Category Archives: Commentary

As people rush to predict what’s coming next, David Kleeman reflects on Joan Ganz Cooney, and how some things about childhood will never change.

This week marks the introduction of Sago Mini Boxes, a new service to promote play-based learning at home. It’s a major milestone for our team, and one that is rooted in many of the ideas of innovators such as Joan Ganz Cooney. So how did a team best known for preschool apps come to develop a physical box service? The Sago Mini apps are really the outcome of two big ideas which underlie all of our work. The first is…

Back in 2010, I sat in a small office on Sveavägen in Stockholm, Sweden. It was fall, which in Scandinavia means that it is dark all the time, and rainy most of the time. My colleague Emil Ovemar and I were doing some research for a potential project regarding touchscreen devices. When doing work like this, you tend to start broad and look at anything and everything. Then you start whittling things down, building hypotheses, and finding concepts that seem…

This article was originally published on Medium in 2016 when Sesame Workshop joined forces with Reach Capital to invest in emerging companies innovating in education, health, and social welfare for children, and appears here with permission. We are honored to partner with Sesame Workshop, one of the world’s most innovative, venerable education organizations for nearly 50 years. Sesame’s experience in children’s media, early childhood development and social-emotional learning is invaluable to our fund and portfolio companies. At Reach, we believe these…

To get people thinking differently about the importance of connecting STEM learning environments, and to increase public engagement in the issue, we need to start talking differently. Empirically tested strategies for how to do this are presented in a free, user-friendly communications toolkit called Wiring Up: Strategies for Talking about Connecting STEM Learning Environments. It was produced by the FrameWorks Institute and based on original research made possible through the Families Learning Across Boundaries (FamLAB) Project as well as the generous…

The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education provided a rationale, initial research base, and blueprint for the Children’s Television Workshop, now known as Sesame Workshop. Joan Ganz Cooney envisioned a program with such broad appeal that it would reach all children, especially those living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Sesame Street has inspired children worldwide with an approach to early learning that has left an indelible imprint on generations. Its academic effectiveness has been documented in hundreds of research studies, in…

In the annals of American philanthropy, the most successful endeavors usually come out of a confluence of vision, expertise, and financial support. This is the case in the development of the world’s most beloved educational television program, Sesame Street. It was Joan Ganz Cooney who came up with the revolutionary idea to harness the power of television for good. Lloyd Morrisett, then vice president of programs at Carnegie Corporation of New York, was an expert in technology and early childhood…

When Joan Ganz Cooney began her study, I don’t think she could have imagined that the path she started down would one day become the longest street in the world. Her 1966 report is much more than a treasured heirloom in the Sesame family. In many ways, it’s our sacred text: the starting point from which a global phenomenon sprang and a material reminder of our purpose and our mission. Seeing massive potential where others saw mere diversion, Joan’s thinking…

In the spring of 1966, Joan Cooney completed her landmark study of television and early education for the Carnegie Corporation. It was entitled The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education. The 1960s created a climate for social change and encouraged people to seek it. Television had become the medium with the greatest reach but offered little of benefit for children and was seen by many as “a vast wasteland.” The country had become sensitized to the problems of early…

You may have heard that television programming in the 1960s was called a “vast wasteland.” by then-FCC Chairman Newton Minow. From the beginning, Lloyd Morrisett and I were both convinced that television – which was capturing the attention of children as nothing else was – did have the power to educate as well as to entertain and we set out to prove it. It was back in 1966 when I wrote my original report, The Potential Uses of Television in…