So, a few months ago we ordered The Best of The Electric Company DVD set. We’ve had the set for a few months, but tonight was the first time we sat down on started watching it. We didn’t get past the first episode but wow…
This was probably the first episode of The Electric Company I’ve watched in more than 25 years. I know the show had cheesy ’70s styles, songs, hair, etc… but I really forgot just how cheesy things were.
Despite the super cheesy feel (like Morgan Freeman wearing an outfit that made him look like Jimmy Hendrix) the boy seemed to enjoy it.
There was a part of me that was a bit concerned about The Boy watching the show, the Electric Company was one of those shows that parents groups said led to shortened attention spans. Not only that but the reality is that the show was targeted at kids older than The Boy. The thing is, when I watched the show I was too young for it too, and at the time, I think most of the lessons were over my head.
But what kept me from pulling the plug, why I decided to let The Boy watch the show is because I thought about what happened a few years later when I was in elementary school learning how to read. As I started learning phonics all of the skits and songs from The Electric Company that I had heard years earlier started to come back to me. They started making sense, and those songs and skits actually helped me learn my phonics. If he starts to pick up those songs I hope that they help him when he learns how to read a few years from now.
I also started to look at the difference between the shows that The Boy watches now compared to what I used to watch as a kid. Overall I think the quality of the shows are better. Unlike Sesame Street and The Electric Company when I was a kid, several of the shows he watches aren’t passive experiences. Several of the shows he watches encourage him to get up and dance or somehow interact with what’s going on.
While I know that The Boy would gladly become a couch potato if we let him, it makes me happy to see him getting up and and singing (in his own way) and dancing to the songs. While television isn’t a substitute parent, it does make me happy to see that he is learning from the shows that he is watching.
Although I can’t quite figure out just what he’s getting from Dirty Jobs, American Chopper, or even Mythbusters….
on 11 Oct 2006 at 7:32 am # The Queen
But did you also notice that while Electric Company was sited as causing shorten attention spans, how LONG each sketch was? I kept thinking WOW, these are so much longer than I remembered them being.
Oh, and “Hey YOU, Guys” — is not heard in the first episode. How weird was that?
Mind you since the show first aired in 1971, this show pre-dates us both. By the time we were watching it, they had a few years to find the “groove”
on 11 Oct 2006 at 8:30 am # michael
I know, I was originally going to title this post “We’re gonna turn it on, We’re gonna bring you the power…” But apostrophies in RSS feeds to display well so I needed another option.
on 14 Oct 2006 at 12:09 pm # Niki
You’re making me feel old. I, of course, WAS old enough to have watched the first episode. And I missed the first episode of Sesame Street by only 23 days. I still don’t get how Sesame Street released “35 years of music” in September of 2003 - someone over there needs to get the Count to check that out. My whole life has been punctuated with their catch phrases - “It’s a word, it’s a plan, it’s Letter Man!” I agree that the shows these days do encourage more activity, but sometimes they are just SO DUMB! I could watch Sesame Street with my kids and still laugh at the pop culture references like Rebel L and Letter B, unlike the moronic Blues Clues songs which get stuck in your head forever!