Mr. Rogers and the importance of social and emotional learning

The new movie about children’s TV icon Fred Rogers, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” tells us what we already know from watching the “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” program during its nearly 40 years on PBS.  

Rogers was masterful at validating children. He messaged that all of their feelings matter and should not be feared. He was both a student and a teacher of emotional intelligence; he didn’t know it. The term emotional intelligence (EI) hadn’t been coined when his show aired in February 1968; 22 years later, in 1990, psychologists Peter Salovey and Jack Mayer put the EI name to the concept.  

EI means being smart about your feelings and harnessing the power of your emotions in the service of your goals. At the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, we define EI as the attitudes and skills related to “Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing and Regulating” feelings, or RULER. 

Decades of research shows that becoming a student of RULER, an evidence-based approach for implementing social and emotional learning in schools, has a range of positive effects. Grades, teacher ratings of students’ social and emotional competence, warmth and connectedness all improved; bullying and aggressive behavior went down, compared to students in schools without RULER. 

Mr. Rogers taught social and emotional learning, or SEL, through interaction with viewers, through guests and puppets who lived in his neighborhood of make-believe. SEL has a wide-ranging positive effect on our lives, as it has been found to strengthen other abilities, including decision-making, planning and motivation, conflict management, and academic performance.

Beyond giving kids a strong foundation in SEL, Mr. Rogers wanted kids to learn about the real world — that it was not always a beautiful place, that they would have tough times and unpleasant feelings sometimes, and that that would be okay.

Rogers once said, off-camera: “Confronting our feelings and giving them appropriate expression always takes strength, not weakness. It takes strength to acknowledge our anger, and sometimes more strength yet to curb the aggressive urges anger may bring and channel them into nonviolent outlets. It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about their feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it.”

He modeled ethical behavior on tough subjects like divorce, disabilities, and race. One inspiring example aired in 1968 when unofficial segregation still forbade black Americans from some public swimming pools. Rogers invited “Officer Clemmons,” one of the first recurring black characters on a children’s show, to join him in cooling his feet in a kiddie pool and baring his blackness so that it could be welcomed. When Officer Clemmons explained that he didn’t have a towel, Mr. Rogers offered to share his without hesitation.

If “Mr. Rogers” had still been aired in 2017, what he would have said about the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va.? White parents are less likely to talk to their children about race than parents of color; perhaps they need an assist from Mr. Rogers, one that isn’t available anymore.

He elevated conversations to include discussion of all things: kind or unkind, sad, or happy, even painful topics like death. So powerful was his unique teaching that even small doses of Mr. Rogers had a positive impact on children’s ability to reinforce each other positively and to improve social interaction with other children and adults.  

Since “Mr. Rogers” went off the air in 2001, emotional intelligence is not modeled in the compelling human way it was during his time. “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” the closest TV program to a “Mr. Rogers 2.0,” features a Mr. Rogers puppet, but the cartoon is aimed at a preschool population, and the hero is not a human being. This matters because, while we know that cartoon- or toy-modeling of behavior can cause children to imitate aggression, the jury’s still out on whether that same cartoon or toy can effectively model positive behavior.

While Daniel Tiger has demonstrably helped preschoolers with empathy, self-efficacy, and emotion recognition, one study found this effect was maximized when the children also received high amounts of household active mediation, meaning that parents become involved in imparting the lesson, too. Daniel Tiger talks to his peers, which is different than when an adult is teaching the same experience to young viewers — and, as you would expect, the language is very different. Using “Motherese,” as linguists call it, was reported to be part of Mr. Rogers’s success. 

The lack of a replacement for Mr. Rogers may be having effects we don’t want. Research has shown that college students — who would have been Mr. Rogers’s audience, had his show not stopped — are less empathic and more narcissistic than they used to be. This has been attributed to technology and our “selfie” culture, but the rise of technology and social media’s boon roughly coincides with Fred Rogers’s program going off the air. While it can’t be definitively traced to the loss of that show, the timing suggests that growing self-centeredness might have been mitigated by continued programming. 

Even if it’s not a Mr. Rogers knock-off, there needs to be something in popular culture — as opposed to academics — that stresses the importance of SEL. Our children’s future depends on it. The Class of 2030 and Life Ready Learning study, “Class of 2030: What do today’s kindergartners need to be life-ready?” conducted in collaboration with Microsoft and McKinsey & Company’s Education Practice, revealed that 30 percent to 40 percent of future jobs will require SEL skills and that only 42 percent of employers believe new graduates are adequately prepared for the workforce, especially with SEL skills.

Many may doubt that anyone can ever replace Fred Rogers; we start thinking that way when we get sad about the past. Loss is part of life, and we need to adapt to it. Otherwise, civilization’s future is imperiled. 

Of course, there will never be another Fred Rogers — but we can replace his educational medium by reaching out to children and adults in books and articles, or by creating another show that teaches emotional intelligence. The cardigan may not be the same, nor the sneakers; those were just props that helped deliver a lesson. A hoodie and some boots will work just as well — but, on.

Robin Stern, Ph.D., is associate director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and author of two books: “The Gaslight Effect” and “Project Rebirth.”