Lessons from the Disney Channel

Since being home, I have had the opportunity to babysit my 4 year old sister ("4 and a half!") for the past week before she begins kindergarten. In the mornings, before she starts dragging me to the pool in the afternoon and before my mom and step-dad become insistent that it's a beautiful day and she needs to be outside, we've passed the time watching ample Disney Channel shows. So, I thought I'd write a post to let everyone in the world out there above the age of 14 (or maybe I should be more generous since it's likely there are people older than that watching Disney still) know what kind of Lessons the kids (et al.) are learning these days.

• Spanish is a legitimate language to learn and therefore it will be featured. French may be featured as well, but only "bonjour" and some combination of "hon hon hon," "ze" instead of "the," and "ah oui, c'est bon." Read: for mocking purposes, not learning ones. Read: Disney knows nothing.
• On a related note, characters who speak some Spanish are always Mexican. And mostly know how to count.
  
• Related note numéro deux: "Let's count with Mickey Mouse, because when it comes to count, we can trust Mickey Mouse." Rough quotation, but the part in bold is what's important. Here we learn two things, we can trust Mickey Mouse with all of our counting needs (even though he probably has one less finger) and Disney doesn't know how to conjugate verbs.
• Animation can only be in extreme 2-d (for a trendy sketch/water color effect), computer animated, or one of these paired with the occasional real-world shot of grass or the sky, as these animated characters pass through.
• A lesson we've all learned a million times: duct tape fixes everything. What Disney tells us, however, is that that rule is not limited to our own personal objects. When leaves start to fall, you can tape them right back up, too.
• Hannah Montana is as annoying as you'd suspect.
• In general, making fun of foreign countries is appropriate when your audience is between the ages of 2 and 6.
• Four creepy older men are the entertainment of choice for aforementioned audience. (Remember The Wiggles? Now there's the "Imagination Movers.")

There may be more to add by the end of this week, or day, but there's a starting list. As you can see, the youth of today is learning a lot of great things. I can't claim that the Disney of my day was much better, but I didn't catch onto that bandwagon until I was a bit older than my sister, so I had quality television like Sesame Street as a precursor. They know what's up.

Well, until my next inspiration...