Mister Rogers’ environmentalism: children’s spirituality in a trash apocalypse

ABSTRACT

In 1990, when Earth Day was set to go international, the iconic Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood – which ran for 900 episodes from 1968 to 2001 and won a Peabody Award and 4 Emmy Awards and received 25 Emmy Award nominations – ran a series of episodes on ‘Caring for the Environment.’ The show grappled with how children might face the looming environmental crisis. In these episodes, Rogers offers a spirituality for children that enables them to grasp the severity of the issue but does so by situating the concern in a hopeful worldview and indicating ways that children can take action. Instead of instilling fear and apathy as popular environmental apocalypticism does, Rogers prepares children for the new social order that must emerge to address the environmental crisis. It is an approach that prevents children from being overwhelmed by anxiety in the face of the environmental crisis but instead develops in them a sense of responsibility for the environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Mister Rogers’ neighborhood
• environmentalism
• apocalypse
• television
• children

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jason King

Jason King is a Theology Professor at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, PA and a Fred Rogers Faculty Fellows at the Fred Rogers Center. He does work on marriage, family, and children.

Sara Lindey

Sara Lindey is an English Professor at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, PA and a Fred Rogers Faculty Fellows at the Fred Rogers Center. She teaches widely in American literature and her previous publications examine the representation of children in nineteenth-century America. Jason and Sara’s book on environmentalism in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhoodis forthcoming.