A Teachable Moment on Arthur?

I watched the recent Arthur cartoon where his teacher, Mr. Rathburn “marries” his boyfriend.

The state of Alabama refused to show it on their public television, repeating a practice they did in 2005 when they refused to air another content-questionable episode.

On Good Morning America, Robin Roberts commented that a real teachable moment was missed when Alabama pulled the show.

I had to think about this one a little bit.

Ready to Learn Television is a federal program that funds shows on PBS, like Arthur.  The purpose of the Ready to Learn initiative is to “promote early learning and school readiness, with a particular interest in reaching low-income children.”

From what I can see, this funding agreement (which is managed by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement) is primarily centered around educational readiness.

 

Ready to Learn “enables local public television stations nationwide to help close the achievement gap for the nation’s youngest learners.”

It is a competitive grant that “helps support the creation of highly researched children’s educational media content and community outreach targeted to help low-income learners ages 2-8 succeed in school. The content introduces children to key science, literacy and math concepts early to prepare them for school while boosting their long-term educational opportunities.

That’s what they are supposed to be doing with their funding.

The controversy about the same-sex "wedding" in the Arthur cartoon brings up some questions I suspect some people might ask:

--If same-sex couples are a reality, should television, and this cartoon in particular, reflect that?  

--Should such a show be endorsed or even promoted?

--Is this a misuse of federal grant money?

--Should parents be able to trust a familiar cartoon to not insert content unrelated to the show’s prescribed goals?  

--Whose responsibility is it to teach our children values?  

I think Roberts’ comment, in reverse, brings up the question—what was actually being taught?  

Here are a few things I noted about the show as I watched it:

This episode is 100% agenda driven.  There’s no getting around it—personal happiness is the only thing that matters when finding a mate and the normalization of same-sex unions is the goal.  

The hope is that one day same-sex unions will be so commonplace, nobody will even notice, or care, as the show idealized.  No one was surprised or even mentioned the fact that the wedding involved two men. 

Ho Hum was clearly the hoped-for response.

The other thing this episode lays out is the idea that as long as you marry whoever makes you happy, nothing else matters. But the reality is, there is a great deal more to marriage than YOU and YOUR happiness.  

Me-centered marriages rarely work.

Don’t get me wrong, happiness is important, especially in marriage. In fact, God wants all of us to be eternally happy, so his design leads us to that.

But I digress.

A few things have occurred to me:

They have the right to produce the show.

Television stations have the right to refuse to show it.

Parents have the right to turn it off.

I do think we should be able to expect a trusted show not to throw in unexpected content that is agenda-driven.

It doesn’t sound to me like the cartoon stayed true to the intended use of the federal grant money they have been given.

As the struggle to redefine marriage outside the bounds of the framework in which God created it to exist, i. e., marriage between a man and a woman, continues, it is necessary to point out that this is the only arrangement that holds up under scrutiny.  

It cannot be denied that we are physically made in the image of God to share in the important work of procreation within the marital union of a husband and wife. 

Returning to the idea of happiness, then, it is important to realize that we may be called to lay aside our personal desire and immediate happiness if it is in direct conflict with the Divine will, even when it causes us tremendous personal sacrifice.  

A healthy way to look at this is that our sacrifice may be joined with that of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, which, as it turns out, leads to our true and final, ultimate happiness.

God created this world and he has not left it for us to redesign.

I think these are important things to think about.

Janet Cassidy

Janetcassidy.blogspot.com

Janetcassidy.blubrry.net