I’m reconsidering my position on Comedy Central’s new series, “Tickle U.” As you may remember I posted something about this last week and at the time, couldn’t have agreed more with the stance from the “Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.” Basically they see this series as a pure commercially driven device to create characters on their network that they can seed and market/sell to young children. While I still do believe that is the basic premise, I feel I was being a bit harsh about their concept. Here’s why.
The concept of “Tickle U” as stated by the producers is to teach young children to have a sense of humor and to laugh. While I still agree that there is no absolute value to doing this on TV, the role of this show still plays an important part in offering parents choice. There is so much emphasis on “educational content,” content designed to create a “smart” child that offering something that doesn’t claim these benefits is refreshing. It is very clear that this is a pure entertainment product—nothing more. It’s not going to teach your child ABC’s or 123’s, it’s supposedly just going to make them laugh. My expectations for quality children’s television lie somewhere in between. I crave solid, benefits to learning from children’s television but don’t need that value in the form of traditional academic outcomes. I’m a “tweener” I guess.
When we developed the Braincandy series, we clearly were focused on placing value on non-traditional means of learning. We believe that developing a child’s critical, independent, creative thinking skills are of far more value than learning to repeat facts. Our children are little sponges eager to learn—let’s remember that all children do that differently. There is great importance in making sure that they learn about themselves and how they are connected to the world before all else. That’s how I feel anyway, how about you?
Posted on August 31st, 2005 by Sam
Filed under: Daily Life, Am I Crazy?
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