Gawker
Why Kids Are So Dumb Today
In the Tipping Point, middle-brow about town Malcolm Gladwell cites rather convincing evidence that Blues Clues, that maddeningly simple television show featuring an azure canine, taught kids more about life than Sesame Street. Sesame Street he claims, en bref, was too complicated for the psyche's of tiny tots. He's wrong and here's why.
First there's the little matter of reading test scores in American students which have been plummeting since the seventies and markedly since the aughts. But that is due to an entire range of factors. The real answer is both deeper and less scientifically supported.
It is accurate that children may follow the oversimplified primary-colored repetitive plots of Blues Clues. But is that what life is all about? Based on not only the above clip of Sesame Street animation set to music Philip Glass composed specifically for the show but this clip, featuring Judy Collins singing "Bring in the Clowns" while clowns execute turned-in pirouettes in the background from The Muppet Show and my life experience, the answer is no. Both of the earlier shows taught an invaluable life lesson: Much of what is beautiful is rare and hard to comprehend. What makes it beautiful does not make sense. "What the fuck?" (albeit expressed in milder toddlerspeak) is often the prelude to the discovery of the sublime. Also, life never makes much more sense than it does when you're three and watching a bunch of clowns dance to a sad song. You just learn to see the beauty in it.
1:13 AM on Tue Jan 8 2008
By Joshua Stein
3,600 views
49 comments
Comments
What time is Nick Douglas back on duty?
Josh, why so late to work this morning? Get stuck in rush hour traffic?
Joshua...I applaude you on this post!
No explaining...just clapping.
Thanks.
Oh, and WRT Blues Clues: Bring back Steve. Joe sucks.
Fuck you for making me cry. Just get your mom to shut up about vaginas and I'm yours.
I'm off now to visit a dairy farm in my dreams, to the sweet, haunting sounds of an analog-recorded flute.
well done, well done.
I like how Jarsh is a streight but isn't afraid to get all highbrow.
josh, you are a rare and beautiful thing.
Wow - I had forgotten the Philip Glass disks of color moving out of the pinwheel until now - and I feel profoundly sad for the children of this millennium. God bless the 70's.
@Josh: Also, life never makes much more sense than it does when you're three and watching a bunch of clowns dance to a sad song. You just learn to see the beauty in it.
Or when you're watching how milk is made.
[www.youtube.com]
This is just really lovely.
Check the plural of "psyche," Puh-Pah. xoxo
Um, it's "Send in the Clowns." (According to my hippie 6th-grade chorus teacher, anyway.)
The difference between "Blue's Clues" and "Sesame Street," in my opinion, is that "Sesame Street" is terrifying. The monster who lives in a garbage can, the obsessive-compulsive vampire, the giant bird with his pet giant mutant-elephant-thing, not to mention the humans living in poverty and despair -- no wonder little tykes are too nervous hanging around that neighborhood to learn anything.
This was fantastic, Josh.
Gawker After Hours is kind of magnificent.
@MordecaiStein1: @TedSez: Ah, both of you are right. I guess I watched too much Sesame Street and not enough Blues Clues! Anyway, changing to Send. Mordecai, you're dead to me.
@TedSez: Shit, I can't change. Just know I tried.
@Josh: No prob. Here are some other interesting takes on the song. (Unfortunately, the inimitable Krusty the Clown version has been scoured from the Web.)
[www.youtube.com]
[www.youtube.com]
[www.youtube.com]
[www.watchingsimpsons.com]
It's just so beautiful. Touching. Sob.
Now I suppose your grandfather is going to die also.
Sesame Street taught me how to count to 20 in Spanish as a 4 year old. Luis and Maria ruled!
1-2-3-4-5, 6-7-8-9-10, 11, 12!
That is all.
If the TV won't raise my child- who will?
Speaking of Blue's Clues, the new Steve isn't half as hot as the old Steve.
More Gawker appreciations of the sublime, please. Even if it means bringing in Kant and Burke, DO IT.
1...2...3...4....5.... 5!5!5! Let's sing a song of 5! How many is 5? 5... chocolate... sundaes! *crashes down the stairs* "Holy crap, mommy, the chef got pwned!"
It's not a rarity, but check this out. "When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer." That's what I learned on Sesame Street.
Very, very nice. And they even had the sound of annoying ringtones in the background before cell phones existed. And the trival pursuit wheel.
I suppose it's kind of a statement about the state of the internet, and Gawker in particular, that a really basic sort of statement, but actually quasi non-statement about art can elicit so much fawning. I guess we're so used to the low bar that anything at waist height becomes olymic high-jump material.
Yah I'm cranky today. Wannafightaboutit?
@SemperBufo: Too bad Sesame Street came too late for Dubya's formative years.
Also, Malcom Gladwell is a boring, turdy intellectual. He's way better when he bends his demi-brain towards journalism. Analyzing factoids and statistics in the service of articles. Then, he's actually really readable - like his piece on American health care, and that weird but awesome one about that duo that created a music analysis computer program to determine number 1 hits. If you actually allow him to formulate new ideas, then he drops five pegs on the four peg scale.
That was awesome. Fuck Malcolm Gladwell.
Seriously, I'm having intense flashbacks here.
Also realizing why I was so obsessed with my compass and protractor as a kid. Besides the fact that I was (uh, am) a raging geek.
And also, in my very technical opinion: Sesame consistently maintains a level of awesomeness that Blues Clues can never touch.
@Nutmeg:
I believe that's from Electric Company, which might appeal more to today's little snowflakes - louder and more colorful than Sesame Street.
@VoxPopuli:
I believe that Sesame Street is far too advanced for Dubya!
He's more suited to Teletubbies.
Where else could I learn how to take my llama to the dentist, or what it's like living in a Capital I? Every time I go to the grocery store I buy a loaf of bread, a container of milk and a stick of butter.
@sunny_lematina: Spirograph, too; those little plastic wheels kept me dazed and happy for hours at a time. Whereas today -- Oooh, the edges are so sharp! Those wheels are non-biodegradable!
I feel sorry not just for kids today but for the parents forced to sit through that Blues Clues/Dora/Barney crap. You don't need to be stoned to appreciate the Philip Glass geometry, but no amount of any substance could induce me to sit through a half hour of current network saturday-morning kids programming.....
@nutmeg:
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 had the best funk beat!
[youtube.com]
@CJC: Nope, Nutmeg had it right - it's from Sesame Street, and it was sung by the Pointer Sisters. Truth!
I loved Sesame Street. It became dead to me (a little) when they made Snuffy real. That was sad.
Grace Slick sings the Jazzy Spies!
[www.youtube.com]
Me and my Llama
Me and my Llama
Goin to the dentist today
[www.youtube.com]
@TedSez: Sesame Street was only terrifying only if that wasn't exactly like the real neighbrhood you lived in. (I'm just sayin'.)
@theobviouschild: Too many 'onlys' there. Oops.
If I saw that clip as a child I would be terrified. Phillip Glass? frightening shit. I liked The Electric Company and Zoom being a 70's kid but the real reason why kids are slower is because most of them suffer from A.D.D.
Mah na mah na!
[www.youtube.com]
''New" Gawker, take notes.
Ok, this is really immature, but right at the 4:59 point in the Judy Collins clips it really sounds like she's saying "don't you love farts."
@SpecialK: Hell to the yes. That is my current default ringtone.
@TedSez: add sam the eagle to that list please! c r e e p y.
well... he was a muppet not starring on sesame street... but still!
The amazing and wonderful thing about this, and what is perhaps missing from today's popular/mainstream kids shows, is that THIS IS A MATH LESSON. Watch carefully... this is designed to teach kids about division, spatial relationships, and patterns. It also happens to be really interesting/beautiful to watch. The lesson is embedded into the piece virtually seamlessly. And that's how they drew the young & impressionable into the seedy underworld of science & engineering! How sneaky of them!
About the only comparable show on today (that I know of) is BooBah, which is trippy & artful, but has similar embedded lessons.
Not as good, though. Definitely not as good.
Start a discussion:
Login with your username and password below. Or comment on this post via email.
Forgot your username or password? New User?