Newspaper Article

Mr. Rogers's neighbourhood is getting crowded

Anderson, Daniel R

2004

Overview

Like losing favourite uncles, millions of us have grieved in the past year at the deaths of Bob Keeshan, the creator of Captain Kangaroo on CBS, and Fred Rogers, who developed Mister Rogers' Neighbourhood on public television. The first time I professionally watched children watching television, two preschool sisters were viewing Mister Rogers. At times they watched intently, at times they played with toys or each other, but throughout, they kept up a running dialogue with Mr. Rogers. He and the Captain knew that young children are intellectually and emotionally involved with programs that respect their level of development. The effects are traceable for years, as we found when my colleagues and I interviewed and reviewed the transcripts of high school students we had studied as preschoolers in the early 1980s. The more these teens had watched programs like Captain Kangaroo, Mister Rogers and Sesame Street as preschoolers - the Captain aired on CBS from 1955-1984 and on PBS until 1990, Mister Rogers ran on PBS from 1968-2001, and Sesame Street started on PBS in 1969 - the better were their high school grades in English, math and science. They also read more books for pleasure, and were less likely to endorse violent solutions to hypothetical social problems.

• Publisher: Postmedia Network Inc
• Subject: Rogers, Fred / Rogers, Mister