Sesame Street: Forever Timeless

Sesame Street is a timeless classic children’s television series which debuted in 1969.It is a show that has been watched by generations of children, whom of which are now mostly parents and maybe even grandparents. After 50 years, it seems as if the popular children’s television show has done nothing but evolve, much like the world around us. 

When thinking about the first episode, we think about how characters were first introduced, the curriculum behind it, and how differently presented the show was. Not much like other shows during this time, Sesame Street opened the show up with Gordon showing his niece or daughter around Sesame Street and introducing her to those who lived on Sesame Street. It is known that the show is known for its hidden curriculums. The show provides different commercial-like segments to indicate certain moral concerns made by parents that educate children about things such as numbers, letters, different animals, how things such as liquids move up and down and different names of family members. All of which were most likely the concern of young children not being able to truly learn and comprehend things through television.

The academic skills that Sesame Street has provided started out with simple clips of different things, but has evolved over the years due to research of children watching the show. An example of this would be through shortened segments, due to toddlers short attention spans, while also making colors in the show much more vibrant to keep the attention of children. This is through more interactive and planned segments such as the Count Von Count’s counting time, or pretend play time with Elmo and Abby. They also incorporate new monsters welcomed on Sesame Street that also help with children’s social emotional skills by bringing up difficult conversations, such as what happened during 9/11 and how to deal with loss of a loved one or meeting a classmate with autism like their newest character Julia. Sesame Street does not only know how to captivate children through their vibrant and upbeat show, but educate as well.