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If only Margaret Wente could have watched these in her youth…

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We may have discovered where the inclination to spend an entire Sunday at TTC Camp comes from: the public transportation propaganda put out in 1970s by the Jim Henson Hippies at the Children’s Television Workshop. The seed was planted with a magnum opus like this one above — it’s everything I hoped the big city would be (the TTC has delivered on occasional late nights, complete with chorus) and probably why I wished, as a child, I lived in a city with a subway. This one is also a fairly honest (as honest as Muppets can be) version of the subway, mentioning some of the unpleasant moments down below.

Here, Grover learns about the bus.

I’ve repeated her words here a few times, but what Spacing associate editor Anna Bowness says is so true, especially after seeing these clips: “Sesame Street taught us everything we need to know about urbanism.” Indoctrinated us, really.

And another public chorus, this time for the bus. I wonder if Margaret Wente would let children watch this sort of thing today? They might start to think that they don’t have to be poor to ride public transportation.

(Thanks to ganjavih at Urban Toronto for the first subway link)

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7 comments

  1. If there is an idiotic contarian position, Wente will be there first. She reminds me of the old Toronto Sun writer Lubor Zink who was such an anti- communist contarian that after the Soviet sytem had collapsed he suggested that it all might be a huge Soviet hoax to lull the West into complacency before they attacked. Zinks stories started to read like comedy pieces we now see in the Onion.

    Its kind of weird that a bunch of puppets talk more sense than a columnist for a national newspaper.

  2. Classic! I love these videos!

    Sesame Street really did teach us about urbanism, overtly and subtly. The construction of their sets created an ideal image of what a neighbourhood was… they had an intangible feel that I still get when I’m in certain places in our city…

    but this makes me think… who is teaching our children these things today?

    This is also falls into my train of thought as of late… why aren’t urban issues (and women’s studies as well) taught in our elementary schools and high schools?

    It seems that Civil Society activists are mainly preaching to the converted… and the best way for us to make changes in our cities is to begin teaching our children the W5H of urban issues… we may not see the results for many years but it will be worth it in the future

  3. scott> I guess there is a market for her. And she gives me a scapegoat — a face to attach to the front of an anonymous anti-transit population.

    craig> I was struck by the one muppet that said “it’s so hot in here i think i could die” — the kids stuff “in my day” wasn’t watered down. it seemed to treat kids with respect and intelligence. though, it was at the baby boomer’s apex of intelligent activity — been downhill for them since.

  4. While on the topic of things we learned in kindergarten, I’d like to add the book The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton. The book essentially explains urban sprawl in a context kids can understand. The inside cover of the hardcover version has a brief pictoral summary of the story. It took a while to find a hardcover version in a second-hand store, but it’s well worth the it for both the story and the nostalgic trip.

  5. My long-held theory is that the Globe keeps Margaret Wente around as a kind of shadow play to distract attention away from how conservative the rest of the paper is. Because political positions like “left,” “centre,” and “right” are defined relationally, a ranting extremist like Margaret Wente makes the Globe’s other columnists appear “centrist” and “moderate,” even though most of them are in fact quite conservative.

    But maybe I’m being too conspiratorial…

  6. Margret Wente is really just an old dingbat. I remember reading her silly column almost 2 years ago (self-inflicted punishment) where she lamented about how much she missed the twice weekly garbage pickups and how onerous it was for her and her husband to now have to sort all their garbage, organics and items to be recycled. She wrote that they dreaded garbage day and all of the work that it now entailed. I guess 400 plus semi-trucks per day to a Michigan Landfill is a much better alternative. Her shtick for her weekly article is “counter-point” but this usually requires a departure from logic and reason on her part. I wish that the Globe would jettison her and that other old dinosaur Rex Murphy as soon as possible to free up some space for more intelligent and progressive opinions.