So true. You’ve a real talent, Mary, for seeing and saying and clarifying what many of us suspected.
John Bruce
2 years ago
My generation were subjected to two useful idiots, aka Bill and Ben, being manipulated by a pernicious, psychopathic Weed into performing minor acts of vandalism, then denying their involvement. It was our introduction to Machiavellian philosophy and stood us in good stead.
We also grew up with Clangers, Oliver Postgate and the wonderful accompaniments of Vernon Elliott. The sound of a bassoon still takes me back 50 odd years. What a time to be young.
I still worry about the sinister subliminal messages sent out by The Woodentops though and wonder whether it ruined my chances of becoming governor of the Bank of England.
Last weekend I watched my daughter (1) and mother-In-law (81) clapping and bopping joyfully to those very Clangers of which you speak. Thank God for reruns.
Being an older Gen-Xer, and spending my nightclubbing years pre-Tellytubbies, Bacchanalian evenings often concluded with watching the Open University broadcasts and a game of frisbee in the park. I suppose that some of it sunk in and we got fresh air and exercise. The Tellytubbies indeed marked the beginning of Blair’s infantilisation of Britain and the further decline of the family.
Last edited 2 years ago by Al M
Lennon Ó Náraigh
2 years ago
Great article. But I must query this:
There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that full-time nursery care has no impact on academic performance
There is some high-quality very recent evidence that shows that state-wide pre-school programmes actually make academic performance, school attendnace, disciplinary infractions, etc. worse. This is a large-scale randomized control trial, the most rigorous kind of social science that can be done. (Durkin, K., Lipsey, M. W., Farran, D. C., & Wiesen, S. E. (2022). Effects of a statewide pre-kindergarten program on children’s achievement and behavior through sixth grade. Developmental Psychology, 58(3), 470–484.)
Similar results were found with Quebec’s pre-school programme.
These results go agaisnt mainstream expectations and beliefs – surely something for Unherd to pick up on?
I’m a teacher (not in the UK). Off the record, primary teachers and principals say that many children now are simply not ready for school. Most attend some kind of day care and as stated in the article, it is totally ‘child centred’. What this means is that they can wander around and pretty much do what they like. Due to the lack of structure, when they start school many children can’t sit still or follow instructions. Some believe (as they have been taught) that they can do what they like and tell their teachers to get f***ed when they are asked to co-operate. Another issue is the increasing number of children starting schooling who are not toilet trained.
Children are starting school in the UK also who are not toilet trained.
Katharine Eyre
2 years ago
As a fellow geriatric millennial, I can say there is hardly a day that goes by when I don’t feel thankful that my childhood was spent with Bagpuss, Blue Peter (in the Yvonne Fielding, Mark Curry, Caron Keating era), Byker Grove and Grange Hill. No smartphones, internet or social media and we were encouraged to make designs for new roof bosses for York Minster after the fire and send them in by post instead of hanging in front of a screen.
My one and only run-in with the Teletubbies was one morning during my studies in the early 2000s. I was all keyed up, ready to go and sit a property law exam and was looking for something to calm my nerves. 5 minutes of this brainless TV goop and I’d had enough – it stressed me out more than the thought of the exam.
That was it. I grew up in Yorkshire and know the Minster well so the act of doing my design (aged 4) and sending it in with the hope of it being included in the great building was really exciting. I didn’t win, but I still love to look up at those bosses whenever I go into the Minster.
Michael K
2 years ago
I always found the Teletubbies funny, but exceptionally weird. It’s incredible the parallels that Mary points out with modern life. It makes me think whether that series possibly marks the beginning of an intentional trend. Where better to grow the Transhumanism movement than with children who have no filters in their consciousness?
Paul Sorrenti
2 years ago
In the latest CBBC phenomenon ‘Bing’ there once again are no parents, but there are informed care-givers that the creators have designed to be half the size of Bing and his friends. A reluctant acknowledgement, perhaps, that adult wisdom is required and desired, whilst simultaneously keeping them safe in the knowledge that at any moment they could pick up the adult and throw them into the sea
Unlike the Teletubbies, things occasionally go wrong, but never more than the sadness of a popped balloon or a scratched knee, which the care-giver can easily fix. My daughter was fascinated by this show, until I began reading her fables with lying boys, vengeful wolves, innocent young girls and varying intellectual degrees of pig, all of whom put their lives or livelihoods in danger. Now she’s like ‘daddy, let the Corbynistas raise their brood on this sappy rabbit nonsense – I want it REAL’
Philip Stott
2 years ago
The Magic Roundabout was my favourite trippy kids show, both as an actual kid and as an after rave “adult”.
Jonathan Andrews
2 years ago
That was very interesting.
I’m curious about Mary’s statistic about the proportion of mothers returning to work within a year. I have a sense that as far as possible one parent should be at home with infant children. I offer no evidence, just a feeling.
I wonder why both parents need to work. It seems odd that I grew up with only one parent earning a less than average salary and yet materially we had everything we needed. Okay, it was a bit cold in the winter, my mother had a day’s work with washing clothes in a twin tub and my father spending weekends repairing chappy second hand cars.
I live on quite a high income now; far more than my father earned. I’m quite content but I don’t feel materially better off. Well, it wouldn’t be difficult to do without the extras.
We have friends on low income with the good luck to have inherited a home. They are very frugal but seem to me to live materially well.
I’m sorry to ramble, I know money doesn’t buy you happiness but I’m not convinced it makes you especially materially better off (compared to the 70s). So, why do families need to earn so much?
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
I have no telly, but am about a stone overweight.
Julian Farrows
2 years ago
Much entertainment these days is aimed at the young and the imbecilic. When you stop watching it, you realize how much of it is geared toward conditioning people to be accepting of distasteful ideas and lifestyles.
Peter LR
2 years ago
Perhaps in recognition of the outcomes for the Blair generation, they should create a new Teletubbie in a white costume called Woko!
Geoffrey Simon Hicking
2 years ago
All my friends are hard working [married] parents that do the best for their children. The only juvenile idiot I know is me.
I never watched teletubbies. Thought it idiotic.
Prashant Kotak
2 years ago
Recommended “THX 1138” (1971) in the context of the subjects adjacent to this piece, an odd early Lucas/Coppola largely unknown classic.
Jason Highley
2 years ago
As a geriatric millenial who was horrified by Teletubbies the moment I first saw them as a child, I was doubly horrified to learn in this report that they are still on the air. Not all of us gave up on adulting though. I haven’t had cable television in 10 years, I don’t participate in any social media apart from the occassional Telegram and Gab, and I don’t subscribe to a single streaming service. My life is way better off for it.
Last edited 2 years ago by Jason Highley
Francisco Menezes
2 years ago
Book of Revelations, Chapter 13, verses 16 and 17. The sign in the right hand is the i-phone. The mark on the forehead is a chip. Transactions only via CBDC. John of Padmos must have had a crystal ball.
Last edited 2 years ago by Francisco Menezes
Caroline Watson
2 years ago
Strange isn’t it, that female journalists who can work from home whenever they like, and combine it with childcare, feel that they have a right to criticise other women who have no choice but to go out to work; as nurses, teachers, shop assistants and carers, to keep roofs over their children’s heads and food in their bellies?
The Teletubby young, with their blue hair and fantasies about changing sex and living without ‘fossil fuels’ remind me of HG Wells’s Eloi – and we know what happened to them!
Madeleine Jones
2 years ago
Hello my fellow teletubbies.
David Lewis
2 years ago
What about The Magic Roundabout?
Steve Boyd
2 years ago
Has anyone seen the latest Teletubbies reboot? They have CG Teletubbie babies! What does it mean??
Jeffrey Chongsathien
2 years ago
I expect this to be the first of series, covering Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, Thundercats, He-Man, She-Ra, Dungeons and Dragons, Gummie Bears, Bucky O’Hare, M.A.S.K….
Lorenzo Gallego Borghini
2 years ago
This article is genius! I’ve laughed out loud (though should I cry really?)
Thank you!
Neven Curlin
2 years ago
This is such good and pleasant reading! I’m of the same generation as the author, and found the Teletubbies baffling and eery, but even more so in hindsight, reading this excellent and insightful article. Thanks yet again.
Terence Fitch
2 years ago
Little kids liked it and their parents got a break. Artsy students who didn’t do labs sessions and so had plenty of daytime telly time on their hands watched it. They ‘grew up’ to write overblown theoretical pieces about it.
Don’t know why that got a downvote. My own experience of university was having a 9 – 5 schedule of lectures, labs and tutorials, with Wed afternoons reserved for sport. My artsy female flatmates reading English lit and art history spent their days in bed or smoking fags in front of the telly. They could barely remember which afternoon they were supposed to go in.
Last edited 2 years ago by Al M
Neil MacInnes
2 years ago
I guess as a boomer I should think myself lucky that when I pulled a pharmacologically enhanced all-nighter there was no early morning television to drag me into another generation’s childhood.
This must be the greatest amount of over intellectualised bullshit I have had the misfortune to read since, well, maybe ever.
There is no doubt Mary possess a superior intellect. Only clever people can over intellectualise to this extent.
Sometimes it pays to be just a poor little average soul.
So true. You’ve a real talent, Mary, for seeing and saying and clarifying what many of us suspected.
My generation were subjected to two useful idiots, aka Bill and Ben, being manipulated by a pernicious, psychopathic Weed into performing minor acts of vandalism, then denying their involvement. It was our introduction to Machiavellian philosophy and stood us in good stead.
I honestly read that as Mancunian philosophy initially. And on reflection, it probably fits better.
So did I. Well, Mark E Smith always had an opinion.
Hahaha, that’s one way of looking at it!
We also grew up with Clangers, Oliver Postgate and the wonderful accompaniments of Vernon Elliott. The sound of a bassoon still takes me back 50 odd years. What a time to be young.
I still worry about the sinister subliminal messages sent out by The Woodentops though and wonder whether it ruined my chances of becoming governor of the Bank of England.
Last weekend I watched my daughter (1) and mother-In-law (81) clapping and bopping joyfully to those very Clangers of which you speak. Thank God for reruns.
Being an older Gen-Xer, and spending my nightclubbing years pre-Tellytubbies, Bacchanalian evenings often concluded with watching the Open University broadcasts and a game of frisbee in the park. I suppose that some of it sunk in and we got fresh air and exercise. The Tellytubbies indeed marked the beginning of Blair’s infantilisation of Britain and the further decline of the family.
Great article. But I must query this:
There is some high-quality very recent evidence that shows that state-wide pre-school programmes actually make academic performance, school attendnace, disciplinary infractions, etc. worse. This is a large-scale randomized control trial, the most rigorous kind of social science that can be done. (Durkin, K., Lipsey, M. W., Farran, D. C., & Wiesen, S. E. (2022). Effects of a statewide pre-kindergarten program on children’s achievement and behavior through sixth grade. Developmental Psychology, 58(3), 470–484.)
Similar results were found with Quebec’s pre-school programme.
These results go agaisnt mainstream expectations and beliefs – surely something for Unherd to pick up on?
I believe the “no impact” is a typo since the linked reference supports what you are saying
I’m a teacher (not in the UK). Off the record, primary teachers and principals say that many children now are simply not ready for school. Most attend some kind of day care and as stated in the article, it is totally ‘child centred’. What this means is that they can wander around and pretty much do what they like. Due to the lack of structure, when they start school many children can’t sit still or follow instructions. Some believe (as they have been taught) that they can do what they like and tell their teachers to get f***ed when they are asked to co-operate. Another issue is the increasing number of children starting schooling who are not toilet trained.
Children are starting school in the UK also who are not toilet trained.
As a fellow geriatric millennial, I can say there is hardly a day that goes by when I don’t feel thankful that my childhood was spent with Bagpuss, Blue Peter (in the Yvonne Fielding, Mark Curry, Caron Keating era), Byker Grove and Grange Hill. No smartphones, internet or social media and we were encouraged to make designs for new roof bosses for York Minster after the fire and send them in by post instead of hanging in front of a screen.
My one and only run-in with the Teletubbies was one morning during my studies in the early 2000s. I was all keyed up, ready to go and sit a property law exam and was looking for something to calm my nerves. 5 minutes of this brainless TV goop and I’d had enough – it stressed me out more than the thought of the exam.
That was it. I grew up in Yorkshire and know the Minster well so the act of doing my design (aged 4) and sending it in with the hope of it being included in the great building was really exciting. I didn’t win, but I still love to look up at those bosses whenever I go into the Minster.
I always found the Teletubbies funny, but exceptionally weird. It’s incredible the parallels that Mary points out with modern life. It makes me think whether that series possibly marks the beginning of an intentional trend. Where better to grow the Transhumanism movement than with children who have no filters in their consciousness?
In the latest CBBC phenomenon ‘Bing’ there once again are no parents, but there are informed care-givers that the creators have designed to be half the size of Bing and his friends. A reluctant acknowledgement, perhaps, that adult wisdom is required and desired, whilst simultaneously keeping them safe in the knowledge that at any moment they could pick up the adult and throw them into the sea
Unlike the Teletubbies, things occasionally go wrong, but never more than the sadness of a popped balloon or a scratched knee, which the care-giver can easily fix. My daughter was fascinated by this show, until I began reading her fables with lying boys, vengeful wolves, innocent young girls and varying intellectual degrees of pig, all of whom put their lives or livelihoods in danger. Now she’s like ‘daddy, let the Corbynistas raise their brood on this sappy rabbit nonsense – I want it REAL’
The Magic Roundabout was my favourite trippy kids show, both as an actual kid and as an after rave “adult”.
That was very interesting.
I’m curious about Mary’s statistic about the proportion of mothers returning to work within a year. I have a sense that as far as possible one parent should be at home with infant children. I offer no evidence, just a feeling.
I wonder why both parents need to work. It seems odd that I grew up with only one parent earning a less than average salary and yet materially we had everything we needed. Okay, it was a bit cold in the winter, my mother had a day’s work with washing clothes in a twin tub and my father spending weekends repairing chappy second hand cars.
I live on quite a high income now; far more than my father earned. I’m quite content but I don’t feel materially better off. Well, it wouldn’t be difficult to do without the extras.
We have friends on low income with the good luck to have inherited a home. They are very frugal but seem to me to live materially well.
I’m sorry to ramble, I know money doesn’t buy you happiness but I’m not convinced it makes you especially materially better off (compared to the 70s). So, why do families need to earn so much?
I have no telly, but am about a stone overweight.
Much entertainment these days is aimed at the young and the imbecilic. When you stop watching it, you realize how much of it is geared toward conditioning people to be accepting of distasteful ideas and lifestyles.
Perhaps in recognition of the outcomes for the Blair generation, they should create a new Teletubbie in a white costume called Woko!
All my friends are hard working [married] parents that do the best for their children. The only juvenile idiot I know is me.
I never watched teletubbies. Thought it idiotic.
Recommended “THX 1138” (1971) in the context of the subjects adjacent to this piece, an odd early Lucas/Coppola largely unknown classic.
As a geriatric millenial who was horrified by Teletubbies the moment I first saw them as a child, I was doubly horrified to learn in this report that they are still on the air. Not all of us gave up on adulting though. I haven’t had cable television in 10 years, I don’t participate in any social media apart from the occassional Telegram and Gab, and I don’t subscribe to a single streaming service. My life is way better off for it.
Book of Revelations, Chapter 13, verses 16 and 17. The sign in the right hand is the i-phone. The mark on the forehead is a chip. Transactions only via CBDC. John of Padmos must have had a crystal ball.
Strange isn’t it, that female journalists who can work from home whenever they like, and combine it with childcare, feel that they have a right to criticise other women who have no choice but to go out to work; as nurses, teachers, shop assistants and carers, to keep roofs over their children’s heads and food in their bellies?
The Teletubby young, with their blue hair and fantasies about changing sex and living without ‘fossil fuels’ remind me of HG Wells’s Eloi – and we know what happened to them!
Hello my fellow teletubbies.
What about The Magic Roundabout?
Has anyone seen the latest Teletubbies reboot? They have CG Teletubbie babies! What does it mean??
I expect this to be the first of series, covering Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, Thundercats, He-Man, She-Ra, Dungeons and Dragons, Gummie Bears, Bucky O’Hare, M.A.S.K….
This article is genius! I’ve laughed out loud (though should I cry really?)
Thank you!
This is such good and pleasant reading! I’m of the same generation as the author, and found the Teletubbies baffling and eery, but even more so in hindsight, reading this excellent and insightful article. Thanks yet again.
Little kids liked it and their parents got a break. Artsy students who didn’t do labs sessions and so had plenty of daytime telly time on their hands watched it. They ‘grew up’ to write overblown theoretical pieces about it.
Don’t know why that got a downvote. My own experience of university was having a 9 – 5 schedule of lectures, labs and tutorials, with Wed afternoons reserved for sport. My artsy female flatmates reading English lit and art history spent their days in bed or smoking fags in front of the telly. They could barely remember which afternoon they were supposed to go in.
I guess as a boomer I should think myself lucky that when I pulled a pharmacologically enhanced all-nighter there was no early morning television to drag me into another generation’s childhood.
This must be the greatest amount of over intellectualised bullshit I have had the misfortune to read since, well, maybe ever.
There is no doubt Mary possess a superior intellect. Only clever people can over intellectualise to this extent.
Sometimes it pays to be just a poor little average soul.