Sesame Street
	When Sesame Street was aired in November 1969, a new would of children’s programming was developed. The show had an entire new cast of Muppets with a structure that would teach pre-schoolers to recite the alphabet or count to ten.    
“The setting is in a small street in a city where children and furry puppet monsters learn about numbers, the alphabet and other pre-school subjects taught in commercial spots, songs and games (Kenneth Chisholm {kchishol@execulink.com} <http://us.imdb.com/SearchPlotWriters?Kenneth+Chisholm+%7Bkchishol%40execulink.com%7D>).” 
Sesame Street would prove to be one of the most important children’s programs in television history. 
	The Sesame Street production team took great initiative in creating a structure for the shows programming. The producers made a set of goals for Sesame Street, which was the fundamental guideline to the educational process that would be broadcasted. 
“ Symbolic representation: The child can recognize such basic symbols as letters, numbers, and geometric forms and can perform rudimentary operations with these symbols (Fisch 304).” 
This is just one of the guidelines that was established by the team of research expertise. Sesame Street was attempting to create a pre-school classroom in the living room of American’s homes. 
	The show airs usually in the early morning hours, which is convenient for parents that are getting ready for work or for daycare providers to add education and entertainment to their business. The show gives the views what they want to see and hear. Every show beings with the famous jingle, “Sunny days, sweeping the clouds away…” which every child and adult that has been brought up in a Sesame Street age can recognize. 
The show opens by introducing one of the main characters. In the Episode “Dog Days” Big Bird opens the show by asking the children to use their imagination to form an imagination zoo where they make the noises of the appropriate animal. This encourages the children to be creative and use their imagination. The ideal of using your imagination is reinforced with a clip of Elmo and Robert DiNero using their imaginations to turn Robert DiNero into objects such as cabbage. The show continues as it introduces the number of the day, twelve followed by an animation that further reinforces the number twelve. The viewer is then introduced to Telly Moster, Baby Bear, and Big Bird. Telly Moster is saddened by the fact that he has no dog, but when Telly Monster leave, Baby Bear makes a wish that he was a dog. The Dog Fairy comes and turns Baby Bear into a dog to make is friend happy. This clip teaches children how far a good friend would go for his buddy. Other clips are shown that involve the interaction of the child with animation and clips of animals. The letter of the day “R” is presented and reinforced with a rap song sung by Cookie Monster titled “Kick it.” Then words that begin with “R” are recited. The show also incorporates the Spanish language with a clip where Grover shows a dog and repeats “perro,” the Spanish name for dog. Saying that the information is presented and then reinforced with one to two other clips that may contain a jingle, animation, or interaction can summarize the shows format.       
	The show produces short clips that catch the children’s attention and teaches them the basic idea of the alphabet with a simple, but catchy jungle, or teaches the children to count to ten with the help of the comical Count von Count. The shortness of the lesson keeps the short attention span of a pre-schooler allowing for them to keep the child interested in learning. Children’s programming that we see today is nothing like it was thirty years ago. The programming is not on only on Saturday mornings, it is on weekdays now with the intent to capture a larger audience and make the programming more like a classroom schedule. 
	The pedagogical principles that have been embedded into the shows format is heard in the jingles and seen in the animation that teaches children to count or recognize objects. The producers created a goal for every learning idea. When teaching numbers they would refer back to their subset of goals and find that “given a set of symbols, either all letters or all numbers, the child knows whether those symbols are used in reading or counting (Fisch 304),” is one of the goals that has to be reached to teach the child correctly. In the “Dog Days” episode the number twelve is the number of the day. The number is shown to the child viewer many times with the name of the number, twelve, being repeated many times. The process of counting to twelve is also addressed many times. There are at least three short clips that are focusing on the number twelve and how to use it. 
	One might notice that the shows format and air time has changed since it first aired in November 1969, but you might also notice that the role of women Muppets present in the show is still very small. The show lacks women Muppets, however, because the children viewers do not pay attention to the women Muppets and lose interest in the show. The women Muppets that are on the show are quiet reserved characters that are not as fun and exciting as the other male characters. Some characters, like Big Bird, do not show a specific gender, but most pre-schoolers assign a gender to the bird. The show has not changed these arguments of women’s roles in the program because it is the children that want the male characters. But how about making a women puppet that is just as fun and entertaining as the male characters. 
	Sesame Street has no doubt caught the attention of children over the years, but the same arguments that were present at the begging of the show are still present in the contemporary programming of today. The show will continue to show what makes money and if male character make money, then that is what they will sell. The show will not lose its educational purpose by doing this, it will still continue to educate young children about the world that they live in.