> And God he says, lives in heaven with Santa Claus and
> their dog Marianne, implying that the Supreme Being
> is not only imaginary, but also gay.
That is like saying Ernie and Bert are gay. I'd appreciate if the author tried a little harder at interpreting childrens television from a childs perspective.
> If we are all made in his image, a bit of him must have been gay, trans, fluid, etc. etc.
> Or is this not how it works?
I think that the orthodox position would be that man was meant to be in God's image & likeness, but the Fall has warped the world and imperfections have crept in. Kinda like if I took a photograph of you, and then some random person came by and drew on a moustache.
> If we are all made in his image, a bit of him must have been gay, trans, fluid, etc. etc.
Or gender, like nationality and status under human laws, is an element of the material condition of humanity irrelevant to the manner in which humans participate in the image of God; consider, e.g., Gal 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (text from the NAB, but the sense isn't shifted in any other version that I am aware of.)
My favourite one is that Mercury is a liquid at room temperature. It should be a solid, it doesn't form diatomic molecules in gas form, and it has far lower melting points and electrical conductivity; largely because it doesn't share it's valence electrons easily due to a mixture of relativity and quantum effects.
You say "your screen" like you imagine that there's more than one mind here .. and you imagine that mind isn't being fed sense-data from a malevolent aliens laptop for entertainment purposes.
Being a bit more grounded there's a possibility that it's electron, not electrons too.
There's also proof of God: to borrow Sir Christopher Wren's epitaph, si monumentum requiris, circumspice.
I don't mind a little atheist boy proclaiming his disbelief in preschool, but I wonder how his father would feel about a little religious boy proclaiming his belief in that same school.
This, is no proof. At best it's an argument from authority.
You need a little leg up in rhetoric arguments. It has long been decided, by better logicians and theologists than us, that either there's no proof of a supreme being or that it doesn't exist. To borrow vocabulary from another domain, it's a closed issue.
Either way is fine, and I've been careful not to disclose my beliefs.
edit: I used an argument from authority, partly by sarcasm
pedit: musing about languages and brains: I did 3 years of latin classes and was good at it, and although I could roughly understand the latin quote, translating it in English through my native tongue made my brain feel weird, so I took the translation found on wikipedia...
Because false beliefs that are later dashed make kids cynical? Being prepared to distinguish reality from fanatasy is an essential skill needed to rise above the whims of crowds. However, if I had a kid in a similar situation as the OP, I might have tried to teach them about the dangers of confronting other kids' parents when those kids stop believing in Santa at four instead of whatever age they'd hoped.
That's ridiculous. The claim that unicorns and hobgoblins don't exist is also unfalsifiable but we human beings aren't purely rational automatons that can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality.
In the absence of falsifiable claims, the burden of proof lies exclusively on the person making a positive statement of existence (that there is a supreme being). If you care about truth, preaching from a book is so much worse.
Kids don't choose to believe in any of that stuff. It's a game for adults that involves extensive lying and often elaborate staging. You're explicitly equivocating between cynical and realistic, here. Everything true is not bad, and the adult world is not all terrible.
Isn't one of Santa's big things that he has a list of good and bad children and you will receive coal instead of presents if you are bad? Lots of parents use Santa as a threat especially to misbehaving kids in the weeks leading up to Christmas. I don't think there's anything wrong with that but there is definitely a 'bad' side to Santa as their typically is with religion.
You really ought to get to know some Mormons ;) (spoken as a former believer). One reason some groups, like atheists or evangelicals, are so vocal is because they believe that the damage done to society by others not sharing their beliefs will be irreparable. This is why beliefs and decisions need to be rooted in reproducible evidence, rather than the reverse.
Evidence refers to that which can be evidenced on demand, or rather more apropos, produced upon demand. Therefore, unless you mean something other than the commonly accepted meaning of the term 'evidence', then evidence must be reproducible. Perhaps if you could share some examples, we could explore your definition more fully?
I disagree that all evidence must be reproducible, which is the standard for experimental evidence (simple physics comes to mind). Just off the top of my head, there is historical evidence and geological evidence, for example.
Historical evidence (whether documentary or archaeological or otherwise) is certainly producible, but not reproducible in the sense that you can provide the exact same thing again.
Geological evidence (again, very simply, like rock strata) is not reproducible. Even saying that this kind of formation always accompanies another kind isn't reproducible. (The "all ravens are black" problem.")
There are other logical kinds of evidence that don't meet the "scientific" standard, and yet are quite valid. My objection really is that the original statement was far too narrow.
I can't speak for sverige, but in my experience and in observations of others, some types of non-reproducible evidence used to justify belief include:
- Coincidences where the person decided at "random" to take a different route, and ended up avoiding a disaster or helping someone as a result. Counterarguments: confirmation bias, ignoring unconscious intuition.
- Other people saying or doing the right thing at exactly the right time to alleviate a personal suffering the other person "couldn't" have known about. Counterarguments: confirmation bias, underestimating others' intuition/perceptiveness.
- Feeling a funny happy/peaceful/warm/shivery/tingly feeling at the same time as something religious happens or while reading a religious book. Counterargument: fMRI+TcDCS/TcMS experiments (though tentative), other situations in which similar feelings occur like relationships, deeply artistic movies, music, nature, etc.
- Children saying things about subjects they haven't been taught about directly, like a long dead relative. Counterargument: confirmation bias (think of all the misbehavior children commit), and underestimating children's perceptiveness.
- Personal epiphanies, like having unexpected words or an internal dialog instead of monologue popping into mind especially in religious scenarios, for example when praying over someone else, or when reading, etc. Counterarguments: right temporal gyrus (bicameral mind theory), evidence that thoughts occur before we are aware of them, subjective variations in nature of internal monologues and imagery.
I think your mistake is that your assuming because some atheists are loud they represent all of them. It's definitely off-putting but those people are in a minority just as religious fundamentalists are in a minority.
I was proud of him for stating his beliefs in a context where that would have been difficult to do. The fact that his own beliefs happened to coincide with my own even though I'd never explicitly communicated them to him was a secondary thing.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12274765 and marked it off-topic. This is a classic flamewar topic and the guidelines ask us to resist introducing it:
I've made this comment in response to this type of moderation before: if comments expressing skepticism (or even cute stories about kids being kids) are detached, but comments lacking skepticism it are not, then a bias is created in which it becomes okay for the religious to discuss those intellectual aspects of their beliefs suitable for HN, but not anyone else.
And FWIW, I thought the commenters in this thread did a decent job of not turning it into a flamewar.
So if this comment was detached because it received a lot of flags, consider that it may be effectively suppressing an interesting intellectual viewpoint because of one group's disproportionate taking of offense at disagreement, to the point of feeling the need to flag this comment but not other, similar comments that support that group.
I'm Dutch but my wife is Danish. She does her utmost best confronting our kids with Danish TV (we live in Holland), so I understand a bit of what the author is on about. I was initially surprised as well.
Truth is, it _is_ entertaining! But most importantly, once you get past the absolutely amateuristic way things are shot (hey, the kids don't care, why should you?), there's a lot of depth to a lot of it. You need to let that depth sink in a bit before you can see the value of it.
For example, the article about Kaj and Andreea:
Probably most striking, though, is another thing lacking: education. Quite simply, there is none, academic or moral. “Kaj and Andrea”, a pair of puppets, are sweet friends, but also goofily flawed: Kaj is terribly self-obsessed, Andrea is warbling and neurotic. When other characters do something wrong, there is little of the obvious consequence-and-lesson resolution of American shows; the results are usually left to speak for themselves.
The lovely thing here is that it is educative, but it's up to the watcher to draw the lesson. Kaj's self-obsession is usually very funny and rather ridiculous. It teaches kids "wow, it's pretty ridiculous to be so self-obsessed". And at the same time it teaches kids that even if you're flawed, that's ok - both Kaj and Andreea appreciate one another and are appreciated and respected by the human co-hosts of their TV shows. This is something that I've not really seen anywhere else.
I'm not convinced that kids learn lessons like these better when it's spelled out for them.
I am old enough (40) with a daughter who is almost 3, to be a little horrified by kids' TV. It's not that there isn't a ton of "good" stuff for her, it's that there is only "good" stuff. There isn't anything not geared toward teaching her math, reading or morals. When I was a kid, that was PBS and a handful of other shows and the rest of it was people whacking the crap out of each other to make me bug my parents to buy toys. I don't think either extreme is particularly wise, but it's strange to me there's nothing aimed at her age range that's simply fun.
Left to her own devices (literally), she scans youtube for videos of off-screen adults playing with toys (which depresses the crap out of me) and 1990s-quality offshore Flash video of the same "Johnny finger" song in various copyright violating incarnations. The song is horrific. Do not go look it up unless you plan on having kids and want to inoculate yourself now, but writing this out I wonder if it's not her looking to simply enjoy something rather than constantly be prompted to solve a shitty math puzzle so we can move on with the plot.
All of this sounds like I am an awful father but in reality we limit her daily screen time to no more than 24 hours.
Get some copies of the classic Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry 1940-1950 for example. (not the sixties it all goes downhill, the drawing isn't as good, they begin talking, too much characters).
imo, often the things made for adults are better suited for kids than the things designed specifically for kids (by misguided adults).
Kids aren't dumb, they just lack refined thinking models adults develop as they grow up. Eg: I think we all have experienced reading again something we read young and loved and finding a lot more meaning in it.
(I'd still avoid showing some things to them of course.)
As an early movie recommendation, I suggest WALL-E. We started with it at ~2ish, and every time we watch it together, there's more depth revealed (currently at 5.5years old).
At first, it's about a robot and another robot doing stuff. Then they're on a journey. Then the desire for friendship. And hospital. Then (gradually) the idea of different motivations comes in. Perhaps some ecology. Then conflict, etc.
All the while, my daughter is delightfully more interested in robots and space travel than standard 'pink princess' fare.
> I think we all have experienced reading again something we read young and loved and finding a lot more meaning in it.
My favourite example of this comes from comics:
Try looking at Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run (issue #20 or 21 of volume 2 - the 1982 revival). It's a masterpiece that is well worth reading as an adult.
Now try looking at early 80's X-Men. While e.g. Days of Future Past is good, one of the reasons some of the arcs like Days of Future Past stands out so much is that many of these series were so full of excessive amounts of tedious exposition recapping things that just happened and reminding about and explaining things to the reader all the time, and the standouts were the few exceptions that treated the reader as a person with somewhat more mental capacity than a goldfish.
At the time, I didn't see the difference. I enjoyed X-Men and Swamp Thing equally. Now, going back and looking at those old X-Men issues is - with a few exceptions - almost painful and only worth it for the nostalgia.
Had the same thought but it's just not that easy. She's at an age where we are trying like hell to convince her hitting isn't the best option, so showing her things like "Hillbilly Hare" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9SrXRNPRCA) aren't the best idea. She's actually in love with old Pink Panther cartoons right now and it's amazing to see what we used to watch: smoking, violence, a lot of shotguns.
Easily ~Youtube-able option with lots of episodes : "Kipper the Dog".
Also 'findable' : The Clangers (charming 1970s show from the UK); Mr Men; Shaun the Sheep; Mr Benn.
All of these are 'gentle' but fun, and not really educational per-se. Even though you'll end up watching all of these again-and-again, Shaun the Sheep remains entertaining for parents too.
My wife and I are working through the old Tom and Jerry cartoons with our toddler, and we are shocked to see how much blackface there is. Like, okay, I get it was a different time- but the quantity is shocking. Episodes where it doesn't even have to happen, they'll just quickly mock black people and then get back to the plot.
I've watched a lot of old cartoons (it comes with the territory when you want to be an animator) and to be honest I'm not sure it was seen as "mocking" back then. It was just How You Drew Black People back then - a caricature based on a caricature.
If you want a complicated viewing experience, track down Clampett's "So White An' De Sebben Dwarves", which is positively bursting with energy and love, for both the craft of animation, and the jazz scene of the day... and a whoooole lotta visuals that just aren't okay any more.
read this and thought i was talking to myself! those marketing videos with kids opening toys or "acting" with barbie dolls make me want to puke. we're debating getting rid of youtube kids because of all the garbage.
pbs kids is much better "educationally", meaning i guess the danes and the article author would hate it. the point of numbers and letters at an early age is not some parental obsession "achievement" but rather acclimation to things critical to life. you can't read -- whatever the hell you like to read -- if you can't spell, and for us, the sooner our kids can read themselves the better.
On average kids are vastly smarter than we give them credit for. From 18 months to 4 years, kids add ~10,000 words to their vocabulary with minimal repetition. 26 letters and 10 numbers is nothing as long as it's meaningful for them.
Educational entertainment is more about parents than education. However, kids also like to learn things so interesting and educational are frequently linked when done well.
PS: If you actually want to teach kids to read then integrating subtitles and story seems like a great option.
I don't really have a problem with our kids having some screen time (without commercials, because it's so easy now), but we had to drop Youtube Kids because of this very reason as well.
Amazing that Google thinks that unboxing videos of products paid by the companies to the "entertainers" is good content for developing minds. I was under the assumption that app was curated, but it must not be.
Amazon's Freetime Unlimited with a Kindle and a soft case has been the best setup so far. Lots of educational stuff from PBS, but they can also mix in the Pokemon or super hero cartoons.
Surprisingly (or not), the kids sort of gravitate towards the more educational PBS shows.
Another huge perk on Amazon is there's tons of decent kids games for free on their Underground app store. Kids games are really expensive ... it still burns I paid $10 to unlock all the utensils in a Strawberry Shortcake cooking game!
I'm not a parent myself, but my mother didn't teach me to read by age three with numbers-and-letters TV shows. She did that by teaching me to read. I'm not especially smart or perspicacious, but I gather from what she's told me that it didn't take her very long.
Well, you can't go wrong with Oliver Postgate, who I now notice made nearly half of the programs in my (completely randomly selected) list...
Also I appear to have remembered a fairly small selection of the 'children's television on drugs' genre. See also: Banamaman, Jamie and the Magic Torch, Roobarb and Custard, Captain Pugwash...
While talking about children's television: it's not British, and it's slightly later, but any person of any age who doesn't like Fraggle Rock has no soul.
I used to think the theme tune went 'The wombles of Wimbledon: common are we' but actually it's 'The Wombles of _Wimbledon Common_ are we'. I had never heard of Wimbledon Common, although it's only 4 miles from where I was born.
It was co-produced by a British television company (TVS), and had specifically filmed inserts that replaced the Inventor with a Lighthouse owner (the sequences were arguably better too, certainly less rambling and more focused).
But even if you ignore the inserts (others were filmed worldwide) it's still partially British
My children were the right age about 5 years ago, and everything on your list (and by another comment, Fraggle Rock) held up well for them, and also the watching parents. Sure Mister Ben was a little clunky, but in a fairly timeless way. And Postgate and Henson just had the "storytelling" touch.
If you are implying that those using drugs to stimulate their creativity are somehow inferior to those who are not that would be a tad insulting to many creative individuals who use drugs. Just saying ;)
We got all of these in Australia when I was a kid, including Australia's own effort at anarchistic kids telly, Aunty Jack: https://youtu.be/vIqqiK4ncfs
That sounds like my 4 year old, right down to the finger song she can sing along with in like 5 languages now lol. Those youtube videos of people with toys are nuts, some of them are like a modern form of story telling and really well made.
Some shows I like of hers:
- Miles from Tomorrowland, a family adventuring in space with bits of science and physics thrown in
- Lost in Oz, it's decades later and Dorothy's daughter is into making gadgets and stuff, ends up in Oz. There's only 1 episode now but it's about to be a whole series on Amazon
- Wishenpoof, another Amazon title , little girl can make wishes come true with magic but she's constantly discovering she doesn't need magic to solve problems
- Barbie Spy Squad, it's decent even though all the other Barbie stuff I've seen is pretty fucked-up.
We recently started 'Barbie - Life in the dreamhouse' on netflix for giggles and found it to be an actually decent show. The plot is what happens if you give the barbie dolls and merch to a bunch of nerds and give them free reign.
You get Glados running the automated closet and plotting for world fashion domination, only to be stopped by the evil switch being turned off again, a large part of the first episode is modelled on an Indiana Jones temple exploration, they often handle things like batteries and glitter in the real size form (so the battery is about half the size of the people).. it's surprisingly funny.
My daughter went through that show for a while, and we found the same enjoyment. It's self-referential enough, and plays their inanity clearly enough that even the youngest kid can tell it's not behavior to emulate.
I think you may have solved a mystery for me. For weeks our daughter has been talking about someone named "Bobby SuhMEEsa" and we finally gave up and decided he's Keyser Soze, but I think it may be a corruption of "Barbie's Dream House". I kind of liked the mystery better.
Now that I think of it, the closet basically proposed to use its vast database of good fashion (formed from Barbie's timeline) to generate new excellent fashion - a machine learning problem plus capable AI.
I wonder whether someone is working on that, it really sounds like a good and interesting idea. Is there a system to parameterize clothes? Hm..
I would have joined the closet if I was Barbie, despite the relation with the 'evil' switch.
My kids are learning english from youtube. My 7 yo son like watching Sonic Adventure easteregg videos and try to replicate them on my Dreamcast. He is getting good.
Why can the little girl only do magic on the weekends - is that some nod to the contemporary assumption that everyone works 5 / 7 days, with the other two nominally for personal (fun / satisfying) time?
There is a woman who calls herself "Ms. Hands" (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV6P5rRVmiTL637byUZBTrQ) and I can only assume she's a billionaire given how often I hear her awful voice as she pops toys out of Play Doh "eggs". I find the whole genre depressing as hell because I can't help but think of kids watching the videos who have 0 hope of ever actually playing with those toys.
OTOH, I've been thinking off and on about how to start a channel since it's clearly a great way to pay for kids' toys based on the one show we watched where a kid and his dad assembled a gigantic Spider-Man drivable car.
> I've been thinking off and on about how to start a channel since it's clearly a great way to pay for kids' toys based on the one show we watched where a kid and his dad assembled a gigantic Spider-Man drivable car.
There's your self-licking ice cream clone. I wonder why it's so pleasurable to watch these kind of unboxing vids. Mirror neurons?
I think watching people play with toys ~= playing with toys,
It's not all unboxing though, whole stories get acted out with toys and different camera angles and lots of editing. There's a lot of elaborate music video reenactments too, like the songs from Frozen.
> I find the whole genre depressing as hell because I can't help but think of kids watching the videos who have 0 hope of ever actually playing with those toys.
To be completely fair, I subscribe to more than a few blacksmithing, metalworking, machining, woodworking, and other heavy-duty crafty channels, and there's little-to-no chance that I'll ever get a lathe or a mill.
> we limit her daily screen time to no more than 24 hours.
Here's the thing, though. There's a tradeoff between setting limits and teaching children what's right and wrong; and teaching them how to decide for themselves what's what. This is why kids of a certain age often get cash allowances, for example.
Kids are going to grow up one day. They will watch porn, and they need to know what's what -- what's bizarre entertainment and what's intimate, whatever its kinky-ness level, sex. They will watch violent movies, and movies that depict amoral, despicable situations. And this is fine: we're always flirting with the edge of our morality and our knowledge, this is how we keep growing as humans. "You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth."
This why I have long decided not to have kids. I don't have the kind of generosity to host a little person that at first can't walk on his own, but is already his own person. I don't know how fathers do it. I often think my father should be disapointed that I didn't become a musician like him or some other kind of high-brow artist, but instead a "numbers person" as he puts it. But he isn't disappointed. And just I had been warned, when you're 10, dads know everything; when you're 20, they're total fools; when you're 30, they're even wiser than you realized when you were a kid.
My dad knows something mysterious about Being and Life itself I can only glimpse from watching soccer with him. Foolish as some of his life choices have been.
>There's a tradeoff between setting limits and teaching children what's right and wrong
Absolutely, but it's mysterious and nuanced and a giant pain in my analytical brain. Allowing her to wander off with a phone or tablet can be a life-saver when things need to be done without any outside "assistance" but our daughter is highly susceptible to a condition I have named "iPad Face" wherein a screen held at arm's length or closer (how I laugh about what my parents' generation would say about eyeballs so close to a TV) can turn the happiest of moods into a dark sulk.
The other problem is everything needs to be taught by example, not by legislative fiat, which is another PITA and a bit of a challenge in These Modern Times. Looking forward to getting her interested in video games so she has another excuse to never go outside!
Yeah at a certain point. But kids at a young age need regulation. If I didn't regulate my 2 year old she'd sit plastered to a screen for half the day. The thing about tv, smartphones etc is that they are incredibly addictive and I'd prefer to avoid my kid being addicted to something before they are old enough to decide for themselves what they'd like to have as a vice. I struggle enough with media/info addiction and I hope to help my daughter be aware of it and avoid it when she's old enough.
Wait, did I read this wrong? Limiting the daily screen time to "no more then 24 hours" reads like a tongue in cheek joke, because there are only 24 hours in a day.
Just to close the loop, yeah I did mean to say I'm an awful parent so feel free to ignore anything I wrote. Not quite sure how it slipped through anyone's sarcasm filter but now I'm trying to imagine someone who can imagine a small child staying awake for 24 hours.
Yes, they need to grow up eventually, but not at age 3. A toddler cannot make good decisions on their own. I'm 100% for the point of view you exposed about letting kids make their own responsible choices instead of hand guiding them, but a 3 year old needs to be told what to do.
The Mole is fairly popular in Germany. Clips were included in the children's show "Sendung mit der Maus" which many have jokingly pointed out as being more popular with parents than children. The show also included clips explaining how everyday things work or are made[0].
The subtitle of the show was (is?) "Lach- und Sachgeschichten" (roughly "stories to laugh about and stories to learn from") hinting at the format: some clips were pure entertainment and some were educational. The show is still running though the format has changed a bit over the decades I think.
[0]: See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PNRrOGJqUI for an example of a 1990s explanation of how the Internet works (with live action re-enactments of DNS resolution and data transfer).
When she gets older, if you let her watch Cartoon Network, there's quite a bit of content with zero educational or moral value. In fact, the latest incarnation of Teen Titans seems to be written by people my age (40) _for_ people my age. With tons of references to 80s culture that the kids would never get.
That was actually one of the first shows she really paid attention to (along with Clarence), but it was back when she was really just interested in colors and sound and not able or interested in repeating what she saw. If we let her watch TTG! on the regular now the house would be a burning pile of rubble.
Shaun the Sheep is wonderful sometimes. It is a mix of things kids enjoy as well as references only grown ups will get.
My kids will come and tell me when it shows up in between all the braindead stuff because they know I'll sit together with them. Same goes for Tom&Jerry (eh, the part about me sitting down to watch TV, not the part about hidden references.)
Edit: oh, and I found the Winnie the Pooh audiobook from before Disney bought it and turned it into another educational timewaster. Kids have learned to like it as well.
"With tons of references to 80s culture that the kids would never get."
This is likely in part deliberate. A significant amount of Teen Titans Go seems to be about taking potshots that those who enjoyed the original cartoon. Like 'Revenge of Slade' and its entire plot being a poorly disguised lecture on how fans of the first cartoon shouldn't want this one to be more than randomness for really young kids.
Which of course means anyone actually in the target demographic would have no clue what half the episode means. It's simultaneously confusing to young kids and infuriating to older viewers at the same time.
I never saw that as a kid but now we have Daniel Tiger's Neighbourhood which apparently is a continuation of sorts. I find it almost condescendingly heavy on the moralizing and turning everything into a 'teachable moment' but then again I'm not exactly the target audience.
I am raising Danish kids abroad myself so I have watched a fair share of the Ramasjang shows from here.
To be fair, Danish children's shows are often inspired by American shows, to the point where many of the characters are - visually - clones of popular American versions: Check out this bird from what is maybe the most popular Danish children's show ever (5 sec in): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGOf_cV5ebc Looks like Big Bird. Or this popular show, Ramajetterne, which is visually completely like Sesame Street: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-jk_VuoJsg
It reminds me of the output of Dutch public broadcaster VPRO during the 90s and 00s. Looking back at fragments of series like Purno de Purno and Rembo en Rembo, it's remarkable how this was allowed to air. A state-funded Sunday morning programme full of references to sex [1] and other stuff people would find morally questionable to show to kids nowadays.
But I don't remember it being bad for me as a kid, I thought it was fun: the naked bodies made me laugh. I didn't reenact the bad behaviour shown, I knew it was just for show and exaggerated. I remember an interview with the makers some years ago, arguing that it's better to show sex as a fun thing and let you children ask about it instead of keeping it silent. And that's it better than having kids shows where violence is a big part of the entertainment.
Haha, yes Purno de Purno was fun, never knew what the big Clit was until very much later of course. Don't think it damaged me at all. I think taboos damage kids. I think in the American system, where sex is a big taboo and you end up with 15 y/olds going for Netflix and chill where the girl was never told that sex is something to enjoy and how to enjoy it, she sees a lot of Nicky Minaj ("My Anaconda don't..."), and the boy is self educated by porn, is much sicker than such cartoons. I recently listened to a podcast on this topic [0]. Sex is not something to be ignored with children as it is such a big part of adult life.
I also watched a lot of VPRO when I was a kid at the end of the 80ies and beginning of the 90ies. They had many great off the wall programs. E.g. mevrouw Ten Kate was also great:
Not full of sex references, but definitely politically incorrect dialogues and some swear words for good measure. I don't think it had any negative impact on my childhood ;).
Here in Australia we get a mix of US and British kids shows (on ABC Kids, have no idea what is shown on commercial channels), and its trivially easy to pick the US ones because they are dripping in morals, lessons, and such (and are also terrible).
I've started describing it to people as: British shows are designed to entertain first, and perhaps kids can learn something, whereas the US approach is THOU SHALT MAKE SURE CHILDREN UNDERSTAND RIGHT AND WRONG!.
Don't forget the importance of nutrition and exercise! There's also some law that these shows have to have a symbol on the screen somewhere that says "E/I", for "educational/informative" I think. In case you couldn't figure it out on your own!
> I'm not convinced that kids learn lessons like these better when it's spelled out for them.
From another angle, showing events with consistent and guaranteed moral consequences could be seen as mis-educating viewers that if people misbehave then benign forces will appear on the scene, putting things to rights and dealing out appropriate punishments and rewards.
Sadly, in the real world, this is far from often the case.
Obviously, you don't want kids to grow up thinking "great, I'll be a bully and a thief, I'll get what I want and nothing will happen to me," but neither would I want them to grow up thinking "I'll just go along with whatever shit unpleasant people throw my way because something bad will happen to them before long without me having to do anything, and my innate goodness will be rewarded automatically."
> I'm not convinced that kids learn lessons like these better when it's spelled out for them.
Exactly.
Yes there is a time to spell things out, but by and large, kids learn by emulation. That's why the cliché "do as I say, not what I do" fails.
And more generally, that applies to adults as well. Most of us pick up more knowledge and life lessons from those who live it, than from explicit teaching. Sure a dump of information is good here and there at various stages of the mastery process, but that's a minority in the journey.
> I'm not convinced that kids learn lessons like these better when it's spelled out for them.
I'm no child psychologist, but I'd even tentatively argue it could be damaging.
I remember being a kid and seeing both: shows that tried to teach me, and shows that were entertaining. I remember even young-me rolling my eyes at "educational" shows. Sure, some were great, but most of the time, I'd rather watch the entertaining ones, because I didn't feel like they were pushing something onto me.
Once I got into school, I realized "oh, it's more of this educational crap". I clearly remember being skeptical of whatever they taught me, because, once again, it felt like they were pushing something onto me.
The same thing with games (video and non). I hated games that tried to teach me things. There was a clear contrast of quality between entertainment games, and learning games.
Kids aren't dumb... I was very analytical since young, when I have a child I'll treat him/her as not-stupid, definitely. The only issue is, uncritical people make better "citizens" in our society, it's tough being a nonconformist..
Seems that the author of the article conflates teaching with lecturing and "spelling out" the desired interpretation for the audience.
Kids (or adults) don't learn from lecturing nearly as much as we do from modeling and direct experience.
For me, this article was more about the reaction of someone raised with sterile and condescending media presence now witnessing an experience that does not underestimate children's intelligence.
It is about what USA-nians consider "unhealthy" children's television.
I am Danish (now live in NY) and grew up with Kaj and Andrea and Bamse and Kylling (and Anne and Lotte) and so many other children shows.
They where mostly products of the seventies and I would argue they where educational by not being pedagogic.
I am more annoyed by my youngest who watch YouTube kids. He is not just watching "ABC" but also shows about other children who play.
In some ways it's the same as the Danish shows yet filled with product placement stuff so I guess I kind of understand how Danish children shows must feel to foreigners.
At the end we probably shouldn't worry too much. At those ages kids don't really learn as much as evolve.
> But until then, they seem utterly unharmed by a childhood of hearing about the queen’s bottom and watching grandma light some bodily gas on fire.
Is that really as surprising as is implied? To me, none of what the article describes seems like such a bad thing. Sure it's a little weird, but it seems right up there with the humor children enjoy. And not everything has to have a message or a moral at the end of it.
I don't know what they are showing on CN in general right now, but I'm an adult who watches the regular show and Steven Universe, and would very much watch the latter together with my children if I had any.
My two kids (6, 9) fell in love with the regular show years ago. It's the only show I can watch with them. The writing is strange and psychadelic with hidden messages I'm sure only I pick up on and the artists (is this show computer animated?) are great.
Pretty much every new cartoon you see is done at least partially with the computer. In the case of Regular Show, Wikipedia tells me that it's animated traditionally, on paper, then goes through digital ink and paint. Which is pretty retro for a show that premiered in 2010.
I've got a large amount of extended family and married friends, so good shows like these are super helpful in positively connecting with their kids. And shared media interests is actually part of a large social aspect of public school.
> Steven Universe
This show works incredibly well. Especially since the episodes are short - a feature for parents as well as kids. Gravity Falls, as well, does a great job of being fun without trying to do much preaching. Of course, some of the adult fandom for these can be a bit ... enthusiastic, so I worry about whether the kids will be able to enjoy themselves at conventions and on the internet without getting caught up in the drama.
Both of these shows have also garnered approval from some parents with some pretty insane control issues, too. In situations like that, it's nice to be able to provide gateway entertainment to kids languishing under extreme supervision. I doubt I'm the only one who's had to deal with that. It's surprising how many parents unwittingly rob their kids of a childhood. Being a non-parent in some ways gives a more even perspective about loosening the grip on the kids and not taking everything so seriously.
Shows like Regular Show and Adventure Time are pretty good, but some parents reject them for being "too stupid". Yeah, there's juvenile behavior, but it's not all over. When introducing parents to these, I sometimes have to be particular about which episodes I start with, or they'll immediately reject it.
I've introduced teens to shows like Rick and Morty and Star vs. the Forces of Evil. Parents are generally more accepting of more edgy material at that age. And they're gonna push boundaries, so at least point them to the better quality shows. Anime has also gotten hugely popular in this recent generation, to the point that some of my nieces and nephews seem to literally breathe it. Streaming subscriptions help with that, though available shows vary by licensing deals and region. Hulu is one of the best for cartoons.
It's also amusing that the creators of these shows are the recent adults who grew up on the last generation of entertainment cartoons.
To be honest, while We Don't Have Cable(tm), some of the stuff I have seen on Cartoon Network was surprisingly good. Shows like Adventure Time are weird and funny, there was also a mini-series called Over The Garden Wall that was straight up fantastic.
Even stuff towards the more rubbish end of the spectrum, like Teen Titans Go, obviously has really good writers and is a lot of fun, at least for somewhat older kids and their parents.
IMO any TV with adverts is unhealthy childrens's television. Seriously we don't have broadcast TV at home - when the kids go to their grandparents (with us) it's amazing how sad, unkind, and needful they get because the adverts told them they needed $latestPieceOfPlasticTat and we won't buy it for them.
I think it's possible to dispute not only that Cartoon Network is unhealthy children's television, but also that it is children's television at all.
Several of its shows seem aimed at all-ages audiences, some are exclusively adult--so much so that they call the block Adult Swim--and only a few are primarily for kids.
Of those that do seem to be kids' shows, it seems to me that they are better than the cartoons I watched as a child. At the very least, they don't seem to be long-form toy advertisements.
What makes television unhealthy, anyway? Is watching Cubs baseball unhealthy? Doesn't that teach the lesson that no matter how great you look at your regular job, you will always collapse into disappointment in the postseason? Is watching Good Morning America unhealthy? Doesn't that horribly skew one's perceptions of what is actually important in life, and prime you for receptivity to advertisement? Is watching unscripted "reality" television unhealthy? ...Yes. Absolutely, it is.
Exactly, Cartoon Network is about cartoons, but cartoons != children television. Networks like Sprout, Disney Jr., PBS (schedule dependent), etc show much more typical children's television.
Not sure if Johnny Bravo and Cow and Chicken were good influences, but Dexter's Laboratory and Powerpuff Girls, while very visually busy, definitely did make an impact on me.
I'm a Dane, and grew up with Danish children's television, including the shows mentioned in the article. I just recently re-watched one of my favorite shows "Nanna", which you can now stream from the archives of DR. Even as an adult, I still enjoy watching it for its humor and creativity, and for the fact that it doesn't speak down to its audience. I don't think that can be said about most other children's shows.
You missed Bamse ("Teddy"): A self-absorbed egocentric narcissist, taking advantage of his naive, little-minded friend Kylling ("chicken"), episode after episode with zero negative impact. After +20 years he's now joined by Bruno, also a teddy bear, sharing similar personal flaws except with much refined insults bordering on psychopathic abuse, bullying kids instead of chickens, believing firmly that the world exists solely to please him in every which way.
However, mostly you may have missed the subtle, educational point (yes, there is one) underpinning these characters: Critical thinking. Is it right to behave like this, even if there is no negative consequence (as is often the case in real life)? Do you emphasize with someone taking advantage of their friends? In Denmark, we have this crazy idea that kids are interested in distinguishing right from wrong, even when the answer isn't spoon-fed by a morally correct television character - and maybe exactly because it isn't.
The kids don't like Ramasjang because it's a training ground for inspiring film makers. The like it because naughty is fun. And, if done right, it just may induce some critical thinking. It'll take more than a few days of watching, but just like the kids, you'll see the point :-)
Best regards from a grown-up, bottle-fed on Bamse, somewhat certain of right from wrong.
> Probably most striking, though, is another thing lacking: education. Quite simply, there is none, academic or moral.
I already love this!
If there's one thing that children need to experience at an early age, it's that the majority of what they'll deal with in life will have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Life should be enjoyed for life ... it doesn't always have to be a backhanded way to learn to count.
> Probably most striking, though, is another thing lacking: education. Quite simply, there is none, academic or moral.
I already love this!
If there's one thing that children need to experience at an early age, it's that the majority of what they'll deal with in life will have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Life should be enjoyed for life ... it doesn't always have to be a backhanded way to learn to count.
As a Citizen of Denmark and a father of two (4 & 1), I absolutely love the danish stuff on Ramasjang and hate most of the American (foreign) stuff. The programs produced in DK are rude and fun and slow and scary, while the foreign stuff is mostly lame attempts at education (Dora the explorer is a particularly nasty example of this) or over the top animations with too much moral crap, too pretty characters and backed by toy franchises and whatnot.
I seems to me that the author actually enjoyed the shows and I mostly agree with his assessment, but he can't have been watching too much because he missed some important shows that are in fact educational.
Most prominent of the educational shows is Mr. Beard, who teaches numbers, counting, simple math, letters and simple spelling. The show is weird and quirky, but also features some great songs. The whole thing is backed by some pretty great apps, which expand on the educational stuff.
There's also a great show about kids helping animals in trouble. They don't pretend that the kids do most of the work, it's a professional that does the heavy lifting, but the kids get involved as much as possible.
I don't mind watching these shows with my kids, but I'll leave as soon as Dora or Thomas the tank engine or Chuggington starts.
If you're interested in watching some completely outrageous danish childrens TV, go watch "Carsten og Gittes vennevilla". It's created by the duo "Wulf Morgenthaler", who have produced some the weirdest stuff on danish TV. Particularly the one where Carsten creates a fox is a hoot.
The most astute observation is that characters on Danish kids TV are often completely, unapologetically flawed. This makes them relatable to kids, and kids enjoy watching them in all their dysfunction.
And I actually disagree with the premise that this contains no lessons or morals. Children are able to see clearly how ridiculous and ill-advised the behavior of these characters is, and so learn to recognize it in themselves and others.
Someone once pointed out that while Mickey Mouse is the mascot of Disney in the U.S. and the main character of the franchise, in Europe it was Donald Duck who became popular. Europeans like the flawed anti-hero, while moralizing America (sorry!) preferred the do-gooder know-it-all Mickey Mouse.
In Britain, the nihilistic Looney Tunes cartoons like Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry and (above all else) Roadrunner were vastly more popular than anything by Disney.
In fact, I don't think I've even seen a single Mickey Mouse cartoon...
Watched tonnes of Looney Tunes growing up on British TV. Never seen a Mickey cartoon and I've always been curious if there even were any besides a few when Disney first started.
of course, because those are adult cartoons filled with adult references a cultured person would get, and more or less robbed the 1940s for comedy. It's more about how dynamic 1940s culture was compared to our own, I think.
If you go a bit later, to when they started doing new animation for Looney Tunes tv specials in the 70s and 80s, the cartoons got dumber as well.
>You know that scene in Animal House where there’s a fellow playing folk music on the guitar, and John Belushi picks up the guitar and destroys it. And the cinema loves it. [Belushi] just smashes it and then waggles his eyebrows at the camera. Everyone thinks, "God, is he great!" Well, the British comedian would want to play the folk singer. We want to play the failure.
I'll punt as to the accuracy of your "moralizing America" sneer, but remember that Disney chose their mascot--not the American public.
Additionally, my understanding is that Donald Duck had at least a few American fans. Though their numbers are probably limited to the few Americans who enjoy Looney Tunes, Homer Simpson, and the stereotypical sitcom dad (among other characters).
TIL that Donald Duck isn't very popular in the US.
I grew up with a weekly Disney comic book that was a collection of mostly Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse (detective) stories. Almost always skipped Mickey, he's just way too boring as a character.
But didn't you guys have Duck Tales as well? I thought that was massively popular.
Donald comes off a lot better in comics, where he's not saddled with a comedy voice that renders him almost completely incomprehensible. Duck Tales was, indeed, pretty popular, with four seasons - and it focused almost entirely on the adventures of Uncle Scrooge and Donald's nephews. Who you could actually understand. (It was also largely based on the Carl Barks comics, so a lot of the stories would probably be super familiar to you.)
And yeah. Mickey's a boring goody-two-shoes. The earliest cartoons had him as an anarchic troublemaker but once he became the Disney mascot he got all the fun siphoned out of him and everyone quit giving a shit about him.
I don't think it was. It lasted a while, but that had to do with it being the first syndicated afternoon Disney animated cartoon. (Gummi Bears was a saturday morning one first.) It lasted a bit because of that, but around the same time you had the really popular cartoons and shows, like Tiny Toon Adventures, Batman the Animated series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
Ducktales was a very well done series, but what appeals to adults doesn't always appeal to kids, and the Ducktales movie bombed so bad it canceled the rest of the movies based on Disney Afternoon shows.
For comparison, the best Disney Afternoon series in the states was Aladdin, which outlasted Ducktales by several years, and spawned several direct to DVD movies.
Donald Duck's specific popularity has a lot to do with World War II and the marshall plan -- whereas the USA had TV And Radio, Europe's infrastructure was devastated and the influx of american comic books formed a cheap form of entertainment. One of those happened to be Donald Duck -- which was ALSO popular in the USA at the time and ran in lots of newspapers.
But in the USA, Donald Duck (and comics in general) had growing competition whereas in europe he had time to become a nostalgic tradition.
I just turned off the television after my kids watched more television in one morning than they have in an entire month. The reason? Rio Olympics track and field. Finally had to turn it off because I wasn't getting any work done.
Other than that, in the summer time anyways, I'll usually toss them a book of matches and tell them to start a fire or go build a dam in the brook.
We usually have lofty educational goals at the start of summer but quite honestly I can't be arsed when the weather is warm and there's so much great romping to be had. When we watch TV it's usually youtube for something we're curious about as a family. The "Fun" T.V. most always leaves my kids grumpy afterwards so we avoid it, not for moral or educational or child development reasons, but because i don't like grumpy kids.
After a couple kids and being the oldest of a large family I've realized from my individual scientific survey of one that kids will develop and learn in spite of their parents. We get too much credit and too much blame.
You gotta water if the sun's hot and it won't be raining for a while and you should try to get a load of fertilizer at least once a year. I guess you should weed after the first planting but you certainly can't make them grow.
If this comment is too rambling for you maybe you should go watch something with a moral in it[0]
> Ramasjang is entertainment, not a replacement for parents or school. Parents are expected to know when to switch it off (but just in case, the characters go to bed at 8.00pm, and are shown sleeping until the morning) rather than pretend that it is self-improvement.
yes, I grew up watching mainly old American cartoons (like Tom and Jerry), and I don't remember them being particularly "educational", and it was well understood that we are watching them for entertainment, and the last one was at 7:15 pm on our television.
'childrens' is 'more correct' because it makes the most grammatical sense.
Since it's genitiv, why would you apostrophe it, add another character for what reason? Whose ball is it? The dogs ball. Whose exhaust is it? It's the rockets exhaust. The apostrophe is used to mark silent letters inbetween the slew of two words. It is -> It's ~ It(i)s.
The apostrophe is used to indicate genitive in English. I think you're thinking of the more subtle double genitive case that you sometimes see in examples like "A brother of the man's" (double genitive) instead of "a brother of the man" (normal genitive). English is strange, but you can indicate the genitive with either the "of" construction, or the apostrophe.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Mr. Roger's Neighborhood yet. One of the best if not the very best childrens' program in the US. It was slow-paced and deliberate like the Danish shows are described, but instead of being crass and letting things play out, he dealt with serious topics in a simple, honest, and caring way. He also encouraged curiosity and investigation and broke gender and ethnic mores way before it was the in thing to do.
I see a lot of fellow Europeans in this thread who prefer local TV series to preachy US cartoons (me too). This is slightly off-topic, do you have an opinion on the old Dutch show Alfred J. Kwak[1]? It was extremely political, but somehow I didn't mind when I was a kid. I wonder if it was simply surreal enough to make up for all the reality that it depicts? Has anyone re-watched this series again with kids, 25 years later?
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