My excitement at reliving some of the magic that I remembered from my visits to the aquarium when I was younger diminished slightly as soon as the dolphin show, now known as "Fantasea" began. I remembered a pretty cool display of dolphins doing tricks and trainers explaining a few things about the animals. What we got this time was a flashy, dumbed-down show with little actual substance. They removed every remotely educational aspect from the script and replaced them with actors dressed up in white jumpsuits, which were supposed to look like beluga whales, I guess.
I also felt like a was being brainwashed the entire time, because they kept flashing their logo (see picture) and mentioning that they are sponsored by ComEd (which is another issue altogether).
Maybe somewhere along the line the director of the program decided that they needed to draw in a younger audience and, in an effort to make everything more kid-friendly, made the show into something fit for Cartoon Network rather than the Discovery Channel. My own qualms about preserving my youth aside, I think that the revisions made to the show demonstrate a real lack of faith in today's young people. We have begun to assume that no child can be interested in learning without adults dumbing it down and making it fun and colorful for them. This is so wrong. It is quite limiting on creativity, since it gives kids an already-packaged story behind the show, rather than letting them absorb it in their own way.
Whatever happened to learning for learning's sake? If kids cannot appreciate the world as it is now, instead of as some fake construction created by a corporate sponsor, how will they ever? Do you think this kind of thing is helpful or harmful to children?
I think the issue is why museums should be fun; should it be flashy to keep your attention, or should it try to be real and let you discover things? If I want flashy entertainment, i'll watch a cheezy action movie based entirely on special effects. But in a museum like the shedd, I want to see the animals, have people tell me about them, and learn what I can about the sea. People are under the assumption that flashy entertainment is the only fun children can have these days; that that assumption is what's harming children. Museums are fun because we can discover; and under rating the power of discovery is what is harming today's younger generation.
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