Jemima Stratton
High Distinction and Equality and Difference Prize
Hornsby Girls High School
Open Wide, Come Inside… Australia.

Many Australians do not define the 70s and 80s as an epic boom of feminism and multiculturalism, nor the 90s as an era of great technological change. Instead, their recollections are of Humpty, Jemima, Noni, George and the rocket clock. For many, childhood ‘heroes’ were Play School characters and presenters.

The popular ABC children’s programme ‘Play School’ holds a prominent place in living rooms, play groups and the social worlds of young children. Screened twice every weekday at 9:30am and 3:05pm since 1966, the program has potentially contributed much towards the development of children, consequently, the development of a nation. In exploring the programme as part of my PIP I question the role of television as a socialisation agent. The cultivation of viewer’s perceptions of reality and the role Play School plays in perpetuating general beliefs or specific attitudes is part of the reason why it is such an iconic programme for young Australians.

My primary research aims to investigate whether Play School reflects social change or acts as an agent of social change in terms of the attitudes and values presented as social norms in Australia. Similarly I aim to discover whether Play School has challenged or reinforced social norms and expectations over time. Recognising its role in moulding children’s perceptions of the world, part of Play School’s popularity and influence in childhood experiences may be due to the ways in which the production does not aim to impose particular values on a variety of children upholding a variety of beliefs, but rather endeavours to equip them to later survive in a world challenged by variety.

In their interactions with other children and adults, children embed and take on racial identities, while assigning identities to others. They learn to associate power and privilege with racial identities. As such, children create and re-create already established racial hierarchy, entrenching what it means for them both cognitively and emotionally. For children, racial group and ethnicity are pertinent to self-conception and self-definition as interaction with people inside and outside of their family structures is generally inevitable. Hence, race and ethnicity assume great importance in childhood. The augmentation of globalisation creates greater acculturation, movements across national borders and intercultural communication, meaning that Australian children are ‘exposed’ to a plethora of cultures and cultural norms. However following the Piagetian tradition of ‘locating children’s thought processes as different from adults’ it is argued that children are incapable of understanding major social constructs such as gender, class or race and that the views a child may express about race are just imitations of adult behaviour. Nonetheless in visually representing interactions, different faces and colours twice a day through the same medium, ‘adult’ constructs about gender and race become adopted as norms. Play School aims to cater to this understanding by allowing for the use of imagination in play, as well as exposure to lifestyles that may be alternative to their own. Thus it is suggested that young children are more than “empty vessels into which adults pour their own ideas, concepts and attitudes”, including understandings of race. Play School does not aim to distinguish between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’, or to infer that one culture is different from another. Producers instead intend to reflect the diverse elements of society as a reflection and not an act of tokenism.

My own values in terms of multiculturalism, family structures, gender and the broader branch, diversity, may have been influenced by Play School due to its presence in such a crucial time in my own cognitive development, and still may be if I continue watching while childminding... Finally I had to say – Jemima, are you a product of Noni and Big Ted?!