Background
Gerald S. Lesser was the Biglow Professor of Education and Developmental Psychology at Harvard University. He studied how social class and ethnicity interacted with school achievement and was one of the first academics in the US who researched how watching television affected children and their development. In 1963, he served as an academic adviser for the NBC educational program, Exploring. [1] In 1968, Sesame Street co-creator Lloyd Morrisett, whom he had met as a student at Yale University, asked Lesser to assist with the research of a new children's show he and producer Joan Ganz Cooney were developing, a show that eventually became Sesame Street. [2]
Lesser was initially skeptical about the potential of using television as a teaching tool, but he was eventually named as the advisory board chairman of the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), the organization created to oversee the production and research of Sesame Street, and was the show's first educational director. [3] He was also skeptical about Cooney's qualifications as CTW's first director, [4] but Cooney later stated, "...I couldn't begin to measure how proud I am to be Gerry Lesser's colleague and how happy I am to know the pleasure of his company". [5]
In the summer of 1968, under what Sesame Street researchers Edward Palmer and Shalom Fisch called Lesser's "able leadership", [6] five three-day curriculum planning seminars were conducted in Boston. [7] [8] The purpose of the seminars, attended by educational experts and the new show's writers and producers, was to ascertain which school-preparation skills to emphasize. According to writer Michael Davis, Lesser's skills at encouraging collegiality were evident during the seminars. [4] Writer Louise Gikow reported that the real friction occurred between the educators present. As Sesame Street songwriter Christopher Cerf reported, "...[Lesser] ran meetings better than anyone I've ever seen. He made everybody feel like they were important, that they got listened to, and that their work ended up in the final product". [9] Davis noted that the seminars also served as a "crash course in child development, psychology, and preschool education" for the show's producers and writers. [10] According to researcher Robert W. Morrow, Lesser understood that in order to bring research about child development into the production process of Sesame Street, a close working relationship had to be created between the researchers and the producers. [1] Davis credited Lesser's "informal, unpretentious, and collaborative" manner with the creation of that close relationship. [11]
As head of research on Sesame Street, Lesser came up with what he called "the CTW model". This model included having assumptions about how children learn from television, the use of high-quality production values, and establishing "an organization that fostered mutual confidence among its members". [12] Field research testing the effectiveness of each episode's content was conducted at preschools, prior to broadcast. The show's educational goals were measured after each episode aired to further evaluate the show's effectiveness. [13]
Lesser wrote Children and Television in 1974, early in the show's history, to evaluate the effectiveness of the CTW model, to explain what the show's writers, researchers, and producers were attempting to do, and to respond to criticism of Sesame Street. Lesser also explained the show's logic, its curriculum, and its pedagogy. [14] Writer Robert W. Morrow called Lesser's book "Sesame Street's most adept defense". [15] According to Morrow, Children and Television was the most complete explanation of the CTW's reasoning behind the show at the time, and a memoir of the show's development. [14]
Synopsis
Children and Television has four sections, "A Proposal", "Planning", "Broadcasting" and "Lessons from Sesame Street". The book also has a preface and an epilogue, written by Lesser, a foreword written by Joan Ganz Cooney, and an introduction by Lloyd Morrisett. Scattered throughout the book are cartoons drawn by children's author Maurice Sendak, who attended the 1968 seminars. [16]
Lesser begins his book by describing the origin of Sesame Street and his part in it. He had been studying child development and how its concepts could be used to teach children; since 1961, he studied children's reaction to television and whether or not the medium could be used to teach them. In 1966, he was approached by Cooney and Morrisett to assist them in creating the new show's educational objectives and research goals, and he agreed despite his misgivings about the effectiveness of television as a teaching tool.
Sesame Street's audience included any child in the country who wished to watch it, but Lesser reports that the producers' original purpose was to reach the poor children of America. Lesser states, "If the series did not work for poor children, the entire project would fail". [17] He is critical of the American public school system, and blames its failure to educate children on the lack of defined goals. When he wrote Television and Children, most American children received no preschool education. The first two chapters of the book detail the reasons for the experiment of creating an educational television program like Sesame Street, especially in regards to its audience. [18]
"Grownups never seem to understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them".
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince .
Gerald Lesser used this quote to begin the second section of Children and Television. He introduced many of his sections and chapters with pertinent quotes.
Lesser opens the section on "Planning" by relating how many of the cast and crew were recruited: executive producer David Connell, producer Sam Gibbon, head writer Jon Stone, producer and writer Matt Robinson, Jim Henson, composer Joe Raposo, and actors Loretta Long, Bob McGrath, and Will Lee. Lesser also recounts the process of hiring head researcher Edward L. Palmer and those involved with community outreach. The producers of the new show spent eighteen months planning, something that was unprecedented in children's television. Lesser extensively describes the series of curriculum seminars that took place at Harvard University and in New York City in the summer of 1968.
These chapters outline the philosophy behind Sesame Street. The show's creators made assumptions about teaching and held the unconventional view that learning can be unintentional and enjoyable. Finally, they decided that although Sesame Street was set in an urban setting, they would avoid depicting more negativity than what was already present in the child's environment. Lesser states, "With all its raucousness and slapstick humor, Sesame Street became a sweet show, and its staff maintains that there is nothing wrong in that". [19]
The researchers developed a "Writer's Notebook" for the show's writers and producers to serve as a bridge between curriculum goals and script development. Lesser connects the show's production techniques—including the use of music, humor (especially slapstick humor), and animation—with educational goals. Lesser emphasizes the importance of characters, both human and Muppet, to sustain children's attention. According to Lesser, Sesame Street combines four elements to sustain attention: Muppets, the cast of live adults and children on the set, animation, and live-action film.
According to Lesser, before the creation of Sesame Street, children's reactions to educational television was ignored; this marked the first time that they were studied to evaluate and improve the show's content and efficacy. Lesser reports that approximately 10-15 percent of the CTW's initial two-year budget of $8 million was spent on research. He relates the priorities for pre-production research, which he called "summative evaluation". Using outside research groups like the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the Workshop wanted to ascertain if watching the show made any difference. They were particularly interested in comparing the show's effect on children from different socio-economic groups, and if viewing conditions affected its effectiveness.
Lesser states, "This became the first time in television's 25-year history that child-watching was systematically applied over a sustained period to the design of a televised series for children". [20] Lesser describes the new methods researcher Edward Palmer created to study the effects Sesame Street had on its young viewers; for example, the "distractor", in which a slide projector was placed next to a television set and adjusted to change slides every eight seconds. The researchers recorded when children in their study moved their attention away from the television to the projector, and the data collected were analyzed. Segments were removed based upon the information gathered. "This was the first time in television's history that the children themselves would be listened to with care as a television series for them was designed and broadcast", Lesser states. [21]
Lesser begins the section on "Broadcasting" relating the origin of the show's name. As he puts it, "...We were forced to select the name we all liked the least". [22] Lesser reports that the show's premiere on November 10, 1969 was met with a large amount of acclaim and good reviews, but there were some negative reviews and criticism, which he recounts and addresses in great detail in the chapter entitled "Criticism". He includes the criticism of approximately thirty groups and individuals, and demonstrates the essence and range of their arguments.
Lesser describes the research about the long-term effect of Sesame Street. He reports that the show was watched by three to four million viewers by the middle of its first season, and breaks down the viewership into categories. According to Lesser, ratings remained consistently high. Lesser also describes the testing used by ETS, which found positive differences after the first three weeks of the show's first season. They found that the children who watched the most learned the most.
The final section of Lesser's book, "Lessons from Sesame Street", summarizes what the creators and researchers were attempting to do. As Lesser states, "Here is Sesame Street's main lesson: It deliberately uses television to teach without hiding its educational intentions and yet it attracts a large and devoted audience of young children from all parts of the country". [23]
Sesame Street is an American educational children's television series that combines live action, sketch comedy, animation and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop and was created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett. The program is known for its images communicated through the use of Jim Henson's Muppets, and includes short films, with humor and cultural references. The series premiered on November 10, 1969, to positive reviews, some controversy, and high viewership; it has aired on the U.S.'s national public television provider PBS since its debut, with its first run moving to premium channel HBO on January 16, 2016, then its sister streaming service HBO Max in 2020.
Sesame Workshop, formerly known as the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), is an American nonprofit organization that has been responsible for the production of several educational children's programs—including its first and best-known, Sesame Street—that have been televised internationally. Television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and foundation executive Lloyd Morrisett developed the idea to form an organization to produce Sesame Street, a television series which would help children, especially those from low-income families, prepare for school. They spent two years, from 1966 to 1968, researching, developing, and raising money for the new series. Cooney was named as the Workshop's first executive director, which was termed "one of the most important television developments of the decade."
The preschool educational television program Sesame Street was first aired on public television stations on November 10, 1969, and reached its 50th season in 2019. The history of Sesame Street has reflected changing attitudes to developmental psychology, early childhood education, and cultural diversity. Featuring Jim Henson's Muppets, animation, live shorts, humor and celebrity appearances, it was the first television program of its kind to base its content and production values on laboratory and formative research, and the first to include a curriculum "detailed or stated in terms of measurable outcomes". Initial responses to the show included adulatory reviews, some controversy and high ratings. By its 40th anniversary in 2009, Sesame Street was broadcast in over 120 countries, and 20 independent international versions had been produced. It has won eleven Grammys and over 150 Emmys in its history—more than any other children's show.
Mr. Harold Hooper was one of the first four human characters to appear on the television series Sesame Street. Created by producer and writer Jon Stone, Mr. Hooper is the original proprietor of Hooper's Store, the neighborhood variety store and combination diner/corner store that serves as a place for Muppets and humans to meet and interact. Lee, a character actor and instructor who had been blacklisted during the McCarthy era, was "perfectly cast" as Mr. Hooper. Mr. Hooper ranked first of all human characters of the show in recognition by young viewers. Mr. Hooper, who has been described as "slightly cranky but good-hearted" and "curmudgeonly", bridges the gap between the older generation and its young audience. Hooper's Store, "an idealized social institution", is an extension of his personality. He had a special relationship with the Muppet Big Bird.
Sésamo, formerly titled Plaza Sésamo prior to 2016, is one of the first international co-productions of the American children's television program Sesame Street. Its first season premiered in Mexico in 1972, and the last season ended in 2018 during the holiday season and the 50th anniversary of Sesame Street, but the show returned in 2020 and was immediately a ratings hit. It also aired throughout Latin America, to a potential audience of 25 million children in 34 countries. Unlike some of the earliest co-productions, which consisted of dubbed versions of Sesame Street with local language voice-overs, Sésamo was a true co-production. Half of the show was adapted from the American show, and half was original material, created in Mexico by Mexican writers, performers, and producers. The first season consisted of 130 half-hour episodes. The Plaza Sèsamo development process was similar to that of the American show. Its goals were developed by local experts in television, child development, and early education during curriculum seminars in Caracas, Venezuela. Sésamo's goals emphasized problem solving and reasoning, and also included perception, symbolic representation, human diversity, and the child's environment. Other goals included community cooperation, family life, nutrition, health, safety, self-esteem, and expressing emotions. Early reading skills were taught through the whole language method. The show's budget for the first and second seasons was approximately US$1.6 million.
Elmo's World is a five-minute-long segment shown at the end of the American children's television program Sesame Street. It premiered on November 16, 1998, as part of the show's structural change and originally ran fifteen minutes at the end of each episode until 2009, but was then rebooted in 2017. It was designed to appeal to younger viewers and to increase ratings, which had fallen in the past decade. The segment is presented from the perspective of a three-year-old child as represented by its host, the Muppet Elmo, performed by Kevin Clash in the original series and Ryan Dillon in the 2017 reboot.
Joan Ganz Cooney is an American television producer. She is one of the founders of Sesame Workshop, the organization famous for the creation of the children's television show Sesame Street, which was also co-created by her. Cooney grew up in Phoenix and earned a B.A. degree in education from the University of Arizona in 1951. After working for the State Department in Washington, D.C. and as a journalist in Phoenix, she worked as a publicist for television and production companies in New York City. In 1961, she became interested in working for educational television, and became a documentary producer for New York's first educational TV station WNET. Many of the programs she produced won local Emmys.
Iftah Ya Simsim is the first international co-production of the American children's television series Sesame Street created in the Arab world. It premiered in Kuwait on September 14, 1979 and was broadcast in 22 Arabic-speaking countries, running until June 23, 1989. The program continued to be well-known decades after it went off the air. In 1978, educators, mass media officers, and social planners agreed to adopt Sesame Street as a feasible and economical solution for the low attendance in preschools and illiteracy that plagued the region. They approached the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), the producers of the American show, and purchased the rights to create an Arab version for US$2.5 million.
Sesame Street international co-productions are educational children's television series based on the American Sesame Street but tailored to the countries in which they are produced. Shortly after the debut of Sesame Street in the United States in 1969, television producers, teachers, and officials of several countries approached the show's producers and the executives of the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), renamed Sesame Workshop (SW) in 2000, about the possibility of airing international versions of Sesame Street. Creator Joan Ganz Cooney hired former CBS executive Michael Dann to field offers to produce versions of the show in other countries.
"Snuffy's Parents Get a Divorce" is an episode of the children's television program Sesame Street. Produced in 1992, it never aired because tests showed several unintended negative effects. Sesame Street has had a history of presenting difficult topics as part of its affective curriculum goals, including death, marriage, childbirth, and disaster. Extensive research was done before these episodes were written and produced, to ascertain their focus, and after they aired, to analyze the effect they had on viewers, and that was the case for "Snuffy's Parents Get a Divorce". The show's producers had expressed a desire to produce the episode as early as 1989, and they were convinced that it was a topic they should address after the US Census Bureau reported that 40% of American children had experienced divorce.
A wide variety of characters have appeared on the American children's television series Sesame Street. Many of the characters are Muppets, which are puppets made in Jim Henson's distinctive puppet-creation style. Most of the non-Muppet characters are human characters, but there are many characters that are animated.
Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street is a non-fiction book chronicling the history of the children's television program, Sesame Street. Street Gang is journalist and writer Michael Davis's first book, published by Viking Press in 2008. On bookshelves in time for the show's 40th anniversary in 2009, the book developed out of a TV Guide article Davis wrote to commemorate the show's 35th anniversary in 2004. Davis spent five years researching and writing the book, and conducted hundreds of interviews with the show's creators, cast, and crew.
Lloyd N. Morrisett Jr. is an American experimental psychologist with a career in education, communications, and philanthropy. He is one of the founders of the Sesame Workshop, the organization that created the children's television shows Sesame Street, which was also co-created by him, The Electric Company, and many others.
Gerald Samuel Lesser was an American psychologist who served on the faculty of Harvard University from 1963 until his retirement in 1998. Lesser was one of the chief advisers to the Children's Television Workshop in the development and content of the educational programming included in the children's television program Sesame Street. At Harvard, he was chair of the university's Human Development Program for 20 years, which focused on cross-cultural studies of child rearing, and studied the effects of media on young children. In 1974, he wrote Children and Television: Lessons From Sesame Street, which chronicled how Sesame Street was developed and put on the air. Lesser developed many of the research methods the CTW used throughout its history and for other TV shows. In 1968, before the debut of Sesame Street, he led a series of content seminars, an important part of the "CTW Model", which incorporated educational pedagogy and research into TV scripts and was used to develop other educational programs and organizations all over the world. He died in 2010, at the age of eighty-four, and was survived by his wife, a daughter, a son, and a grandchild.
In 1969, the children's television show Sesame Street premiered on the National Educational Television network in the United States. Unlike earlier children's programming, the show's producers used research and over 1,000 studies and experiments to create the show and test its impact on its young viewers' learning. By the end of the program's first season, the organization founded to oversee Sesame Street production, Children's Television Workshop (CTW), had developed what came to be called "the CTW model": a system of planning, production, and evaluation that combined the expertise of researchers and early childhood educators with that of the program's writers, producers, and directors.
Sesame Street is an American children's television program that is known for its use of format and structure to convey educational concepts to its preschool audience, and to help them prepare for school. It utilizes the conventions of television such as music, humor, sustained action, and a strong visual style, and combines Jim Henson's Muppets, animation, short films, humor, and cultural references. The show, which premiered in 1969, was the first to base its contents, format, and production values on laboratory and formative research. According to researchers, it was also the first to include a curriculum "detailed or stated in terms of measurable outcomes".
Music has been a part of the children's television show Sesame Street since its debut on PBS in 1969. For the first time, music was used as a teaching tool on a TV program for children; the songs written and performed on the show fulfilled specific purposes and supported its curriculum. The music on Sesame Street consisted of many styles and genres, but was consistent and recognizable so that it could be reproduced. The producers recorded and released dozens of albums of music; many songs became "timeless classics". In order to attract the best composers and lyricists, CTW allowed songwriters to retain the rights to the songs they wrote, which allowed them to earn lucrative profits. Sesame Street Book & Record, recorded in 1970, went gold and won a Grammy. As of November 2019, Sesame Workshop has partnered with Warner Music Group's Arts Music division to reform Sesame Street Records to make the music of Sesame Street fully available.
The children's television show Sesame Street, which premiered on public broadcasting television stations in 1969, was the first show of its kind that utilized a detailed and comprehensive educational curriculum, with specific educational goals, in its content. Its goals were garnered from in-house formative research and independent summative evaluations, and its first curriculum was created in a series of five seminars in 1968.
The children's television program Sesame Street premiered in 1969 to high ratings, positive reviews, and some controversy, which have continued during its history. Even though the show aired on only 67% of American televisions at the time of its premiere, it earned a 3.3 Nielsen rating, or 1.9 million households. By its tenth anniversary in 1979, 9 million American children under the age of six were watching Sesame Street daily. Its ratings declined in the 1990s, due to societal changes. A survey conducted in 1996 found that by the age of three, 95% of all American children had watched it. By its fortieth anniversary in 2009, it was ranked the fifteenth most popular children's show.
