On November 10 Sesame Street celebrated its 41st birthday. I learned some interesting things about Sesame Street that day. It got started because it was found that kids from low income households entered kindergarten with a vocabulary of about 3,000 words versus those from higher kincome households of 20,000. Television was the common connector between these families with disparate incomes, and so the idea of a kids educational show was born.
During the pilot tests the producers had groups of kids watch the shows with a screen right next to it flashing random imagies. Sesame Street had to compete with the advertisements and cartoons kids would see on TV so they had to make it compelling. If a kid looked at the random images more than 50% of the time then they'd refilm the show. What they found was that kids stayed captivated to Sesame Street when the puppets, or Muppets, were on the screen (with or without the humans). Something else the research has found is that kids who grew up watching Sesame Street get higher scores on standardized tests.
So there you go - 41 years later my little girl runs around shouting "Elmo! Elmo! Elmo! Elmo!" and loves watching Sesame Street (as seen from watching it this morning in this photo).
