The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education

In 1966, Joan Ganz Cooney was a documentary producer at Channel 13 when Lloyd Morrisett, then Vice President at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, offered her an opportunity that would change the landscape of children’s media forever. The Carnegie Corporation provided funding for a three-month study during which Joan traveled the country to interview early learning experts and children’s television producers and filmmakers.

Her report, The Potential Uses of Television for Preschool Education, became the blueprint for Sesame Street and Children’s Television Workshop, and today it drives our efforts at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, a research and innovation lab she founded in 2007. We are grateful to Joan and Lloyd for their vision and leadership.

We are pleased to share Joan Ganz Cooney’s original, unedited report and hope you will find both food for thought and inspiration within these pages.

With special thanks to the Carnegie Corporation of New York

• A Letter from Joan Ganz Cooney
• A Timely Experiment in Television and Education by Lloyd Morrissett
• Carrying a Vision Forward by Jeffrey D. Dunn
• The Power of an Idea by Vartan Gregorian
• A Blueprint for the Future by Michael Preston and Michael Levine
• The Report That Started It All