 and of The Press, published by Morrow in 1989. He is the author of Energy and the Urban Crisis (1979) and the editor of Energy and Equity: Some Social Concerns (1978), both published by the Joint Center for Political Studies. He also wrote The Rebirth of Community Power, published by Westview Press: 1983.
At the Institute for Journalism Education (at the University of California, Berkeley), Cose designed and directed a widely quoted study on journalism careers published by IJE: The Quiet Crisis: Minority Journalists and Newsroom Opportunity (1985). He also instituted and served as inaugural director of IJE's Management Training Center at Northwestern University.
In his capacity as president of Ellis Cose, Inc. Cose has produced, written and hosted the pilot for a multimedia documentary series: "Against the Odds." The radio project (which has received funding from the Ford Foundation and will be distributed by Public Radio International) profiles individuals who have overcome tremendous adversity. It aspires to provide continuing and better coverage—in public radio but also on the web and in other media, including print—of people and communities often relegated to the margins of society. It also aims to stimulate thinking on how they, and their respective societies, can overcome that marginalization. The pilot focuses on a young man from a refugee camp in northern Kenya who, studying by the light of a rechargeable lamp, managed to get himself into Princeton University.
Cose has appeared on The Today Show, Nightline, Dateline, ABC Evening News, Good Morning America, the PBS "Time to Choose" election special, Charlie Rose, CNN's Talk Back Live, and a variety of other nationally televised and local programs. He has been interviewed for British, Brazilian and Canadian television. He is also a judge for the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. Cose has received fellowships or individual grants from the Ford Foundation, The Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, and numerous journalism awards—including the University of Missouri medal for career excellence and distinguished service in journalism, two Clarion awards, and four National Association of Black Journalists first place awards. He was also named the 2002 winner of the New York Association of Black Journalists' lifetime achievement award, winner of the 2003 award for best magazine feature from the National Association of Black Journalists as well as the winner of two New York Association of Black Journalists' first place 2003 awards for commentary and magazine features. In 2004 Cose was named the first recipient of the newly inaugurated annual Vision Award from the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. In 2006 he won a Unity award for commentary and also shared in a first place award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
A Chicago native, Cose holds a master's degree in Science, Technology and Public Policy from George Washington University. He is married to Lee Llambelis, former legal director for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and current director of intergovernmental relations for the Attorney General of New York. He has a daughter, Elisa Maria.
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