Sunday's edition of Australian newspaper the Age carried this story about how early Sesame Street shows dating from 1974 and earlier are too un-PC for today's child. Apparently Oscar, the Cookie Monster, and even Big Bird are inappropriate role models since they are unhygienic and antisocial, gluttonous, and delusional (remember when Snuffy was imaginary?), respectively, and therefore unfit for children to watch because, you know, children are little simpletons who might think that all these things that all these strange looking puppets do are somehow ok in the real world.

Say what?

There are a couple of assumptions here that I have a problem with:

1. Children are too stupid to distinguish fantasy from reality and will therefore ape any kind of behavior they see on tv.
2. Children must be protected and ushered through their childhoods with as little contact with reality because it might scar them for life.

First of all, children are not that stupid. Even the children of the delusional, gluttonous and socially retarded members of my generation are not that stupid. Their parents, on the other hand, I can't vouch for. But I do know that most children are able to separate make-believe from reality, even when they don't want to, which is why fantasy, particularly for children, has always had a place in human culture. One of the first things we're taught is limits; what we can and can't do is spelled out for us constantly as we grow up. It is important, therefore, to be able to escape into a world with no (or different) limits so that we may exercise our imaginations safe in the knowledge that what we are doing is imaginary.

It seems to me that it isn't children who confuse fantasy with reality but their parents. Witness the rising tide of emotionalism and deliberate Oprah-style renunciation of rationality in exchange for touchy-feely "you're all special because you think you're special" nonsense. Yes, for the price of one DVD, you too can have the secret to untold wealth, happiness, success and good teeth.
Which takes me to the second issue: reality. Reality means the stuff in the real actual world. You know, the one out there, that comes packed with grouches, hedonists, delusional people, and a whole lot more. Given that you're going to have to deal with them anyway, mightn't it be a good idea to have a practice run or two? Or maybe just the exposure so that when you come across someone who doesn't think you're the specialest special little thing in the whole wide world, you can actually cope?

The article also quotes the head of children's programming at the ABC (that's Australian Broadcasting Corporation) as saying that even if a tiny minority of children mimic the behaviors they see on screen, the program in question should not be shown. By that logic, children shouldn't be shown anything at all or allowed to read or speak or play or think because you never know when exposure to something as radical as scarfing down a plate of cookies could do serious damage to their psyches. And if we stunt an entire generation of children in the process, so what? At least they'll all be svelte and clean and utterly unimaginative.

I am not a parent (and things like this make me even more glad that I never need to be), but I certainly was a child and I seem to remember the biggest lessons coming from those two people who had the job of raising me, not the silly images I saw on the telly. I wonder, in all our analysis of the effect of anything and everything on the fragile psyches of children, have we forgotten entirely about the role of parents?