What Can Technologists Learn from Sesame Street? With Dr. Rosemarie Truglio

What happens when creators consider what lifelong human
development looks like in terms of the tools we make? And what
philosophies from Sesame Street can inform how to steward
the power of AI and social media to influence minds in
thoughtful, humane directions?


When the first episode of Sesame Street aired on PBS in
1969, it was unlike anything that had been on television before -
a collaboration between educators, child psychologists, comedy
writers and puppeteers - all working together to do something
that had never been done before: create educational content for
children on television. 


Fast-forward to the present: could we switch gears to reprogram
today’s digital tools to   humanely educate the next
generation? 


That’s the question Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin explore with
Dr. Rosemarie Truglio, the Senior Vice President of Curriculum
and Content for the Sesame Workshop, the non-profit behind
Sesame Street. 


RECOMMENDED MEDIA 


Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street


This documentary offers a rare window into the early days of
Sesame Street, revealing the creators, artists, writers
and educators who together established one of the most
influential and enduring children’s programs in television
history

Sesame Street: Ready for School!: A Parent's Guide to Playful
Learning for Children Ages 2 to 5 by Dr. Rosemarie Truglio


Rosemarie shares all the research-based, curriculum-directed
school readiness skills that have made Sesame Street the
preeminent children's TV program


G Is for Growing: Thirty Years of Research on Children and
Sesame Street co-edited by Shalom Fisch and Rosemarie Truglio


This volume serves as a marker of the significant role that
Sesame Street plays in the education and socialization of
young children


The Democratic Surround by Fred Turner


In this prequel to his celebrated book From Counterculture to
Cyberculture, Turner rewrites the history of postwar America,
showing how in the 1940s and 1950s American liberalism offered a
far more radical social vision than we now remember


Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman


Neil Postman’s groundbreaking book about the damaging effects of
television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed
as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century


Sesame Workshop Identity Matters Study


Explore parents’ and educators’ perceptions of children’s social
identity development


Effects of Sesame Street: A meta-analysis of children's
learning in 15 countries


Commissioned by Sesame Workshop, the study was led by University
of Wisconsin researchers Marie-Louise Mares and Zhongdang Pan


U.S. Parents & Teachers See an Unkind World for Their
Children, New Sesame Survey Shows


According to the survey titled, “K is for Kind: A National Survey
On Kindness and Kids,” parents and teachers in the United States
worry that their children are living in an unkind world


RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES


Are the Kids Alright? With Jonathan Haidt


The Three Rules of Humane Tech


When Media Was for You and Me with Fred Turner


 


Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for
Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_