Is that the message we really want Sesame Street (or any other show or elsewhere in our society for that matter) to send to our Deaf children? To hearing kids? To hearing adult audiences who may happen to watch Sesame Street?

Again, “uncaptioned, unvoiced” signed conversations don’t reflect “equal communication access.” It reflects Sesame Street’s (and the hearing society at large) attitude that anything signed is not worth listening to.

The other day I saw Shanny Mow on Sesame Street. I didn’t see the whole episode, but I caught the last 10 minutes of the show and in that 10 minutes, Shanny Mow and other actors taught a female Elmo-like pink puppet to sign “dance”, and she was talking during the lesson, but nobody was telling Shanny what she was saying. This is the kind of so-called “magical communication” I’m talking about here.

Sesame Workshop says:
“If you think your favorite soap opera is packed with romantic drama, listen to this: Sesame Street’s writers once considered having Bob and Linda marry. They figured since Gordon and Susan and Maria and Luis had already walked down the aisle, why not? According to Bob McGrath the writers sprinkled in references to the pairing many times throughout the years. A famous scene had Barbara Walters asking Bob why he was in such a rush to meet Linda. His answer? To play checkers, of course! Ultimately, however, Bob decided that he liked being a bachelor.”

Please. Those deaf kids do NOT have equal communication access on Sesame Street!

Look at Sesame Street again…NO hearing person on Sesame Street signs. No puppet signs.

Somehow these deaf kids are always magically understood, and somehow communication is achieved despite the obvious imbalance in communication between the deaf participants (kids, Linda Bove, etc) and hearing participants (actors, puppets, etc).

You need to re-evaluate what “equal communication access” means. It’s not just captions. You should also be looking at how PEOPLE and puppets communicate to each other on Sesame Street. What they are doing is an illusion of magically ‘equal’ communication that wouldn’t exist in real life.

Delivered on the 1st of May, 1969. (sorry for the copy-pasta but it still brings a tear to me eyes every time I read it.)

Senator Pastore: Alright Rogers, you’ve got the floor.

Mr. Rogers: Senator Pastore, this is a philosophical statement and would take about ten minutes to read, so I’ll not do that. One of the first things that a child learns in a healthy family is trust, and I trust what you have said that you will read this. It’s very important to me. I care deeply about children.

Senator Pastore: Will it make you happy if you read it?

Mr. Rogers: I’d just like to talk about it, if it’s all right. My first children’s program was on WQED fifteen years ago, and its budget was $30. Now, with the help of the Sears-Roebuck Foundation and National Educational Television, as well as all of the affiliated stations–each station pays to show our program. It’s a unique kind of funding in educational television. With this help, now our program has a budget of $6000. It may sound like quite a difference, but $6000 pays for less than two minutes of cartoons. Two minutes of animated, what I sometimes say, bombardment. I’m very much concerned, as I know you are, about what’s being delivered to our children in this country. And I’ve worked in the field of child development for six years now, trying to understand the inner needs of children. We deal with such things as — as the inner drama of childhood. We don’t have to bop somebody over the head to…make drama on the screen. We deal with such things as getting a haircut, or the feelings about brothers and sisters, and the kind of anger that arises in simple family situations. And we speak to it constructively.

Senator Pastore: How long of a program is it?

Mr. Rogers: It’s a half hour every day. Most channels schedule it in the noontime as well as in the evening. WETA here has scheduled it in the late afternoon.

Senator Pastore: Could we get a copy of this so that we can see it? Maybe not today, but I’d like to see the program.

Mr. Rogers: I’d like very much for you to see it.

Senator Pastore: I’d like to see the program itself, or any one of them.

Mr. Rogers: We made a hundred programs for EEN, the Eastern Educational Network, and then when the money ran out, people in Boston and Pittsburgh and Chicago all came to the fore and said we’ve got to have more of this neighborhood expression of care. And this is what — This is what I give. I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique. I end the program by saying, “You’ve made this day a special day, by just your being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you, and I like you, just the way you are.” And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health. I think that it’s much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger–much more dramatic than showing something of gunfire. I’m constantly concerned about what our children are seeing, and for 15 years I have tried in this country and Canada, to present what I feel is a meaningful expression of care.

Senator Pastore: Do you narrate it?

Mr. Rogers: I’m the host, yes. And I do all the puppets and I write all the music, and I write all the scripts –

Senator Pastore: Well, I’m supposed to be a pretty tough guy, and this is the first time I’ve had goose bumps for the last two days.

Mr. Rogers: Well, I’m grateful, not only for your goose bumps, but for your interest in — in our kind of communication. Could I tell you the words of one of the songs, which I feel is very important?

Senator Pastore: Yes.

Mr. Rogers: This has to do with that good feeling of control which I feel that children need to know is there. And it starts out, “What do you do with the mad that you feel?” And that first line came straight from a child. I work with children doing puppets in — in very personal communication with small groups:

“What do you do with the mad that you feel? When you feel so mad you could bite. When the whole wide world seems oh so wrong, and nothing you do seems very right. What do you do? Do you punch a bag? Do you pound some clay or some dough? Do you round up friends for a game of tag or see how fast you go? It’s great to be able to stop when you’ve planned the thing that’s wrong. And be able to do something else instead — and think this song –

‘I can stop when I want to. Can stop when I wish. Can stop, stop, stop anytime…. And what a good feeling to feel like this! And know that the feeling is really mine. Know that there’s something deep inside that helps us become what we can. For a girl can be someday a lady, and a boy can be someday a man.’”

Senator Pastore: I think it’s wonderful. I think it’s wonderful. Looks like you just earned the 20 million dollars.

I agree with you that spell-check is beneficial to everyone, not only Deaf/HOH people. Just because I can hear, doesn’t mean I always know or remember how to spell some words correctly, and of course I make the occasional typo that I don’t catch - I utilize spell-check features regularly.

BUT, you are referring to one small statement that could have been worded better, that is found on ANOTHER blog, which was NOT even written by the author of THIS post. So I do not understand why you are trying to connect the two.

And this last comment you’ve made doesn’t have anything to do with this post either? You’re confusing me.

The whole purpose of the Equal Communication Access contest is to get more people involved, to pull people together (not divide them further) to work together for the common good in supporting the Equal Communication Access Campaign and “spreading the word”.

We want these messages to get out into the hearing community, to generate awareness, as the average hearing person who has no experience with Deaf/HOH people may not understand just what Equal Communication Access is and why it is so important.

If you don’t want to discuss and support ECA, then that is your choice. But if you do, then why not comment on that subject here? Or better yet, as suggested above, why not submit your own blog entry to the contest?