Thought of the Week: The Garden of Your Mind

The following video was posted by PBS yesterday. Turn up the volume, click play, and enjoy:

Amazing. This video struck a nerve with me instantaneously. I was a young boy at the peak of popularity of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in the late 1980s and my grandparents allowed me to watch the show just about every time we stayed with them. Although I was entertained by the characters at that time, watching this remixed video now gives a deeper appreciation of the lessons taught by that great educator Fred McFeely Rogers (1928-2003).

These are those lessons:

You can grow ideas in the garden of your mind.

It is good to be curious about many things.

Every person you see is someone different from every other person in the world.

There are so many people that can help us learn in this world.

Did you ever think of all the many things you can do?

All you have to do is think and they’ll grow.

You should have noticed that Mister Rogers’ voice sounds different in the video compared with what you remember from a kid. That is because the audio has been remixed using an “auto-tuned” style. I am so impressed that an aging network like PBS is reinventing itself by remixing and breathing new life into this iconic shows. Make sure you subscribe to their new pbsdigitalstudios YouTube channel to see what they roll out with next!

What other lessons did you hear in the video? @mpascoe

P.S. – Here is another video of Fred Rogers (1997) giving the best award acceptance speech in the history of mankind – http://youtu.be/Upm9LnuCBUM