Free Range Sesame Street!

I am wathcing Old School Sesame Street with Victoria and Rosemary. Yes, I ignored the warnings at the beginning of the disks about it not being appropriate for today's preschoolers. How Sesame Street can be inappropriate for preschoolers of any generation is beyond me, but yes there is a warning at the beginning of each episode.

So far, in this episode this is what I have seen:

• Louise left his store in the care of a child around seven years of age while he left for five minutes to grab a cup of coffee.  He asked her to answer the phone if it rang and tell the people he would be back in five minutes.  This child is clearly not his.
  
• Small kids (some girls) running around without a shirt on.
• A group of children playing outside the buildings unsupervised and then joined by a man who has no children of his own.
• A child sitting alone on the stoop of his building.
• A boy around the age of 11 driving a cart of some kind (his job I assume) while a younger child sits on it.
• A young girl telling someone who is practically a stranger that she loves him and giving him a kiss.  (The infamous A-B-C Cookie Monster clip.)
• Lots and lots of bellbottoms.

None of that would ever be shown to todays kids.  And why?  Because all of it has been deemed to be dangerous behaviour.  But is it really?

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Old school vs. new

I would rather my kids watch the outside of the box Sesame Street old school than the formulaic one that is currently offered on PBS. As my brilliant 19 year old nephew put it, old school Sesame Street taught kids how to think and now Sesame Street teaches kids what to think.

Do you remember the yo-yo man and the lost kid? What great advise yo-yo man gave to the boy!  "You should figure it out yourself".  Do you remember the kid buying a loaf of bread, a container of milk and a stick of butter?  No need to write it down mommy!  I can remember!  Neither of those clips would be suitable for today's preschool children, according to so-called child experts.  And why?  Because those children were left to think for themselves.

What are some clips from new Sesame Street?  Let's see, there's Jack Black and the fuzzy red incarnation of evil itself Elmo teaching about octagons.  Then there's Neil Patrick Harris (love him!) singing about shoes.  Where's the thinking involved in those?  (And if anyone can show me a new Sesame Street clip that would make me jump for joy and change my stance, please point me to it!  I will even make sure everyone who visits me here will see that I am wrong.)

How about the guest songs?  Well, Feist visited Sesame Street and sang a redone version of her 1-2-3-4 song.  But, way back in the day, Paul Simon visited Sesame Street and sang Me and Julio.  Can you see the difference there?  Which gives you a good feeling about the future generation?  I weep for todays generation of children when the freedom to think for ones self is not considered appropriate for preschoolers.

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I would be remiss if I didn't include a rant about Elmo's world in here.  My personal feeling about Elmo aside, I hate Elmo's world.  A lot.  Sure kids like it, but kids will watch a video consisting of fish swimming in an aquarium.  And I would rather they did.  At least fish are unpredictable.  "Hey, I wonder where the orange one will swim next!  Oh and look!  The angel fish (just for you my friend Angel <3) swam in the same place three times and is now moving to a different area! What will happen next!"  With Elmo's world, kids know exactly what will happen next.  Right down to the words of the song he will sing at the end of the episode.

And just for fun, watch the clip of Elmo's song with Big Bird and Snuffy and put a sarcastic undertone on everything Big Bird and Snuffy sing and say.  "To think, he wrote that himself" *roll eyes and snicker*