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Irrationality on Kid’s Shows

My son and I watch the television show “Arthur“. It’s based on the series of storybooks by Marc Brown, and is shown in the mornings on PBS. It’s pretty good, as far as kids shows go. It teaches some good morals and emphasizes compassion and understanding, both good traits for people of any age.

On Friday the 13th, though, they showed an episode regarding Superstition. In this episode, the science nerd “Brain” (that’s his name) devises an experiment to conclusively show that superstition is bunk. He does so by walking under a ladder, breaking a mirror, stepping on sidewalk cracks, etc. The usual drills. So good so far.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 8:12 am and is filed under Editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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            [post_content] => My son and I watch the television show "Arthur". It's based on the series of storybooks by Marc Brown, and is shown in the mornings on PBS. It's pretty good, as far as kids shows go.  It teaches some good morals and emphasizes compassion and understanding, both good traits for people of any age.

On Friday the 13th, though, they showed an episode regarding Superstition. In this episode, the science nerd "Brain" (that's his name) devises an experiment to conclusively show that superstition is bunk. He does so by walking under a ladder, breaking a mirror, stepping on sidewalk cracks, etc. The usual drills. So good so far.

But then some really bizarre stuff starts happening to him -- a series of unfortunate events that coincides immediately after he does these unlucky acts. It would be one thing if it was a self-fulfilling prophecy (as unlucky gestures tend to be), where it was merely a confirmation bias of the character NOTICING bad things happening, creating the ILLUSION of an increased frequency. This part was a little sticky -- I chalked it up to creative license and plot development, and let it go.

So the brain character decides he's going to buy into superstition anyways, and so he has the bunny character, Buster, give him a whole gym-bag full of good luck charms. Clovers, horseshoes, the works. Everything but holy water. Brain brings this bag to his next baseball game, gets up at bat, and hits a home run. Afterwards, he finds out that the gym bag contained his mother's gym clothes, NOT his good luck charms. He declares, triumphantly, "This proves my hypothesis! It was all in my head, it wasn't luck after all!" (paraphrased). His friends respond "No, it proves that your mother has some really lucky gym clothes."

Brain responds by saying "Well, if you can't beat em, join em!" and runs after his friends.

Then it ends. That's it. The take-home message is "Well, if all of your peers believe in irrational things, you may as well also, even if you don't agree they make any sense."

I was really disturbed by this, and wrote a letter to the television show. Here is my original letter:

I watch Arthur every morning with my 1-year-old son. I like the show,  and I think my son does too.

We saw the Superstition episode today, and I have to say I was a little displeased. At first, I thought the tele-writers would take the high road and show that superstition *IS* totally bogus, that it's a coping phenomena in our psychology to look for order and purpose where there is none.

But the take home message? "If you can't beat [the superstitious], then join them."

Come on, folks.

I understand that the overarching theme of the show is respect for one  another, and I can dig that. But if I had a friend, no matter how dear to me, who sincerely believed in salt, horseshoes, clovers, mirrors,  etc. I'd probably talk to them about it. (Certainly if they were as  compulsive as Buster is!) Brain's attempts at explaining the logic of proof and epistemology were entertaining; And I thought it was done well. (How much understanding of formal logic can we expect from kids,  right?) But the closing lines, Brain accepting his friends' notions
that his mother's gym clothes must be lucky (a Post Hoc ergo Propter Hoc fallacy), was a very unsatisfactory ending; It sends the message "Hey kids, it's ok to be irrational if everyone else is."

Critical thinking is in short supply these days; We need to encourage it as much as possible, ESPECIALLY in kids!

Aside from this gripe, thanks for your show. :)

Their reply was a verbose non-answer (emphasis mine):

I've received your recent e-mail about Arthur.  I want to thank you for your thoughtful viewing of the series.
Our goal is to provide an educational program that children and their parents can watch, enjoy, and learn from together.

Arthur stories represent the points of view of Arthur and the other children on the show.  We work closely with Marc Brown, author of the Arthur book series, to create characters that act and sound realistic (and are therefore imperfect).
We are also conscience [sic] of the socio-cultural implications of the content aired, especially of that regarding to the targeted age group that Arthur is intended.
We are pleased to see that you are taking an active role in what children watch on television - we wish all adults did.  We regret that you've found some of the content to be inappropriate. I hope that you and your family continue to enjoy watching Arthur together.

Draw from that what you will.

We aren't going to stop watching the show just because of this one thing -- this was an exception to an otherwise great secular show for young kids. But I was rather disappointed with the producers for caving to the whims of the superstitious masses.

What do you think?
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                    [post_content] => My son and I watch the television show "Arthur". It's based on the series of storybooks by Marc Brown, and is shown in the mornings on PBS. It's pretty good, as far as kids shows go.  It teaches some good morals and emphasizes compassion and understanding, both good traits for people of any age.

On Friday the 13th, though, they showed an episode regarding Superstition. In this episode, the science nerd "Brain" (that's his name) devises an experiment to conclusively show that superstition is bunk. He does so by walking under a ladder, breaking a mirror, stepping on sidewalk cracks, etc. The usual drills. So good so far.

But then some really bizarre stuff starts happening to him -- a series of unfortunate events that coincides immediately after he does these unlucky acts. It would be one thing if it was a self-fulfilling prophecy (as unlucky gestures tend to be), where it was merely a confirmation bias of the character NOTICING bad things happening, creating the ILLUSION of an increased frequency. This part was a little sticky -- I chalked it up to creative license and plot development, and let it go.

So the brain character decides he's going to buy into superstition anyways, and so he has the bunny character, Buster, give him a whole gym-bag full of good luck charms. Clovers, horseshoes, the works. Everything but holy water. Brain brings this bag to his next baseball game, gets up at bat, and hits a home run. Afterwards, he finds out that the gym bag contained his mother's gym clothes, NOT his good luck charms. He declares, triumphantly, "This proves my hypothesis! It was all in my head, it wasn't luck after all!" (paraphrased). His friends respond "No, it proves that your mother has some really lucky gym clothes."

Brain responds by saying "Well, if you can't beat em, join em!" and runs after his friends.

Then it ends. That's it. The take-home message is "Well, if all of your peers believe in irrational things, you may as well also, even if you don't agree they make any sense."

I was really disturbed by this, and wrote a letter to the television show. Here is my original letter:

I watch Arthur every morning with my 1-year-old son. I like the show,  and I think my son does too.

We saw the Superstition episode today, and I have to say I was a little displeased. At first, I thought the tele-writers would take the high road and show that superstition *IS* totally bogus, that it's a coping phenomena in our psychology to look for order and purpose where there is none.

But the take home message? "If you can't beat [the superstitious], then join them."

Come on, folks.

I understand that the overarching theme of the show is respect for one  another, and I can dig that. But if I had a friend, no matter how dear to me, who sincerely believed in salt, horseshoes, clovers, mirrors,  etc. I'd probably talk to them about it. (Certainly if they were as  compulsive as Buster is!) Brain's attempts at explaining the logic of proof and epistemology were entertaining; And I thought it was done well. (How much understanding of formal logic can we expect from kids,  right?) But the closing lines, Brain accepting his friends' notions
that his mother's gym clothes must be lucky (a Post Hoc ergo Propter Hoc fallacy), was a very unsatisfactory ending; It sends the message "Hey kids, it's ok to be irrational if everyone else is."

Critical thinking is in short supply these days; We need to encourage it as much as possible, ESPECIALLY in kids!

Aside from this gripe, thanks for your show. :)

Their reply was a verbose non-answer (emphasis mine):

I've received your recent e-mail about Arthur.  I want to thank you for your thoughtful viewing of the series.
Our goal is to provide an educational program that children and their parents can watch, enjoy, and learn from together.

Arthur stories represent the points of view of Arthur and the other children on the show.  We work closely with Marc Brown, author of the Arthur book series, to create characters that act and sound realistic (and are therefore imperfect).
We are also conscience [sic] of the socio-cultural implications of the content aired, especially of that regarding to the targeted age group that Arthur is intended.
We are pleased to see that you are taking an active role in what children watch on television - we wish all adults did.  We regret that you've found some of the content to be inappropriate. I hope that you and your family continue to enjoy watching Arthur together.

Draw from that what you will.

We aren't going to stop watching the show just because of this one thing -- this was an exception to an otherwise great secular show for young kids. But I was rather disappointed with the producers for caving to the whims of the superstitious masses.

What do you think?
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