It’s a Beautiful (and Creative) Day In the Neighborhood: Mister Rogers and His Legacy

Mister Rogers touched the lives of thousands of children across America and even the lives of some children reading this blog post right now. While many of us hold fond memories of the beloved television show Mister Roger’s Neighborhood it is easy to overlook the creativity that we didn’t pick up on as kids.

Fred Rogers creativity impacted the realms of education and television. While Fred Rogers never held a degree in early childhood education, he worked closely with some of the best in the field to create the show. This collaboration with experts in the field made the show an extremely effective tool for education. Fred Rogers carefully worded and wrote every script with children in mind. He worked closely with Dr. Margaret McFarland to ensure that his scripts were appropriate for his early learners. His sentences are far from simple phrases to say to children. They are carefully planned out complex ideas encoded in a language that his young viewers can comprehend.

Like I said before Fred Rogers did not graduate college with an early childhood education degree. He graduated with a degree in music composition. His musical pedagogy is similar to his educational pedagogy. He did not want to overly simplify feels for children. This is exemplified when he tried to persuade one of his musicians to play for the show. The musician was concerned about playing simple tunes for a children’s show; he wanted music that was more exciting. Fred assured him that none of the music on the show would be simplified. He wanted to expose children to complex music because children deserve complexity. Children just like adults have complex feelings. Just because a child can’t describe exactly what the music does to them, the can still feel its effects. 

On his most successful show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (yes there were others before that) Fred’s passion was to help children navigate real emotions. When testifying before Congress in 1969 to ask Congress to continue funding PBS, a major part of his speech was about creating drama in children’s television. This relates to Mister Rogers’ motivations. He follows a strict definition of creativity for he saw a problem and created a solution. The problem was that children’s television was violent and brutal. Further, the news of the day depicted destruction and tension in the second half of the 20th century. Fred Rogers wanted to change that. Through his show, he created drama not through fighting but from the very emotions that many children experience. The drama Fred knew was “What do you do with the mad that you feel?” or how to cope with people who are different from you and happier feelings like love and showcasing a person’s talent.

The show reflected what was going on in real life in the world of the children who were watching his show. The fears, the anxieties, the worries of childhood, all mentioned and managed on the show. I can think of no better example of this than when the show tackled the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. I highly encourage you to watch the video. Mister Rogers used his creative capacities to make an analogy for the children. The analogy for death is air coming out of a balloon. From there Daniel Striped Tiger asked what assassination means. Mister Rogers closes out the episode by talking directly to the parents, asking them to help and guide their children through a national moment of crisis. To continue with this trend, in the 1980s Mister Rogers would do a whole week discussing deep themes like death, divorce, and getting lost.

All in all, Fred Rogers revolutionized children’s television. He creatively communicated complex ideas to children. He revolutionized what children’s television could be, changing it from a medium of pure entertainment to a learning environment. Personally, I believe that Fred Rogers was intrinsically motivated from the start of his work in television until the last episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. He was deeply troubled by what children were seeing in the changing world around them. He wanted to give children the tools to cope with growing up. And most importantly he ended every episode letting every child know how important and special he or she is.