Contents
If you want to teach children something, you usually think of lessons: a teacher, a blackboard, an exercise. That is the direct route. It runs into a strong opponent, the attention span of small children, who would rather be entertained. “Sesame Street” did not fight this opponent. It went around it by hiding the lesson where the children were looking anyway – an example of the Indirect Approach.
A dinner and a question
Situation
In 1966, Joan Ganz Cooney, a producer for public television in New York, and her husband Tim host a dinner party. Among the guests is the psychologist Lloyd Morrisett, vice president of the Carnegie Corporation. The conversation turns to a question: can television teach children anything? Soon afterward, Morrisett commissions Cooney to write a study on how television could be used in preschool education.
Link to the principle
The starting point is clear: children, especially from poor families, arrive at school poorly prepared. The direct route would be more preschool teaching, expensive and slow. Cooney and Morrisett ask a different question: where are the children already, and how can you reach them there?
What children really learn
Situation
At the time, people notice that children can sing along to advertising jingles by heart, even ones for beer. If television can teach them jingles, why not the alphabet too? Cooney puts her goal roughly like this: to master the addictive qualities of television and do something good with them.
Link to the principle
This is the core of the indirect approach. Cooney does not attack the opponent’s strength; she uses it. Advertising has already proven that it reaches children. So “Sesame Street” adopts its tools: short segments, quick cuts, repetition, music, humor.
Research behind the entertainment
Situation
The U.S. federal government, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation together provide around $8 million. In 1968, with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation, Cooney founds the Children’s Television Workshop. The Harvard professor Gerald S. Lesser designs the learning objectives, and Edward L. Palmer builds up the research department. The episodes are tested on children: where do they look, and where do they turn away?
Link to the principle
The indirect route is not a random route. Behind the relaxed surface lies a precise plan. The children don’t notice that they are learning. The makers know exactly what they are supposed to learn and check it constantly.
Puppets instead of teachers
Situation
On November 10, 1969, the first episode of “Sesame Street” airs on public television. At its center are Jim Henson’s Muppets. Tests in the summer of 1969 show that children stay attentive during the puppet scenes but not during the street scenes. That is why Muppets such as Big Bird and Oscar are created to play alongside the human cast on the street. Episodes are seemingly “sponsored” by a letter or a number, the way a program might be sponsored by a laundry detergent. Many sketches are written so that parents laugh along too and watch with their children.
Link to the principle
The program sidesteps any resistance a teacher might provoke. No child feels lectured. Children simply watch a puppet playing with letters. And because the parents watch too, the program also works through them.
The effect
Situation
The Educational Testing Service examines the program in two large studies in 1970 and 1971 and finds a positive learning effect. “Sesame Street” becomes one of the most influential children’s programs in the world and is adapted in many countries, including Germany.
Link to the principle
The indirect approach achieved what the direct one could hardly have managed: millions of children learn letters and numbers, voluntarily and with pleasure. The detour through entertainment was in fact the shortest route.
Key takeaways
Key lessons
- Ask where people already are before you try to bring them somewhere else.
- Use the strength that is working against you instead of fighting it.
- An indirect route needs a precise plan behind it.
- Keep checking whether your detour is really getting through.
- Reach those who influence others at the same time.
Summary
Joan Ganz Cooney wanted to bring reading and arithmetic closer to preschool children. Instead of fighting television and advertising, she used their tools: short segments, music, puppets, humor and mock advertising for letters. Behind the entertainment lay precise research. “Sesame Street,” which launched on November 10, 1969, shows the Indirect Approach in education: the detour through what children love anyway reached the goal faster than any lesson.
Sources
- Gerald S. Lesser: Children and Television: Lessons from Sesame Street. New York: Random House 1974.
