Cookie Monster's new tone
16/09/13 05:38
I’m not a huge fan of television. We have a television and I do watch a few programs from time to time, but when people ask me if I am familiar with a particular program, I rarely have even watched an entire episode. There are lots of things that are part of the popular culture that I know mostly be people talking about them or by news reporting about the media rather than by watching television. It just doesn’t often capture my imagination. I turn on the television, find my mind wandering and soon leave the room to do something else. I think that is why prefer to listen to the radio. The radio is portable and it allows you to do something else while it is playing. It can move seamlessly from the foreground to the background without conscious effort. I know that there are people who can operate with the television in the background, but I find that to be a real challenge. When I visit a home where the television is continually on or, worse yet for me, go to a restaurant with several different televisions with different programs or sports events playing, I find the video to be distracting. I have trouble maintaining a reasonable conversation in such a setting because the television screens pull my attention away from the people.
So I’m no expert on television.
But I do know that it has a special role to play in the lives of many people. I still remember a conversation that we had in the early 1980’s as we prepared to resettle a refugee family coming to the United States. I had focused on what I thought were “essential” items for the small apartment: silverware, pots and pans, towels, sheets, a kitchen table and beds. The person we were working with at Church World Service suggested that we get a television set. My initial reaction was to say, “Is that necessary?” The response was, “Yes.” The television set provided one more way for the family new to our country to be immersed in our language and culture. It became a teacher of English as well as some of the nuances of our way of life.
Often, when I would visit the family, I would see Sesame Street on the television.
I was already familiar with Sesame Street. I think that it was the program that most sealed the deal when our family got our first set. I wanted our children to be able to watch the award-winning preschool program. And, frankly, I loved the puppets. I have never learned to be a puppeteer, but I sure like the puppets. And top on my list of loveable puppets was Cookie Monster. The puppet is essentially a mouth with a pair of googly eyes on the top of his head encased in blue fur. And he has a deep, gravely voice and a love of cookies. It wasn’t hard for me to learn some of his songs and routines and before long we had a cookie monster puppet in our home and I was reading stories and singing songs with our children that came from the television program.
I don’t know if you are a fan of Sesame Street, but the Sesame Workshop is a serious educational venture that pays attention to the needs of children. As a result of that attention, the character of Cookie Monster has been played down in recent years. Cookie has been making fewer appearances simply because we live ini a culture where eating to excess is not a good lesson to teach children. Cookie Monster’s love of cookies is amusing, but the writers and educators of the Workshop began to question if it was a good example. They tried to get Cookie to eat healthy snacks such as vegetables and fruit, but it didn’t really have much effect because Cookie is a Monster – he eats everything! I’ve seen him eat fish and meat, but also a bicycle and also a canoe.
The approach is different in this season of Sesame Street. Cookie is struggling to learn self-control. Assisted by the other characters on the program, he is developing strategies to reduce his desire to over eat. He is learning to take a breath and remember what good foods he should eat. He is learning to use his mind and imagination to help him eat fewer cookies. And for the season, while he will occasionally eat a cookie in his crumbly, monster fashion, he will be eating only one cookie at a time and then only after showing some restraint and self control.
Self-regulation is a very difficult thing to teach to preschoolers, but preschool is just the right age for the lesson. At 3 or 4 years of age, children begin to become aware of the ways they affect others and they begin to understand that others have feelings and experience some of the same emotions that they are experiencing. As children move from all limits being imposed from the outside to having the ability to set some of their own limits, the seeds of conscience are sown. Children who fail to learn self-regulation as preschoolers either have to learn it later in life or they go through life limited only by external rules and structures. Too often those who do not learn self-regulation end up in jail – a place where regulation is imposed in a severe manner.
I probably won’t watch Sesame Street on the television unless I happen to be in someone else’s home. I am, however, grateful to see that the program is allowing its characters to evolve and that it has the courage to address some really difficult issues of culture and of child development. For families where there is a lot of television in the home, I hope that Sesame Street is one of the programs that is watched by preschool children.
And it gets my attention as well. I’m beginning to wish I had a preschooler with whom to watch some of Cookie’s Crumbly Pictures. After all I hear that among the offerings this year will be “The Spy who Loved Cookies,” and “The Biscotti Kid.”
So I’m no expert on television.
But I do know that it has a special role to play in the lives of many people. I still remember a conversation that we had in the early 1980’s as we prepared to resettle a refugee family coming to the United States. I had focused on what I thought were “essential” items for the small apartment: silverware, pots and pans, towels, sheets, a kitchen table and beds. The person we were working with at Church World Service suggested that we get a television set. My initial reaction was to say, “Is that necessary?” The response was, “Yes.” The television set provided one more way for the family new to our country to be immersed in our language and culture. It became a teacher of English as well as some of the nuances of our way of life.
Often, when I would visit the family, I would see Sesame Street on the television.
I don’t know if you are a fan of Sesame Street, but the Sesame Workshop is a serious educational venture that pays attention to the needs of children. As a result of that attention, the character of Cookie Monster has been played down in recent years. Cookie has been making fewer appearances simply because we live ini a culture where eating to excess is not a good lesson to teach children. Cookie Monster’s love of cookies is amusing, but the writers and educators of the Workshop began to question if it was a good example. They tried to get Cookie to eat healthy snacks such as vegetables and fruit, but it didn’t really have much effect because Cookie is a Monster – he eats everything! I’ve seen him eat fish and meat, but also a bicycle and also a canoe.
The approach is different in this season of Sesame Street. Cookie is struggling to learn self-control. Assisted by the other characters on the program, he is developing strategies to reduce his desire to over eat. He is learning to take a breath and remember what good foods he should eat. He is learning to use his mind and imagination to help him eat fewer cookies. And for the season, while he will occasionally eat a cookie in his crumbly, monster fashion, he will be eating only one cookie at a time and then only after showing some restraint and self control.
Self-regulation is a very difficult thing to teach to preschoolers, but preschool is just the right age for the lesson. At 3 or 4 years of age, children begin to become aware of the ways they affect others and they begin to understand that others have feelings and experience some of the same emotions that they are experiencing. As children move from all limits being imposed from the outside to having the ability to set some of their own limits, the seeds of conscience are sown. Children who fail to learn self-regulation as preschoolers either have to learn it later in life or they go through life limited only by external rules and structures. Too often those who do not learn self-regulation end up in jail – a place where regulation is imposed in a severe manner.
I probably won’t watch Sesame Street on the television unless I happen to be in someone else’s home. I am, however, grateful to see that the program is allowing its characters to evolve and that it has the courage to address some really difficult issues of culture and of child development. For families where there is a lot of television in the home, I hope that Sesame Street is one of the programs that is watched by preschool children.
And it gets my attention as well. I’m beginning to wish I had a preschooler with whom to watch some of Cookie’s Crumbly Pictures. After all I hear that among the offerings this year will be “The Spy who Loved Cookies,” and “The Biscotti Kid.”