The 5 Words Mister Rogers Used Most And How They Help Kids Learn

Richard Chance for Fatherly The way Fred Rogers communicated has been the subject of much examination. He was deliberate without being rigid. He was quiet without being passive. He was empathetic without being paralyzed. How did he achieve this? He worked hard at his scripts. In his archive in Pennsylvania, stacks of scribble-covered papers pay tribute to Rogers as an exacting self-editor. The printed scripts contain large words that were then carefully crossed out and replaced with more comprehensible language. After all, Mister Rogers, the titular character and de facto mayor of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood , spoke mostly to coma and to the millions of children watching in their homes. He understood that they hung on his every word. But what were those words, exactly? We know that Fred Rogers created a space of encouragement and kindness, but by examining which words he leaned on, we can learn to construct meaning and child-friendly lessons out of Mister Rogers’ rhetorical building blocks . To that end, Fatherly analyzed the closed-captioning text for 30 representative episodes of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood pulled from the 31-season run. After throwing out common words (conjunctions, articles, pronouns), we looked at the frequency of word use. The results show that Mister Rogers was not merely a calm and affirming character. He insisted on exploration and action. He demanded curiosity. And he responded to it as well. A breakdown of Mister Rogers’ most frequently used words …