February 4, 2012
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Winter 1996 Vol. 5 No. 4
E-mail to the Neighborhood
By Fred Rogers
Fred
Rogers was born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in 1928, and began his television
career in 1951 at NBC. He later became program director for the newly founded
WQED-TV in Pittsburgh, the first community-supported television station in
the U.S. After Rogers was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1962, with
a special charge to serve children and their families through television,
he completed his master's degree in child development from the University
of Pittsburgh, then went on to develop the award-winning PBS series “Mister
Rogers' Neighborhood.” The longest running program in public television,
it reaches eight million households and childcare settings each week. The
program has won nearly every children's programming award, including two Emmys
for Rogers as performer and writer, and two Peabodies. In 1966, when WGBH-TV
in Boston held an open house featuring Fred Rogers, it made provisions for
500 fans: 10,000 showed up—more people than attended that afternoon's
Red Sox game! Twenty-five years later, when Rogers spoke at the graduation
ceremony at Boston University, the entire stadium erupted into cheers and
sang, “It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” His is a deceptively
simple message, about self-esteem and caring—but his truths are timeless
and real.
Dear Mister Rogers,
I'm nervous about learning cursive. I'm worried that I won't do it right.
Katie
Katie sent us that message by e-mail at the end of the summer after she saw the “Ask Mister Rogers” feature on PBS Online (http://www.pbs.org). This online service was a two-week experiment that PBS offered so children and families could “talk with” Mister Rogers about their concerns at the start of school.
E-mail and Mister Rogers? Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a pen and pencil person. I write our Neighborhood scripts in long-hand on yellow legal pads and correspond with friends on notecards. Sure, I drive a car and use a microwave to heat up my cranberry juice each morning, but I've always been pretty much anti-machine. Maybe that's because I don't understand machines all that well. I'm an artist…a musician.
But lately I've become intrigued by e-mail.
What Do You Think about School?
When this online project was suggested, we decided to take advantage of it. It tied in well with our “School” week of “Mister Rogers' Neighborhood” programs which was being broadcast on PBS around that time. On those programs, we visit classrooms and meet with teachers, ride on a school bus, and help children deal with some of their fears and feelings about school. We were looking forward to the online service giving us a way to expand and personalize the communication that we were offering on those programs.
There was Katie, sitting at her family's computer, comfortable enough with it that she wanted (and was able) to use this technology to be our “electronic neighbor.” But I'm sure it was not just the keyboard and the Internet. There was another kind of comfortableness here. Something very human…and something that I am deeply grateful for: her trust. She trusted that I would care about something that concerned her.
Trust has always been an essential part of “Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.” That's why we generally don't refer to our television work as a program or as a show, but as a “television visit.” Our opening song, “Won't You Be My Neighbor?” is an invitation to be in relationship, to be close. Through our mail, we've seen real evidence that a relationship is possible through television…and through the computer.
But that trust doesn't happen by accident. And there are no shortcuts. I'm firmly convinced that it's through relationships that we grow best—and learn best. That's why, from the start, we wanted the Neighborhood to have the atmosphere of a “visit” between me and our television neighbors.
Trust in the Neighborhood
Trust grows out of that caring atmosphere. It grows out of the predictable structure of our program and what we do within that structure—the many ways we've shown that we care about all sorts of feelings. A phrase that's at the core of our Neighborhood is: Anything human is mentionable…and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. On our television visits, we've talked about all sorts of human concerns—feeling proud when you've worked hard at something and were able to do it well…sad when someone you care about moves away or a pet dies…scared of an injection at the clinic…angry when something you made didn't turn out the way you hoped.
As you might imagine, we get letters in our regular mail with the kind of trust I heard in Katie's message, and I'm often touched by what people have written to us. But this was e-mail. It was a new medium for us. An experiment. And a challenge. At first, it seemed that e-mail was kind of anonymous, somehow less personal than our other mail from our viewers. Maybe because e-mail gives us fewer clues with which to know that person—no handwriting, no sense of who that person is from the paper chosen or from the way the envelope is addressed. But the people writing those e-mail messages are very human…and they have come to trust that I am also and that I care about their humanness. That's what keeps drawing me into it.
Katie felt she could trust me to care about something that concerned her. And of course I did. Here's our response.
Dear Katie,
It meant a lot to me that you wanted to let me know something about school
that worries you. It's understandable that you're afraid about learning how
to write cursive. Sometimes it is hard to learn new things and new ways.
Most people make mistakes when they're learning new things. It's certainly that way for me. On one of our Neighborhood programs, we recently had a Chinese calligrapher, Dr. Wang, who helped me learn some Chinese writing, and I know how hard it was for me to try to do it right.
Just your wanting to do well is important, Katie, and most teachers appreciate that. If you're having trouble with writing cursive or learning something else new, I hope you'll talk with your teacher and with the people in your family about that.
There can be angry and frustrating and sad times when you're having trouble with something you want to do well. I have always believed that talking about how we feel is “important talk.” And I hope you know that there are many people in your family and at school who care about you and your feelings.
All of us here in the Neighborhood send our best wishes to you for this coming school year.
Your television friend,
Mister Rogers
‘I'm Scared of Going to School’
In
those two weeks we received a number of e-mail messages about school worries.
Katie's brother James, a middle school student, wrote that he was nervous
about being tardy. Another child sent us one sentence, “I'm scared of
going to school.” An older brother wanted to know how to help his sister
who was repeating first grade—what if her old classmates pick on her?
Someone else said, “What should I do when my locker is on the bottom
and the people with the top lockers step on me at the end of the day?”
Other messages were simply kind and thoughtful “hellos” to us “neighbors.”
The concerns that were raised by children confirmed for me once again that, like everything else, education is involved with feelings. Children are not just brains into which we pour facts, then at test time, out come the facts. They come to their learning with a wide range of feelings: scared that they won't be able to learn what's being taught, frustrated that they didn't understand and afraid to ask, worried about some argument between parents that happened during breakfast, rejected by their best friend who didn't choose them to sit with at lunchtime; and, hopefully, proud of something they did well.
To be really effective in helping children learn, the new technology must begin with an understanding of what children bring to it—not just their brains.
Some Cautions
These days more and more children are being exposed to fancier and fancier machinery. Many schools are using computers in their children's daily routines. No matter how helpful they are as tools (and of course they can be very helpful tools), they don't begin to compare in significance to the teacher-child relationship which is human and mutual. A computer can help you learn to spell HUG, but it can never know the risk or the joy of actually giving or receiving one.
Before a child learns to match the word CAT with a picture of a cat on the screen, I would rather see that child be in the presence of someone who cares about cats and children, someone who can help him or her come to respect cats for their grace and independence, grow to know that cats have feelings, that they need food and water, that each one is different, that they get tired, and they sleep, and they need to be loved.
There are some things children can do with computers in school that help them express their feelings or communicate with others about something that concerns them. But more often than not, computers are used as instruments for drill and practice. Right answer or wrong answer. Certain things in this world are cut and dry like that. But most are not. When a student gets a “wrong” answer, shouldn't a caring teacher be listening, trying to understand why? Sometimes it's a child's humanness that allows him or her to see things a new way that's somewhere between right and wrong.
Making Things Happen
Of course, one of the things I like about the computer is its ability to be interactive. A child is able to make things happen on the screen. One of my hopes in the Neighborhood programs is to encourage imaginative play. Anything that helps a child imagine things can be used for good. Imagining comes first, then the decision about “doing.” We have to help give children tools, building blocks for their active play. And the computer is one of these building blocks. No computer will ever take the place of wooden toys or building blocks. But that doesn't mean they have to be mutually exclusive.
Also, I don't believe that any educational gimmicks can be very helpful in teaching children who are burdened with overwhelming anxieties. For these children, learning readiness really means the establishment or re-establishment of trust. Not machine to needy student, but caring teacher to needy student.
A few friends (including my seven-year-old grandson) pulled me into e-mail. It's that human connection that made me take the leap from pen and paper, envelope and stamp to e-mail. But I have found it to be a long, frustrating road. All too often the computer won't let me do what I want. It gets stuck and leaves me sitting there staring at a screen that won't listen to what I need.
If I'm drawing or writing with a pencil or pen, I can make things happen the way I want. It may not be as “perfect” as something I might be able to do on the computer, but I'm in control. When the computer is stuck, I'm helpless.
‘What Do You Do with the Mad that You Feel?’
If I make a mistake, what I create might be even more imaginative or exciting. But this system won't let me make mistakes. It's rigid. Most machines are. They do what they're programmed to do, and they can't deviate one bit. Not at all like human beings. We're flexible, we interpret, we allow for differences. Often we grow and learn new things because of that flexibility, that new interpretation, that openness to differences.
Someone in the office saw me struggling and grimacing because the screen wasn't giving me what I was asking. That person suggested that maybe at times like that, the computer could play our song, “What Do You Do with the Mad That You Feel?”
I really do worry that the new technology adds frustration, a sense of being helpless, and powerless to a teacher's day and to a student's day. More important, is it possible that while school districts are adding expensive electronic equipment into a child's school day, at the same time many are taking away music and art classes? Machines may be essential to working. Music and art are essential to living!!!
Expressing Feelings
When children become comfortable with making music and making pictures or sculptures, they often find that those become important expressions of their feelings. Children learn that there are many things they can do when they're angry—other than hurting themselves or other people. They can paint with broad strokes or pound on clay. They can beat on drums or play angry sounding melodies on the cello. If the computer is adding more frustration into education, let's make sure we add more ways for students (and teachers) to express that frustration, anger, and powerlessness in creative healthy ways.
Our e-mail neighbor, Katie, and her worries about writing cursive were real. And those worries were an important part of what she would be bringing into the classroom at the start of school. Let's not just give her a computer that has a cursive font—so she won't have to worry about that any more! Let's make sure that we help her deal with her worries—with a teacher who cares about her feelings, who expects and accepts mistakes. Along with the gift of comfortableness with the new technology that will undoubtedly help Katie in her future, let's make sure that teacher gives all the Katies (and Kevins) in her classroom the gift of comfortableness with who they are becoming as human beings.
The main question is not so much how the new technology can help students learn. Rather, it's what will they do with what they learn? Will they use their knowledge to build…or will they use it to destroy? Only real human beings can help them know the difference—regardless of the medium or the technology used for communication.
Everywhere he goes, young men and women who grew up watching ‘Mister Rogers' Neighborhood’ every day, and older ones whose kids did, insist on stopping him and telling him how much he's meant to them, how he's changed their lives.”
—TV Guide, October 26, 1996
| Dear Mister Rogers, Does It Ever Rain in Your Neighborhood?: Letters to Mister Rogers, by Fred Rogers (Penguin Books, 1996) is available through local bookstores. |