Educational goals of Sesame Street
First children's show with a detailed, research-based educational curriculum.
Sesame Street, which premiered on public broadcasting television stations in 1969, was the first children's show to use a detailed and comprehensive educational curriculum with specific goals. Its curriculum was created in a series of five seminars in 1968, and its goals were informed by in-house formative research and independent summative evaluations. The show addressed both cognitive and affective skills, initially focusing on cognitive skills to prepare children for school, especially those from low-income families.
Quick Facts
- Premiere year
- 1969
- First curriculum seminars
- 1968
Facts from the source article.
Purpose
Sesame Street was built around the insight that holding children's attention enables their education. Gerald S. Lesser, the first chair of the advisory board of the Children's Television Workshop, stated that television needed to capture, focus, and sustain children's attention to be effective as an educational tool. The show was the first children's program that paid attention to the structure of each episode and made small but critical adjustments to segments to capture attention. Its educational goals came from formative research that informed production and from independent summative evaluations by the Educational Testing Service during the first two seasons. The first curriculum was created in five seminars in 1968, led by Lesser and attended by the creative staff and educational specialists. The participants generated long lists of goals, which were organized into five categories and later whittled down to four: symbolic representation, cognitive processes, the physical environment, and the social environment. The curriculum was eventually restated to identify the writers' goals instead of the child's.
Cognitive goals
One of the show's creators' goals was preparing children for school, aware of the frustration of a child ill-prepared for its demands. They sought to instill an appetite for learning and provide basic educational skills, which was valuable to inner-city parents, and to teach children both what and how to think. The creators decided to include only skills within the range of three- to five-year-old children, not skills they already had or beyond their reach. They recognized that television lent itself to modeling as a teaching tool, as children tended to imitate what they saw on screen. Many writing and production methods directly modeled effective verbal communication, and indirect modeling without explicit labeling demonstrated positive behaviors such as inquisitiveness and enjoyment of learning. Humor that interfered with the instructional message or exhibited inappropriate behavior was removed. For example, when research found that puppeteers' demonstrations of emotions by banging puppets' heads or having them fall backwards did not model appropriate behavior, these behaviors were changed. The Muppet Roosevelt Franklin was removed because many leaders in the African American community felt he displayed negative cultural stereotypes.
Affective goals
Initially, the creators addressed affective goals indirectly, believing that focusing on cognitive goals would naturally increase children's self-esteem and feelings of competency. Viewers' racial identities were addressed by integrating the show with black and white actors and performers. Critics during the first season forced the Workshop to address affective goals more overtly after extensive research and planning. The affective goals addressed were social competence, tolerance of diversity, and nonaggressive ways of resolving conflict, depicted through interpersonal disputes among residents, making Sesame Street an idealized place of child empowerment. During the 1980s, the curriculum began addressing affective goals more overtly, focusing on turning inward and expanding young viewers' world. These goals were inspired by the experiences of the writing staff, cast, and crew. For example, after the 1982 death of Will Lee (Mr. Hooper), the producers addressed grief. In 1985, adoption was addressed with Gordon and Susan's adoption of Miles, emphasizing its effect on parenting and family relationships. The producers, after extensive research, chose not to refer to Miles' biological parents because child development experts thought it might frighten young children.
Outreach
Sesame Street focused on children from disadvantaged backgrounds, but the creators recognized they needed to encourage all children to watch. Their primary goal was to make the show appealing to inner-city families, a group that did not traditionally watch educational programs on public television. As Gerald S. Lesser stated, if the series did not work for poor children, the entire project would fail. The show's audience was described as concentric, with the urban poor within the larger circle of all preschoolers. The Workshop devoted 8% of their initial budget to advertise the new show in an extensive campaign that demanded as much ingenuity as production and research. They promoted the show with educators and the broadcast industry, understanding that traditional methods of promotion and advertising were not effective with their target community. To reach inner-city audiences, they hired Evelyn Davis from the Urban League as the Workshop's first Vice President of Community Relations and head of the Community Educational Services division. After the first season, the CES' outreach turned from promotion to developing educational materials for preschool settings, and the child-care community became its core constituency. Early outreach included mobile viewing units that broadcast the show in inner cities, Appalachia, Native American communities, and migrant worker camps. In the early 1980s, the CES developed into the Sesame Street Preschool Education Program, which assisted preschools in using the show as an educational resource by combining television viewing, books, hands-on activities, and other media.
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