The Truth About Educational TV

Almost everything my kids have learned, they’ve learned from one important source: Nickelodeon. On a very regular basis, one of my kids tells me something I’m amazed to hear they know. “Saturn is the Ice Planet,” I learn; or “mammals have fur.” Upon prodding, I invariably find they’ve pick up their factoid from Dora the Explorer or Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Unfortunately, they’ve also learned that monkeys can talk and that baby dragons come from magical eggs. I guess we can live with some confusion in that realm. Heck, maybe monkeys can talk.

I do have a few bones to pick with these shows, however. Number one on my list is Dora. In the course of her various adventures, Dora is constantly doing something like climbing Cupcake Mountain or rowing across Chocolate Syrup Lake. The goal of her adventures is always hot chocolate for Grandma, or ice cream for Boots or birthday cake for Isa. Dora frequently says things like “Mmmm, I love lollipops!”

Listen, Nick Junior, it’s hard enough to get your kids to eat their veggies without their animated icons gallivanting around chasing after sweets. Can’t Dora climb Broccoli Mountain and row across Applesauce Lake? Can’t she chase down oranges to make orange juice with Papi? How about “Mmmm, I love Brussels sprouts?!?!?”

I know the reason here – Nick Junior is free with no commercials. But Nickelodeon for big kids is chock full of commercials for sugary snacks and cereals. So how to get the little kids hooked early? It’s the closest thing to product placement they have for this age group. I predict that it’s only a matter of time before Dora is riding her Kit-Kat barge to Dorito valley to see the great strawberry Pop-Tart monument. You heard it here first.

A few notches up the dial, Disney Junior is clearly staffed by Calvinists. How do I know? Toodles on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Toodles is the one who carries all of the tools for Mickey’s adventures. But how in the world can Tootles possibly know in advance that today, and only today, Mickey is going to need a whistle, a hair dryer and a ladder? Predestination, obviously. Disney is clearly trying to teach our children that their futures are predestined and they should accept their fates. It’s another way for The Man to keep us down and it starts in preschool. Am I the only one who thinks of these things?

Another overarching issue with both Dora and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is what it teaches kids about problem solving. Instead of learning that they should run, screaming, from crocodiles, Dora is teaching my kids that they can get past them if they can only make them giggle or build a rainbow bridge over them. Mickey Mouse is teaching them that to solve their problems they just need magical flying tool kits named Tootles.

At least things have come a long way in the realm of animated storytelling. Dumbo, the Disney movie, was released in 1941. How’s this for a story line? In this little ditty, the main character is ostracized for a physical defect. His mother is imprisoned for defending him and he has to live with his outcast companion. Contemplating their troubles, they become so drunk that they hallucinate and pass out. They are awoken by embarrassingly stereotypical minority characters who tease Dumbo into turning his physical defect to a strength.

Uh, I’ll take giggling crocodiles any day.