Sesame Street circa 1969

I was probably not quite 6 years old when Sesame Street first aired on PBS. It was created for a specific audience, the inner-city four year old and if you look at the episodes from those first seasons you will notice a decidedly inner city setting, but one that was undoubtedly cleaner and more hopeful than the reality it was pseudo-mimicking. All I remember about the show were muppets and singing and adults who were never too busy or spoke to roughly, so imagine my surprise when I ran across an article today about the recent DVD release of those first episodes and the fact that they carry a warning sticker. Yes, you heard correctly. There is a disclaimer on these Sesame Street DVD’s cautioning parents about allowing their preschoolers to watch it. Apparently the simpler times that so many people refer to lovingly when talking about their childhood eras don’t include the years in which I was actually a child. Late 1960’s and on need not apply for “wonder years’ status after all it seems.

I was not a huge Sesame Street fan as I remember it. I preferred one of the Children’s Television Workshop’s next creations, The Electric Company a lot more. I was a devoted Captain Kangaroo fan. I can still recall the titles of some of the books he read like Mike and the Steam Shovel, Make Way for Ducklings (which I just read my own daughter the other night) and Caps for Sale (which I ran across one day at Barnes and Noble and bought - for myself). Sesame Street’s mission in the earliest days was to expose disadvantaged kids to the idea of life outside the city and instill in them the idea that learning was fun. While the teacher in me cringes at the latter (learning is not always fun but it is necessary), I feel that those early episodes are probably not the politically incorrect minefield of horror and potential psychological trauma that the warning label is meant to invoke. However, I probably won’t rush out and buy it either. Mainly because I doubt that my five year old would sit and watch it for long. She is, unfortunately or not depending on your old world views, like some many of her peers in that she is accustomed to CGIish characters and settings and the frenetic pace of today’s child-oriented productions. In short, she would probably find it boring. I don’t know if this is too bad or not. Bert and Ernie were two unrelated males lived in the basement of a dingy gray concrete building who shared the same bedroom. Cookie Monster was an unrepentant carbohydrate addict. Oscar was mean and morose and in desperate need of medicating and therapy. The grown-ups on the show often approached children who did not know them and offered them food and drink. The montages of rural life didn’t scream warnings about environmental decay via the toxicity of humanity but instead showed rather bland farm scenes that seem antique even for the time period. The running theme of being kind to your neighbors and helpful and learning without the aid of technology runs at odds with today’s neighborhoods of strangers and looking out for yourself and the idea that an education is complete if it isn’t chocked full of relevancy and head-splitting excitement.

On our recent trip to B.C. to visit Rob’s mother, she hauled out a video of old home movies that Rob had transferred from 8mm years ago. They were interesting for several reasons. First they gave me an opportunity to see all the new players in my life, my in-laws, as they were when they were young. It puts much of the current dynamics at work between them into a frame of reference. The tape also allowed me to learn more about Rob. But finally, it made me realize once again how this world is really about adults. It was built by us and for us, and children are, and have always been not much more than flesh and blood versions of vanity plates and the consequences of our adult needs. And I am not saying this makes all of us bad parents or that the majority of us don’t love our children. While I will never be totally convinced that everyone has the right to be a parent (the right, not the physical ability to breed), I think most of us are conscientious about our responsibilities. I do believe though that in our current efforts to child-proof the world, we are forgetting that children today are not more fragile than we ourselves were back in 1969. That glimpse into the inner city probably did me as much good as the pastoral scenes did those tenement dwelling preschoolers. Which is to say, a lot and that allowing our little ones today those same peeks into the past will probably not have much different of an impact.