Sophia Cajigas Ms. Milliner EES21QH-01 01 June 2017 Problem-Solution Essay Many people in the United States grew up with shows like Sesame Street. Fun, ‘children’ shows that offered important social and educational values. Recently, there have been severe budget cuts to PBS, the program that funds Sesame Street and other educational programs such as the YouTube show Crash Course. While this seems like an issue that shouldn’t be brought into the public eye, there are many repercussions to completely terminating very relevant, poignant programs. People may not see the immediate problem with terminating a program such as PBS, but many educators fear for the future after these cuts. PBS offers free videos of educational programming for teachers to use in class. They offer youtube videos, websites with educational games, and toys that offer healthy stimulation for young children. My mother, a kindergarten teacher, even said that she’s seen improvement in kids who had these educational programs versus kids who haven’t. “They seem more eager to learn and they seem to actually have fun while their learning since they associate counting with fun characters like Elmo”. Not only are these shows incredibly helpful to young children, but they’re also incredibly diverse. Many people who were born in the 90s know about shows such as Static Shock, El Tigre, and Samurai Jack. All three of these shows portray people of color in an accurate, nonstereotyping manner. Static Shock was a black superhero with a white sidekick, El Tigre was a Latino superhero with an art style largely influenced by sugar skulls, and Samurai Jack has a very accurate representation of ancient Japanese culture, with a non-offensively coded Asian male as the lead. These shows from the past offered a chance for people to relate to characters by offering them a character that looks like the person watching, or someone the person knows. Granted you can’t have every body type, race, gender, or sexuality expressed in mainstream media, but there has been a severe lack of true diversity in programming. The article, “Trump Budget Cuts Funding For the Arts, Humanities, And Public Media” state's, “Funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be cut to
Although his article was published 32 years ago in 1985, it is still very relevant today. Technology has continued to improve over the past several decades and television is much more immediate than it was back then. Due to services such as Netflix and the internet, people can watch and download any episode of a television show they want. Due to this, educational shows such as “Sesame Street” are even more accessible to children than they were in the 1980s. I agree with Postman in that television shows such as “Sesame Street” do undermine a traditional idea of what schooling represents. As Postman states, “in a classroom, one may ask a teacher questions, one can ask nothing of a television screen” (1). When it comes to television, people do not have to put in much deep thought or have patience. Although if there ever is a misunderstanding of something discussed on a television show such as “Sesame Street”, a child is not able to ask the television to further explain a concept. A child can ask an educator to elaborate on a subject to allow the child to develop a firmer grasp on the topic. In this aspect, educational television offers mostly a quick and superficial way to “learn”. As a result of this, television acts mainly as a source of entertainment with Postman stating “’Sesame Street’ does not encourage children to love school or anything about
In their article “Moving beyond the 'Vast Wasteland'”, Laurie Ouellette and Justin Lewis critique how public broadcasting functions in the US. Liberal reformers hold to the view that television needs protection from commercialism. The liberal reformer view contains cultural and class hierarchies. They believe that public television is for the white, college-educated middle-class viewer who has “cultural capital”(Ouellette & Lewis, 96). As a result, funding for public broadcasting has gone primarily towards high culture and intellectual programs and not sitcoms or other popular forms of television. Ouellette and Lewis disagree with this, saying that these types of high-brow programming are not the only ones worthy of public investment. Instead, they argue that popular programs that are being commercially maintained also merit public support and investment (96). Rather than reserving public broadcasting for more educational programming, the authors argue that there is a more progressive solution that can incorporate popular media forms while still veering away from commercialization.
Imagine, if you will, a time that seemed innocent... almost too innocent. Imagine a nation under whose seemingly conformist and conservative surface dramatic social changes were brewing, changes as obvious as integration and as subtle as fast food. And imagine, if you will, a radical television show that scrutinized, criticized, and most importantly, publicized these changes, making the social turmoil of a nation apparent to its post-world war, self-contented middle-class citizens. But what if this television show was not as it appeared? What if it masqueraded as simple science fiction, and did not reveal its true agenda until viewers took a closer look? Let us examine how
Children television programs have been around for decades, designed to entertain and educate the targeted audience. These programs are extremely popular among children, typically last twenty to thirty minutes, are scheduled between the hours of 7:00 a.m. – 10: 00 p.m., and are aired daily on a weekly basis. The commercials that air in-between the breaks of each program are also marketed towards and specifically made for children. Even though the main purpose of children television programs is to entertain, inform, and educate, there are a variety of stereotypes that can be found within some of these children shows. Some of these stereotypes have to do with ethnicity and gender. After carefully watching and analyzing a few of these children
Television has been around since 1925 and likely will not go away anytime soon. Back when it was new, white people were the only ones working behind the scenes creating shows, starring in films and dramas, or working in Hollywood. Sadly, in today’s world much of these barriers in the television and film industry still stand. If multiculturalism
PBS is one of the most popular broadcaster and television program distributors of all time. However, despite its continued presence in the spotlight and under the scrutiny of the public eye, there are still some things that many people don't know. With that in mind, here we present our list of 15 things you definitely (probably) didn't know about PBS. Check it out for yourself below!
Waking early every morning hoping to see the little red furry puppet on my TV screen. The one who taught me how to my ABC’s, how to count and how to express myself. Who taught me feelings were ok and how to make friends. As well as I, I know they are millions of kids across the nation who woke up early to see the furry red puppet on their TV screen. Sesame Street is not just another kids show but is an education system in which develops the younger toddler mind to learn. To advance themselves, to prepare them for school. However our new president Trump wants to cut those funding. For a while now the Republicans have wanted to kill government funding for the younger audience favorite
In many ways, television has portrayed a great deal of stereotypical behavior, and is distorted because it does not seem to represent the diversity or culture of certain ethnic groups, for example, Black, Hispanic, Arab, and Muslim communities etc. In my outlook, I feel that the objective of most of these television shows/media is to target certain subcultures for the reason of it being understood as amusing or entertaining, but in turn it evokes other raciest humor. At time, I do find it extremely difficult to watch television, not only is it down grading it clearly shows a misunderstanding of those communities I mentioned, but in general the misperception of Black people over all. The most frustrating and irrational thing about all of
While President Lyndon B. Johnsons “Great Society” program was battling racial inequality and poverty in the 60s, a small group of friends gathered and discussed the idea of manipulating the technology television to do the same, to have a show that promoted racial tolerance and compassion through education. When most parents sit their children in front of the television and turn on child education programs, they have a sense of gratitude, children’s shows would teach their children the alphabet and how to count while they could handle their grown-up stuff. For years, my parents sat me in front of the television and turned on Sesame Street and so did my grandparents when my parents were little. Sesame Street was a daycare in a box, my Father used to joke, but even though Sesame Street had lessons on colors, numbers, and shapes, I doubt my grandparents or parents thought about the greater lessons that Sesame Street aimed to teach children beyond the ABCs— to teach children about diversity and inclusion and other sensitive issues regarding health, safety, and cultural awareness through catchy jingles, diverse casts, special guest stars, and of course our furry little monster friends. In many ways, Sesame street took children’s programing father than it ever had gone before and it set the tone for entertainers, artists, and educators to embrace a sense social responsibility to American youth.
In the best of times here, television had been a closely guarded and carefully monitored luxury. It was an award system that I had shunned since my first day of residency, realizing quickly that the only programs awarded to my special class of society were reruns of Saved by the Bell and whatever channel constantly replayed “Homeward Bound.” Until today, I thought that those were the only channels the damn thing received.
Although so many children’s educational programs attempt to influence attitudes relating to racial prejudice (Persson & Musher-Eizenman, 2003), the amount of research that has been conducted to test the effectiveness of these efforts is extremely minimal. To date, only two known studies have successfully caused children to demonstrate positive changes in racial attitude as prompted by television programming. The first, Gorn et al. (1976) found that their Caucasian preschool-aged participants experienced a positive shift in attitudes towards race after watching Sesame Street. In one condition, participants watched an episode in which White children played with non-White children, and in another condition only children from ethnic minority groups played together. Most notably, participants who had watched either episode claimed they would rather play with the non-White children, whereas the participants in the control condition, who viewed an episode with only White children, almost unanimously claimed that they would rather play with White children (Gorn et al., 1976).
In the past years, Disney television shows have been trying to embody the whole concept of multiculturalism and the idea of inclusiveness. There have been diverse representations of people of colored as cast members in many of Disney television shows. Shows like That’s so Raven and Cory in the House are about black families with diverse casts. Diversity in cast is also seen in shows like Wizards of Waverly place, Good Luck Charlie and Shake it Up. This racial diversity of Disney television shows is seen as a step towards the eradication of racism and the adoption of multiculturalism in television. This is however misleading as Disney’s idea of racial diversity in their television
Community groups had an influence on where public television was going: they wanted more responsive programming (Dobel, 1999).
As television channels in the 1960’s continued to display numerous violence, American comedy, and offensive commercials, television programming offered scanty, enjoyable shows for the general audience. Newton Minow, the Federal Communications Chairman (FCC) from 1961 to 1963, argued for a better quality of television in his “Address to the Broadcasting Industry” to over 2,000 members of the National Association of Broadcasters. As a result, it generated a national debate about the quality of television programming. Throughout his speech, Minow argues for better television programming since other means of communication offer better content, children are exposed to only violence and cartoons, and the
Television networks, such as PBS and Nickelodeon, that are directed towards the attention of children play an essential role in teaching kids about foreign languages. In