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The Stories Of Our Generation
Posted by Janee, Mar 17. 127 views. ID = 842
This post was written in 13 minutes.
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We were a generation that grew up on shows like Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and Sesame Street. They were broadcast each weekday on PBS and were billed as educational television, so parents who wanted their children to do well in the world encouraged them to spend an hour watching these shows instead of the more inane foolishness that flooded the airwaves.
How different these two shows were! One starred a gentle, soft spoken man who took several minutes each day changing his shoes and sweater, while the other starred a trash-dwelling creature who despised cleanliness and a blue monster with ping-pong eyes who was the embodiment of gluttony. The first show addressed us with quiet passion about such things as imagination, integrity, family and courtesy, while the second show spoke to us of A-B-C's and 1-2-3's, and taught us our first Spanish vocabulary words.
In retrospect I realize that Mr. Rogers was trying to turn us into "Sunday People" - people who valued morality, compassion, wisdom, and a genteel outlook on life, while Sesame Street was trying to turn us into "Monday through Friday People" - people who valued education, schooling and knowledge.
Again, in retrospect, I realize that Sesame Street was largely unsuccessful in its endeavor. Its producers believed Education Is Important, but instead of teaching us this lesson, they taught us a far less useful (and certainly less accurate) lesson: Education Is FUN!
At first we believed their lesson. We started out in kindergarten and discovered that school was all about sitting in circles and playing games, taking naps, coloring pictures, and going out for recess. Eventually, however, history, mathematics, spelling, and grammar were introduced into the curriculum, and no matter how hard our teachers might try, they could not match, laugh for laugh, the antics of a giant yellow bird or a green trash monster.
So we stopped believing that education is fun, and since no one had taught us it was important, we saw no reason to take it seriously.
Tragically, not even owls and pussycats (who also addressed us with gentle, soft spoken words) could compete with laugh-a-minute monsters, so we largely dismissed Mr. Rogers as well. Morality, compassion, wisdom and gentility are not, after all, fun!
Thus we are a generation of neither "Sunday People" nor "Monday through Friday People". Instead we are a generation of "Saturday Morning People." Our lives are populated with absurdly insignificant and unimportant stories involving rabbits, roadrunners, transforming machines, aliens and superheroes. These stories require nothing of us but to laugh, and to maintain a two minute attention span.
These are the stories of our generation.
Copyright 2008 Janee. All rights reserved. FifteenMinutesOfFiction.com has been granted non-exclusive rights to display this work. For permission to reprint this item, please contact the author.
Comments
MrPhysics
Mar 17 | I am a retired teacher who found that as time passed more and more of my effort was devoted to making learning FUN because few people, sometimes even including the school system, were teaching that learning was important. I think learning can be fun, but it is a lot easier to make it fun when the students, their families, and the community believe it is important.
~Posted by MrPhysics, Mar 17 |
Janee
Mar 17 | I agree with you wholeheartedly, Mr. Physics.
~Posted by Janee, Mar 17 |
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