{"id":8866,"date":"2010-02-01T11:21:07","date_gmt":"2010-02-01T16:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=8866"},"modified":"2010-02-01T11:21:07","modified_gmt":"2010-02-01T16:21:07","slug":"long-live-fred-rogers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/02\/long-live-fred-rogers\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Live Fred Rogers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mr_rogers\"It\u2019s been seven years since Fred Rogers died, so it\u2019s not exactly a surprise that the era of Mister Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood is waning on television. But the announcement that WMVS-TV (Channel 10) is discontinuing weekday broadcasts <\/a>of \u201cMister Rogers\u201dgives fresh reason to mourn his absence and praise what he did for several decades-worth of very young children.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2001, Marquette University presented Mister Rogers with an honorary degree. I was a \u00a0reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel at the time and I proposed going to Pittsburgh, Mister Rogers\u2019 long-time home and the base for his programs, to do a profile story to run in conjunction with presentation of the degree.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I don\u2019t claim to have been professionally neutral in approaching this. My own children had watched the show almost daily when they were pre-schoolers and, overcoming my initial adult-based reaction, I had come to think the program was a work of genius. (I bet everyone who scoffs at that is not between three and five years old.)<\/p>\n

If you looked at the show through a child\u2019s eyes, it had very substantial content \u2013 over time, Mr. Rogers dealt with issues such as divorce, death, fear, loss, and a wide array of relationship matters. Sometimes very directly (\u201cIt\u2019s such a good feeling to know you\u2019re alive\u201d or \u201cPeople like you just the way you are\u201d) and sometimes through the context of what he did (the gentleness, the way his fantasy characters treated each other, good and bad), his character education messages were healthy, well developed, and (I hope) formative to millions of children.<\/p>\n

I spent an evening watching the real Mister Rogers speak to a group of planetarium officials from around the country who had come to Pittsburgh to see a program his organization, Family Communications, created for teaching children about the planets and stars, and I spent the next morning in a leisurely interview with him. In person, he was \u2013 well, Mister Rogers. He didn\u2019t have a desk in his office, but had a table and some comfortable chairs because that\u2019s how he worked. The office was somewhat cluttered with papers, props, and memorabilia, including his sweater and sneakers and a hand-made wood plaque that hung above where he sat, with the Hebrew word \u201cchesed\u201d on it. I commented on the sign. He said it was a gift, and added that \u201cchesed\u201d means more than just kindness, the usual translation. It\u2019s a whole approach to treating others, he said. He talked at length about what he tried to accomplish in his work and his life both in front of the camera and outside the studio.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was not his style to criticize others, so he drew contrasts between his show and others, particularly \u201cSesame Street,\u201d carefully. He didn\u2019t like the shows where the pacing is so fast, where the action moves from one thing to another every few seconds, where the volume and the frantic pace comes at a child so forcefully.<\/p>\n

He wanted his programs \u2013 which were developed in conjunction with child psychologists \u2013 to appeal to the quieter, more thoughtful side of children. That pace which seems so sluggish to adults was just right for young minds, he thought. In his shows, it was rare for a camera angle to be held only a few seconds. Sometimes they lasted for several minutes, an eternity you\u2019d never see in \u201cSesame Street.\u201d That wasn\u2019t because the production was less sophisticated. In fact, I\u2019d argue the opposite.<\/p>\n

Compared to nine years ago, when I talked to Mister Rogers, so many of the children\u2019s television programs now have, if anything, even more wham-bam pacing, and even less of that gentle voice of someone talking seriously to a young child, right through the television screen. .<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not an expert, but I\u2019d suggest that a lot of kids \u2013 and, ultimately, a lot of adults, a lot of schools, a lot of communities \u2013 would benefit from allowing that pensive, imaginative, gentle side of life to be nourished more. If Mister Rogers is fading down to appearing on local television only at 8:30 a.m. Sundays on Channel 10, maybe that puts the responsibility more on parents to find ways to grow that quiet side of kids, to be the one talking to kids seriously, eye to eye, about what is really on children\u2019s minds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I hope\u00a0parents who grew up on Mister Rogers will act on such thoughts. You don\u2019t need a sweater and some hand puppets to be their Mister Rogers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been seven years since Fred Rogers died, so it\u2019s not exactly a surprise that the era of Mister Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood is waning on television. But the announcement that WMVS-TV (Channel 10) is discontinuing weekday broadcasts of \u201cMister Rogers\u201dgives fresh reason to mourn his absence and praise what he did for several decades-worth of very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-journalism","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}