Children and Television: Lessons from Sesame Street
 Children and Television has four sections, "A Proposal", "Planning", "Broadcasting" and "Lessons from Sesame Street". The book also has a preface and an epilogue, written by Lesser, a foreword written by Joan Ganz Cooney, and an introduction by Lloyd Morrisett. Scattered throughout the book are cartoons drawn by children's author Maurice Sendak, who attended the 1968 seminars. Lesser begins his book by describing the origin of Sesame Street and his part in it. He had been studying child development and how its concepts could be used to teach children; since 1961, he studied children's reaction to television and whether or not the medium could be used to teach them. In 1966, he was approached by Cooney and Morrisett to assist them in creating the new show's educational objectives and research goals, and he agreed despite his misgivings about the effectiveness of television as a teaching tool. Sesame Street's audience included any child in the country who wished to watch it, but Lesser reports that the producers' original purpose was to reach the poor children of America. As Lesser stated, "If the series did not work for poor children, the entire project would fail". Lesser is critical of the American public school system, and blames its failure to educate children on the lack of defined goals. When he wrote Television and Children, most American children received no preschool education. The first two chapters of the book detail the reasons for the "experiment" of creating an educational television program like Sesame Street, especially in regards to its audience. "Grownups never seem to understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them". Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince. Gerald Lesser used this quote to begin the second section of Children and Television. He introduced many of his sections and chapters with pertinent quotes. Lesser opens the section on &#34;Planning&#34; by relating how many of the cast and crew were recruited: executive producer David Connell, producer Sam Gibbon, head writer Jon Stone, producer and writer Matt Robinson, Jim Henson, composer Joe Raposo, and actors Loretta Long, Bob McGrath, and Will Lee. Lesser also recounts the process of hiring head researcher Edward L. Palmer and those involved with community outreach. The producers of the new show spent eighteen months planning, something that was unprecedented in children&#39;s television. Lesser extensively describes the series of curriculum seminars that took place at Harvard University and in New York City in the summer of 1968. These chapters outline the philosophy behind Sesame Street. The show&#39;s creators made assumptions about teaching and held the unconventional view that learning can be unintentional and enjoyable. Finally, they decided that although Sesame Street was set in an urban setting, they would avoid depicting more negativity than what was already present in the child&#39;s environment. As Lesser states, &#34;With all its raucousness and slapstick humor, Sesame Street became a sweet show, and its staff maintains that there is nothing wrong in that&#34;. The researchers developed a &#34;Writer&#39;s Notebook&#34; for the show&#39;s writers and producers to serve as a bridge between curriculum goals and script development. Lesser connects the show&#39;s production techniques—including the use of music, humor (especially slapstick humor), and animation—with educational goals. Lesser emphasizes the importance of characters, both human and Muppet, to sustain children&#39;s attention. According to Lesser, Sesame Street combines four elements to sustain attention: Muppets, the cast of live adults and children on the set, animation, and live-action film. According to Lesser, children&#39;s reactions to educational television was ignored; this marked the first time that they were studied to evaluate and improve the show&#39;s content and efficacy. Lesser reports that approximately 10-15 percent of the CTW&#39;s initial two-year budget of $8 million was spent on research. He relates the priorities for pre-production research, which he called &#34;summative evaluation&#34;. Using outside research groups like the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the Workshop wanted to ascertain if watching the show made any difference. They were particularly interested in comparing the show&#39;s effect on children from different socio-economic groups, and if viewing conditions affected its effectiveness. As Lesser states, &#34;This became the first time in television&#39;s 25-year history that child-watching was systematically applied over a sustained period to the design of a televised series for children&#34;. Lesser describes the new methods researcher Edward Palmer created to study the effects Sesame Street had on its young viewers, mostly notably the &#34;distractor&#34;, a slide projector placed next to a television set and adjusted to change slides every eight seconds. The researchers recorded when children in their study moved their attention away from the television to the projector, and the data collected were analyzed. Segments were removed based upon the information gathered. &#34;This was the first time in television&#39;s history that the children themselves would be listened to with care as a television series for them was designed and broadcast&#34;, Lesser states. Lesser begins the section on &#34;Broadcasting&#34; relating the origin of the show&#39;s name. As he puts it, &#34;...We were forced to select the name we all liked the least&#34;. Lesser reports that the show&#39;s premiere on November 10, 1969 was met with a large amount of acclaim and good reviews, but there were some negative reviews and criticism. These he recounts and addresses in great detail in the chapter entitled &#34;Criticism&#34;. He includes the criticism of approximately thirty groups and individuals, demonstrating the essence and range of the critics&#39; arguments. Lesser describes the research about the long-term effect of Sesame Street. He reports that the show was watched by three to four million viewers by the middle of its first season, and breaks down the viewership into categories. According to Lesser, ratings remained consistently high. Lesser also describes the testing used by ETS, which found positive differences after the first three weeks of the show&#39;s first season. They found that the children who watched the most learned the most. The final section of Lesser&#39;s book, &#34;Lessons from Sesame Street&#34;, summarizes what the creators and researchers were attempting to do. As Lesser states, &#34;Here is Sesame Street's main lesson: It deliberately uses television to teach without hiding its educational intentions and yet it attracts a large and devoted audience of young children from all parts of the country&#34;.