The Return of "The Electric Company"

"Hip-hop by nature is a very verbal idiom," making it perfectly suited for teaching language, says Sherman, who at 28 was too young to catch the original Electric Company on the air. "Dealing with target audiences is an interesting battle. We're talking about kids who are six to nine years old, so you need to simplify the songs as much as possible. But why can't a kid who is four or three like it? Why can't it be something that a parent can enjoy too?"

The thinking of course is that if the show isn't entertaining, then the kids will turn it off. And if they turn it off, they don't learn. According to Department of Education statistics, literacy rates haven't improved much since the original Electric Company debuted: 27 percent of public school fourth graders score below basic levels on reading. Broken down along demographic lines the numbers are more unsettling: 54 percent of African-American, 51 percent of Latino/Hispanic, and 49 percent of American Indian fourth graders read below basic level. "There isn't any silver bullet that's going to solve that problem over all," says Aletha Hutson, a professor of child development at the University of Texas at Austin, who remembers watching the original Electric Company when her daughter was learning to read. "I think the whole rationale for those TV programs early on was that low income kids and minority kids watch an enormous amount of television, so instead of showing them some kind of junk, something that might teach them a little can help. But the problems of poverty aren't going to be solved by any one intervention."

Karen Fowler, The Electric Company's executive producer and a nine-year veteran of Sesame Workshop, understands this. "One viewing is not going to radically shift [a child's literacy] for long term," she says. "The big win is that it's cool to be smart, that reading and writing and being able to express yourself is one of the coolest things to be able to do." Thirty-five episodes have been shot so far and full episodes will be available online alongside an array of games. The cast will be doing outreach into 19 communities in the fall, making appearances and performing in malls to connect with their audiences. "I want to create a revolution in the nation's playgrounds," says Fowler. "Sing about that Silent E, not somebody's booty. The literacy statistics are weirdly shocking — let's make it happen."