Thanks to Sesame: Bringing back the acquisition of knowledge to education Israel today

On days when a visit to a movie theater involves a slight anxiety in the lower abdomen, and every moment of pleasure threatens to be offset by the worry raised by a suspicious cough on the outskirts of the hall, the march to the viewing complexes becomes a complicated system of risk management.

It is difficult to maintain health in the world of culture, it is no less difficult to live without it.

The dilemma is solved only when the screen arrives at a film of proven and thought-provoking value that illuminates, if anything, the mental darkness that surrounds us recently.

At the Haifa Film Festival, quite a few such works are screened.

The documentary "Street Gang" is surely one of them.

Despite its menacing name, the film is dedicated to a revisited street that is familiar to a significant portion of the world’s children. "Sesame Street", is "Sesame Street", is an integral part of the cultural world of many, children and adults alike. The television series, which hit screens in 1969, is already celebrating its 52nd season in the United States. Children in their 60s watch it today with grandchildren on their knees. Very few popular works have managed to survive and succeed in changing times. "Sesame Street" Has succeeded, and the reason for its success is very simple: the view of human knowledge as a valuable element that exists everywhere and at all times.

When TV woman Joan Ganz Connie decided to produce the series, more than half a century ago, she was driven by the power of clear educational motivation. With bridal eyes she saw the many hours children spend, even in her own home, in front of the screen, consuming programs consisting of empty artistic carbs. The realization that there is no contradiction between entertainment and quality, and that the television platform can be used for the benefit of imparting knowledge in every possible field, has led it to pave the way. In each program the tenants and viewers became richer with more insight and a body of knowledge. Ernie and Brett, who later immigrated to Israel and passed their name on to Eric and Benz, taught us math, biology, languages ​​and psychology. Courtesy of their creator, Jim Hanson, they taught us one more, much more important thing: that acquiring knowledge is not a boring or tedious thing, that a TV show can provide sheer pleasure not in spite of its educational value, but mainly because of it.

Precisely because of this, watching Israel in "Street Gang" or in recent seasons of the American Sesame Street is deeply frustrating. Our connection between education and the acquisition of knowledge is becoming loose. While the series is one of the crown jewels on local television in the United States, Israeli educational television has been pushed to the margins and is in the process of significant evaporation. For facts and not values, "he did not know that 50 years later the facts in education would lose their birthright.

Values ​​are a changing thing, easy to design and easy to manipulate.

Knowledge, on the other hand, is a constant factor.

This is why populist vain attempts to market values ​​do not succeed over time, while works that seek to instill knowledge live forever.

Those who do not believe, are welcome to ask, and give a greeting to the carob and cookie monster.