BOS to Sesame Street, I say. Although I wasn't born until '72, this show was *hugely* influential on me, along with the Electric Company and Really Rosie w/ Chicken Soup. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The '70s were the golden age of children's education.
BOS2 to "Stoned Love," atcha.
But did Sesame St really have the effect it was supposed to have? All those kids (especially poor/minority kids) who were supposed to go to school with a head start at reading -- did they? I've never heard of any study that was done. Seems like nothing really changed.
It did for me, but then, I was very precocious. (Impatient to wait for school, I taught myself the times-tables when I was 4.) My gut feeling is that the show intended for parents to use it as a springboard to their own educating efforts, but parents opted to let the TV be a *replacement of* their teaching rather than an *adjunct to* it.
Times tables at 4? Yikes.
I knew how to read before I went to school (my mom read the comics to me and I just kinda picked it up; seems amazing to me looking back but at the time it was no big deal). So I was quite bored by Dick-and-Jane in first grade.
