Article June 23, 2003 Issue

Mister Rogers

By Carol Zaleski

The Christian Century

IN THE TWO DECADES since MTV captured the restless souls and short attention spans of our youth, it has become increasingly evident that teaching and learning require new strategies. The classroom lecture is dead, reading is an endangered art, and memorization belongs next to exorcism in the dustbin of discarded teaching arts. To engage the interest of young people, we have to dazzle them with quick-cutting graphics in an environment that is interactive, fastchanging, and stylishly fragmented.

The above statements, commonplace as they are, are all false. How do we know they are false? Because of Mister Rogers, the saintly Presbyterian minister and TV presence whose death on February 27 felt to millions like the loss of a friend. a teacher, or even a father. Mister Rogers won his devoted audience by breaking the rules of entertainment technology: He bestowed attention instead of grabbing it.

From its debut in 1966 until filming stopped in 2000, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood steadfastly refused to evolve. It kept the steady camera work, the meager props, and the familiar performers who looked more like local talent than TV stars. But it would be a mistake to think that the shows were artless. There was high art in the way they conducted the viewer by trolley from the toy world of the village, to the inner world of the living room, to the outer world of factories and offices, to the otherworld of the Neighborhood of MakeBelieve, and safely home again.

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