Mr. Rogers isn’t what’s wrong with America
There recently have been a few stories about how Mr. Rogers has ruined American culture by telling children that they’re special. That’s right, we better not tell children that they are unique, self-actualized, worthy humans, capable and deserving of receiving love, or else, heaven forbid, they’ll ask for extra credit in college if they have a bad grade.
They claim that Mr. Rogers encourages a culture that ‘coddles’ children, and that this, along with allowing children to call adults by their first names, will lead to the collapse of Western Civilization, or finance professors actually having to talk to their students in a cordial manner, the article wasn’t really specific. I guess putting large economic, social, and behavioral expectations on children is coddling, nevermind medicating them into a stupor, diagnosing them with false mental illnesses and giving them stress disorders.
I think a much more dangerous cultural feature is that we’ve trained children that they cannot control how they perform, that they are born with specific intelligences and abilities that cannot be improved. This is very different than telling children that they are special and worthy. What I remember about Mr. Rogers the most is how he’d often talk about emotional issues that children had, in a calm, very rational way. Worthiness is not the same as entitlement. The difference between entitlement and worthiness is the difference between being selfish and being self-assured. Of being kind, or sucking up. Only a bitter, spiteful person would confuse the virtue with the vice.