Mister Rogers Is Still Our Friend

I was a theology major in college, with a double-minor in history and philosophy. One of my required philosophy courses was in epistemology, the study of knowledge. For the final paper, our professor asked us to take a trip down memory lane, to recall our earliest memories of learning. Classmates submitted papers on methods of learning to read or learning to count. Studies of the efficacy of various models of early learning. I took a different route: I turned to a hero of mine, a man renowned for his emotional intelligence and his ability to teach children healthy ways of coping with emotions: Fred Rogers, better known, of course, as Mister Rogers.

The family I grew up in was not a happy one and emotional expression was often considered inappropriate. I was not allowed to get angry, even as I had to absorb all of the anger of the house. I could hardly cry without that also being an endless source of trouble. A sign of “weakness” (oh, how I hate that word now!). Often, I was able to channel my emotions into music, but this “trick” worked only for so long. So I grew up struggling to appropriately express emotions. I would bottle so much up, the pressure would build up, and I would explode. And then there would be consequences, often terrible consequences.

That’s why I chose “Mister Rogers,” Fred Rogers, as the subject of my philosophy paper that semester. It was, in part because I knew that it was an unusual and creative approach to the question being asked, but also because a part of me wondered what Fred Rogers would have to say to someone like me.

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I vividly remember the first day that I started researching my project. It was a Saturday afternoon, and I decided that the first thing I needed to do was find as many complete episodes as I could on YouTube, to get a feel for the general flow of the show, the kinds of segments he frequently included. The way he spoke to his television neighbor, the words he used. I needed to experience, as an adult, the connection between the Neighborhood of Make-Believe and the theme of the episode. And, of course, to hear the familiar and soothing songs. I remember, at one point, my mother walked into the room and saw what I was watching. Her tone of voice was the typical sneer…

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