Sesame Street at 40: Are Today’s Kids More Dumb?

Last Updated on August 29, 2020

If you’ve browsed over at Google over the past few days, you’ve seen that the search engine’s giant is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street (on November 10th) by featuring characters from the Emmy Award-winning show in its logo.

There’s something disturbing about the thought of Sesame Street hitting its 40th birthday.  That’s probably because that the show made its premiere just a mere 13 days before I made mine.

That must mean…yikes!

Over at CNN, there’s mention of the fact that the DVD sets containing classic skits from the early days of the show carry a warning to parents.  I reported this fact here at Patrick’s Place two years ago, when the DVD set first came out.

I quoted the warning label, and my next line was, “Say what?”

CNN quoted the warning label, and its next line is, “Say what?”

I find this highly amusing.  For the record, I doubt seriously that CNN would come here to steal an idea; that’d be going a long way to make a point.  Still, the notion of a warning label on episodes of Sesame Street, then and now, seems ridiculous.

The explanation, then and now, is that in the earlier, more gritty days of the show, characters exhibited behavior that is, by today’s TV standards in kids’ programming, questionable. An early recurring sketch parodying PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre, then hosted by the late Alistair Cook, featured the Cookie Monster sitting in a leather chair smoking a pipe in a regal setting as “Alistair Cookie.”

Somehow, there’s fear that seeing the Cookie Monster holding a lit pipe — then eating it when the food urge comes over him — would possess today’s children to run right out, grab the first smoking pipe they see, take a few puffs, then attempt to devour it.

I was certainly never motivated to do such a thing.  Seeing this blue muppet holding a pipe that looked like something out of a Sherlock Holmes story didn’t motivate me to do anything other than laugh at what a silly scene it was.  And in fairness to the show, I honestly think that’s not only exactly the outcome they were going for, but from kids of my generation, the outcome they received.

And this begs the obvious question:  if the thought of today’s kids seeing that scene and reacting in a very different way is so well-founded, doesn’t that mean that today’s kids must somehow have far less brains than we had when we watched?

Sure, it’s a good idea to monitor what kids watch on television.  But it’s also unrealistic to think that a parent can block every possible thing that might be taken a wrong way.

So why is it that today’s kids apparently have an inability to think for themselves and reason out that something like a pipe is part of a parody and not something they should be trying to do on their own?  Why is it that today’s parents have to be warned that their kids might not be able to handle a simple scene?

And if you’re a parent, would you really keep your kids away from Sesame Street?