Growing up as a child, one may wonder if what they watched on television had any effects on the way they see, think, or feel about certain things. Going a step further, those television programs that one grew up with may have actually had some effect on how they learn things. This leads to the question: do educational television programs have positive effects on children’s learning? When looking at programs such as Sesame Street and Blues Clues, it seems as though they are geared toward teaching the viewers skills. But, does it work? Do those programs have any educational value or are they providing mock educational fluff to offer up a babysitter to parents of the unknowing child? Perhaps these programs offer up another form of education like learning how to socialize with peers and their families.
There have been many studies regarding children and television. Researchers have studied programs and children trying to find out if these programs are really educational to the viewing audience. Some compare programs and some just look at a certain program to come up with their own conclusion. This paper will look at scholarly literature to help come up with my own conclusion on whether educational television programs really do educate children or not.
I was an avid Sesame Street watcher as a child and I would like to think that I learned a little something from it. My mother would agree. She sure was surprised one day when I started counting in Spanish to her. She had never taught me Spanish. When she asked me where I learned the phrases, I responded with, “From Sesame Street, Mom.” I remember the show with its vibrant colors and crazy cartoons very vividly because I would watch the television with awe. Maybe I just amused easily, but maybe there is some depth behind it.
According to Mates and Strommen (1996), the reason why Sesame Street has been found so effective is that “familiarity with Sesame Street has been found to be a good predictor of knowledge of the alphabet, letter names, letter sounds, and sight words.” (pp. 300) Obviously children are able to learn best by visuals so that seems to be their strength. The authors themselves watched ten episodes of the program and found that due to the way children learn, that the program does not promote literacy. It sure helps with recognizing the letters, but it does not help them read later on. Mates and Strommen (1996) also say that “most of the literacy messages on Sesame Street had to do with the names and shapes of letters or sound of individual letters.” The article seems to point this out as a serious problem, but I think that the program is doing a pretty good job due to my personal experience. If I learned something, then that is all that matters. The show is targeted towards very young children and those things like the alphabet are those that need to come first. It is certainly hard to read if you do not know your alphabet or how to say those specific letters.
Really, by doing a content analysis on a children’s program is pretty tough if you are a forty year old scientist. I am pretty sure it would be pretty hard to relate to what you are seeing when you are not a child yourself. I feel that the only true way to study this idea is to get children into watching the program and actually have a real human sample taking in the content. After the children have watched the show consistently, they could test them on their letters, shapes, and random knowledge that the programs are trying to teach. That would be the only definite way to show actual results that mock the real world experiences of the people that are watching it.
Register (2004) had a pretty good idea of how to measure literacy and education elements in her study entitled “The Effects of Live Music Groups Versus an Educational Children’s Television Program on the Emergent Literacy of Young Children.” A music therapy program was created to teach reading skills which they were putting up against an educational children’s television program entitled Between the Lions. Personally, I am not familiar with this television show because it is a program that has fairly recently been put out for children’s viewing.
The author for that study exposed Kindergarten children from an elementary school in Florida with a low socioeconomic background to each of the elements. In the study, they broke the children up into three different groups. There was a group of music-only exposure, video-only exposure, and a control group which is music and video both put together. Their study evaluated the elements against each other and found that when testing the children after their viewing that the musical therapy group was the lowest on the learning scale when compared with the music and video put together. It showed a number of six times higher than that of just the music only group. That shows that the television program promotes higher literacy and learning elements than just music alone.
This study once again reinforces my idea that the effect of the music and video of a television program has a great effect on getting children to learn. Another experience that I remember from watching educational television programs is I learned how to count. They showed the numbers on the screen and said them slowly enough so you could say them out loud, too. One thing that worked for me well as a child (which I also find that I still do to this day) is the way that they showed the counting of the numbers. On the actual number on the screen, they showed dots at the intersections of the lines of the numbers. So for example, the number five had five dots on each of the turns or curves of the letters. This was very helpful so I could mentally connect the dots later on to be able to write that number on paper.
The next study that was viewed on this particular subject also had to do with the educational television show Between the Lions. Linebarger and Kosanic (2004) recognize that when children are in school and find themselves a bit behind the other children in reading skills, that any little bit of extra help would be a plus. Viewers and non-viewers of the program Between the Lions were tested with a standardized reading test to discover the differences between each group. The children who viewed the program on a regular basis tended to have a higher reading proficiency and accelerated phonemic awareness such as letter and sound tasks. (pp. 297) Although improvements in their literacy skills did vary some (such as word building and speech to print), Kindergarteners showed the most benefits to the program than did first graders.
Linebarger and Kosanic (2004) proved an obvious point. The programs that are deemed “educational” are those that are meant for children in Kindergarten or younger. The study that I mentioned previously with Mates and Strommen (1996) was one that did not take this into consideration. Those programs are targeted towards those that have little or no knowledge of the alphabet or even how to say them. Those are children possibly who cannot even speak a word out of their mouths. Linebarger and Kosanic (2004) make a good point by saying these programs are subconsciously geared towards those that may be having trouble in their classrooms presently. Those educational television programs are an extra teacher if you will that is consistent and ready for the children even before they are able to hit the classroom.
Another element to this idea of educational programs is that do these programs promote socialization? I was unable to find any concrete studies on this idea, but I will channel my own experiences to reinforce my points. When watching Sesame Street, I remember them standing and talking with the puppets being very friendly with one another. Big Bird is walking around helping everyone with their idea of the day for the program. There are also some scenes where everyone is together talking with groups of adults, children, and puppets.
The scenes with Burt and Ernie come to mind the most vividly. I understood that they were related somehow or were just really good friends. Ernie tended to be the one that helped out Burt in one way or another. This is promoting courtesy as well as socializing with a friend to understand things around them.
When thinking of this idea in terms of the educational television program Blues Clues, it is hard to tell if they are actually trying to learn anything concrete except for how to search and find things. But, they do promote things like friendliness and understanding in the means of peers. The main human character is mostly on the spot light most of the time while Blue seems to be hiding. The viewers work together to find certain things on the television screen. This promotes a good amount of team work which I have found in my own personal experiences that it is usually left to be desired.
This is an interesting starting point for farther research on this subject. By looking in more depth at literature that is offered, it is possible that I could come up with a better understanding of socialization and relating it to the educational television programs that are on TV right now.
Another possible direction for research could be more content analyses. It would be a good idea to get more that one or two programs together in order to compare and contrast a good majority of what is out there today for the people of tomorrow. Perhaps contrasting different stations with educational television programs would be effective in learning whether a certain station offers more learning than another. Also, looking at programs from years ago such as the 1980’s and comparing them to the present to determine whether the art of educational programming for children has changed over the years.
So, upon looking at research regarding children and television, do educational television programs have any positive effects on children’s learning? Personal experience and current literature finds that for the most part the programming does have positive effects. I have found after researching for this paper, that much of the research is limited and that my personal experience with some educational television programs has a greater impact of how I interpret specific findings on the subject. I completely disagree with the findings of Mates and Strommen (1996) in which they find that Sesame Street is not promoting the right type of learning. They stress that it should be literacy that the viewers should be learning and I feel that the young ones watching should be learning their alphabet first.
The research study by Register (2004) I feel has a great relevancy to this subject. It goes beyond the content analysis of the previous study that I just mentioned on Sesame Street and actually tests real children and their scoring on reading tests. By studying the viewers and non-viewers, they come up with concrete data that shows that educational television has an impact on children’s learning. They made a great point with saying that children learn at different levels and by being able to watch these programs, they are able to catch up to their expected level.
The study by Linebarger and Kosanic (2004) paralleled the findings of Register (2004) in that they tested the same television program and came up with basically the same conclusion.
By looking at all of these studies, it led me to wonder if socialization is learned by watching these educational television shows also. Due to lack of concrete information on that subject in my findings, going off my own experiences shows that it may actually have a positive correlation. Children are visual learners and tend to go with the “monkey see, monkey do” analogy. If they see it on television with enough repetition, they may actually start channeling what they see when it comes to education.
Overall, I will conclude that educational television programs do have a strong impact on children and their learning abilities. From my own experiences with this sort of television, it reiterates this theory with some actual real life instances. Farther research on this study, I feel, will greatly enhance the findings of this research. By understanding the previous findings on children and educational television, the future may hold a world of media with proven programs of educational value.
References
Linebarger, D. L., Kosanic, A. Z., Greenwood, C. R., & Doku, N. S. (2004). Effects of viewing the television program Between the Lions on the emergent literacy skills of young children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96, 297-308. Retrieved October 28, 2004, from http://web18.epnet.com
Mates, B. F., & Strommen, L. (1996). Why Ernie can’t read: Sesame Street and literacy. The Reading Teacher, 49, 300-306.
Register, D. (2004). The effects of live music groups versus an educational children’s television program on the emergent literacy of young children. Journal of Music Therapy, 41, 2. Retrieved October 28, 2004, from http://proquest.umi.com
