PBS Kids Go! and the Value of Edutainment
I was a kid who absolutely loved learning. The “gifted kid” teacher’s pet who knew advanced math and wanted to be a neuroscientist when they grew up. I owned so many science books, taking great pride in my intellectual maturity. This affinity goes back to before I could read too, where I soaked up everything I could from television. I watched a lot of TV too; it was the next best thing from the Nintendo DS I never had.
Until the age of eight, I wasn’t allowed to watch regular family friendly TV like Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, or Cartoon Network. At the same time, I quickly grew out of children’s programming like Dora the Explorer. Such media was for babies, whereas I was an esteemed, mature six year old. Having these constraints, my go to TV for the majority of my early years was PBS Kids Go!. Created in 2004, PBS Kids Go! was a programming block on PBS which targeted slightly older school aged children. Considering how much I adored their content, it makes sense that I was in the exact demographic network developers were trying to reach. A few years back, PBS decided to discontinue PBS Kids Go!, although it seems like much of the same aged-up, edutainment content still remains on the combined PBS Kids block.
My favorite shows included:
FETCH! With Ruff Ruffman: A game show in which an animated dog named Ruff Ruffman sends a group of live-action tweens through a series of mysterious, daring, and intellectual challenges.
Cyberchase: A cartoon featuring three kids- Inez, Jacki, and Matt- and a digital robot bird voiced by Gilbert Gottfried as they try to stop the evil Hacker from taking over Cyberspace. Of course it focuses on every child’s favorite thing in the entire world: math.
The Electric Company: A 2009 reboot of the 1970s show of the same name. It follows a group of cool, hip young adults who protect their urban neighborhood from the “Pranksters”, and they each have special abilities related to reading and writing.
I religiously consumed edutainment. What better way to spend my limited screen time than by learning? In my ongoing efforts to be taken seriously by adults, I appreciated how these shows weren’t patronizing either. They took both the content and the audience seriously, further enhancing things with interesting and appealing characters, stories, and styles. They didn’t try to hide that there was some lesson about science, math, or language, even touching upon subjects not typically taught in elementary school.
That’s why I enjoyed learning about the world through PBS Kids Go! cartoons. They taught me things that felt new and different from my class material, while also being more enjoyable. Granted, I don’t remember all the facts and information these shows explained to me years ago, but they for sure gave me a leg up in school. Even in my senior year AP Computer Science class, I had a much easier time understanding boolean logic after remembering an episode of Cyberchase explaining Venn Diagrams in math.
Unfortunately, most edutainment is reserved for kids. Even in elementary classrooms there are more “fun” learning activities: candy math, plays about the Solar System, and Oregon Trail style simulation games. Elementary teachers know that kids won’t engage with the material if it’s just presented in a plain lecture format- so why does that change after fifth grade? Students expect more mature and age appropriate education as they get older, but who said they don’t want it to be fun?
Adult television edutainment does exist. There are a variety of shows from Mythbusters, to Adam Ruins Everything, and even Last Week Tonight which teach viewers about the science and structures that run our society. These shows are fantastic, but are generally kept separate from higher academia. I miss the days of my childhood where entertainment was considered a valid medium for learning. I’m not suggesting that all college level course material should be taught through the TV, but if a cartoon robot bird could explain the basics of set theory better than my actual math teachers, maybe we have to reevaluate the role of fun in school.
Works Cited
Cyberchase. Created by Sanda Sheppard, PBS Kids, 2002.
The Electric Company. PBS Kids, 2009.
Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman. Created by Kate Taylor, PBS Kids , 2006.
“Of All the Luck.” Cyberchase, season 1, episode 12, PBS Kids, 5 Feb. 2002.
Sefton, Dru. “PBS Kids Go! Goes Bye-Bye as Colorful Branding Revamp Rolls out to Stations.” Current, 7 Aug. 2013, current.org/2013/08/pbs-kids-go-goes-bye-bye-as-colorful-branding-revamp-rolls-out-to-stations/.
