{"id":6322,"date":"2021-01-18T13:20:09","date_gmt":"2021-01-18T18:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/?p=6322"},"modified":"2021-01-19T08:59:56","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T13:59:56","slug":"the-sesame-street-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/2021\/01\/18\/the-sesame-street-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sesame Street Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By:<\/strong> Alia Wong from The Atlantic<\/p>\n\n\n\n

January 7, 2015<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sesame Street<\/em> was, and in some ways remains, revolutionary in its pedagogy. The show was launched at a turning point in thinking among child psychologists and educators\u2014a time when experts were abandoning the belief<\/a> that cognitive ability was entirely inherited. The federal government even subsidized the show\u2019s launch. There were other educational children\u2019s programs, such as Mister Rogers Neighborhood<\/em> and Captain Kangaroo<\/em>, but Sesame Street<\/em> was arguably the first in the country to explicitly focus on educational content using a research-based curriculum. The idea was to foster preschoolers\u2019 \u201cintellectual and cultural development\u201d and, perhaps more importantly, to \u201creduce the educational deficits experienced by disadvantaged youth based on differences in their environment,\u201d according to Kearney and Levine. In particular, the show targeted poor, urban kids\u2014\u201cthe ones,\u201d as Newsweek<\/em> has described<\/a>, \u201cwho lived on streets with garbage cans sitting in front of their rowhouse apartments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that sense, Sesame Street\u2019s<\/em> virtue could extend beyond cost-effectiveness and scope. It\u2019s notoriously difficult to draw conclusions about the long-term impacts of early education, whether it\u2019s a TV show or a classroom program. Direct, reliable longitudinal data doesn\u2019t exist; even Head Start\u2019s merits are widely disputed. But if nothing else, this new study is a reminder of what\u2019s lacking from today\u2019s preschools: diversity. As The Century Foundation (TCF) recently found<\/a>, pre-k centers tend to suffer from significant socioeconomic and racial segregation\u2014problems that could be undermining young children\u2019s learning and achievement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among boys and black children, a group that has the most room for improvement in academic progress, the researchers extrapolate from the data to reason that exposure to Sesame Street <\/em>reduced the likelihood of being below grade level by 16 percent. Moreover, Kearney and Levine estimate that, were Sesame Street\u2019s<\/em> broadcast to be available in all parts of the country, the rate of black children behind grade level would fall by roughly half. The impact would\u2019ve also been sizable for white children: a 30 percent reduction. These findings bolster earlier, disputed data on the show\u2019s academic benefits, including that from cognitive tests suggesting that exposure to the show amounted to the equivalent of an additional year of learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, preschool classrooms still tend to lack one of the most celebrated aspects of the show. The observable benefits of diversity mostly have to do with the effect of classroom interactions on cognition, with disadvantaged children demonstrating more literacy skills, for example, when they learn alongside more advantaged peers. But the positive social influences of exposure to diversity at a young age are evident, according to the TCF report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source:<\/strong> https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/education\/archive\/2015\/06\/sesame-street-preschool-education\/396056\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analysis: <\/strong>There were a few points made in this article: 1) Sesame and diversity \u2014 something that schools lack. Sesame Street, created during the civil-rights movement, helped and continues to teach children that it’s okay to be different, everyone struggles with it and you’re not alone. With a diverse neighborhood of monsters, Sesame Street normalized disabilities, imaginary friends, and poverty. There have been countless studies concluding that “kids who watched it extensively formed more positive attitudes<\/a> toward people from different backgrounds.” 2) Sesame is more accessible; preschool is expensive. Head Start was federally funded and founded so poor children could attend preschool. Like Head Start, Sesame Street also increased the likelihood that kids were ready for school and advanced through their education, but for WAY less. 3) Sesame as a supplement to early education. The first few years are crucial to one’s development. “It found that kids who had better access to the show performed better in elementary school than those who were older at the time it came out or lived in areas where it wasn\u2019t broadcast.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Alia Wong from The Atlantic January 7, 2015 Sesame Street was, and in some ways remains, revolutionary in its pedagogy. The show was launched at a turning point in thinking among child psychologists and educators\u2014a time when experts were abandoning the belief that cognitive ability was entirely inherited. The federal government even subsidized the show\u2019s launch. There […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":6603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[275],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6322","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-community"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6322"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6604,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6322\/revisions\/6604"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}