[gonzobonzo]

The episode only portrays education before school in a negative light, though. It's message isn't "it's fine to teach kids before they enter school and after they enter school, but you shouldn't badger them." Characters continually say that it's wrong to try to teach kids these things before they enter school, or that if a kid doesn't want to learn them before they enter school parents are wrong to try.

In 1462, look at around 12:30, Elaine is trying to teach Tuesday, who doesn't want to learn, he wants to leave. So Mr. McFeely objects by saying that Tuesday doesn't need to learn them before he goes to school.

Then look at 17:15. Elaine says that Tuesday needs to study, and Aberlin immediately objects saying that he hasn't started school yet. When Elaine says that school is about learning numbers and letters, Aberlin says that that's not true "according to the real teacher." Followed by Mr. Rogers saying that Elaine thinks that everything about school needs to be hard and boring, and that's just not the way it is. But "parents trying to teach you about numbers and letters just want things to be hard and boring" isn't a good message, to say the least.

You're right that Elaine is portrayed as being mean, but that's part of the problem. It feels very much like a negative caricature. No one is saying "here's a good way to teach kids before school," they're all saying "don't be so mean, they don't need to learn these things."

I don't feel so easy about a show teaching very young children that their preferred approach to child rearing is morally correct and other approaches are morally wrong.

(Thanks for a link to the episodes, by the way. 1462 and 1463.)

[esseph]

I think you're taking away a different message from what I did, I watch 1462 and 1463 looking for this section.

The message I got was not "don't learn this stuff before school", the message I took away was that, for a lot of kids watching that show on PBS, especially around the air date of 1979, you were looking at "latchkey kids" plus the incredible struggles of poverty and access to information.

It wasn't "don't learn this", it was "you are not less of a human being because you were born into a family that didn't or couldn't take the time to help teach you these things before you started school". That was the takeaway, for me, and for a lot of the kids I grew up around that weren't privileged.

[gonzobonzo]

But it's not showing that. You could have two kids start school at the same time and say that it's OK that they didn't have different backgrounds. But that's not what they showed - they're showing people who are telling Elaine it's wrong to teach the kids when the kids want to go off and play.

> "you are not less of a human being because you were born into a family that didn't or couldn't take the time to help teach you these things before you started school"

But Elaine does want to teach the kids in this episode. I don't see how this episode would do anything other than encourage fewer parents to try to teach their kids before they go off to school.

[esseph]

"I don't see how this episode would do anything other than encourage fewer parents to try to teach their kids before they go off to school."

You're so far outside the typical audience for this show!

Think more along the lines of poverty with no parents at home, maybe they're both working, or maybe one is incarcerated!

This show sure wasn't put together for young kids of privilege and financial and community support and means - the exactly opposite.