Television: The World’s Largest Kindergarten

Millions of five-year-olds went off to kindergarten last week, and millions of parents told them not to be afraid, it would be just like Romper Room. Children’s television at its best, Romper Room is an educational play session seen every weekday by more than 5,000,000 presumed corrigibles, who in their own living rooms participate in the activities on the screen, whether it means marching around in a circle banging spoons on pan bottoms or solemnly pledging allegiance to the flag and—as one mother reported—to “one naked individual with liberty and justice for all.”

Romper Room is something unique in television among shows of any kind. It is seen in Anchorage, Bismarck, Green Bay, Montreal, New York, Dallas, Albany, Peoria, Boston, Phoenix—in 94 cities at present with 25 more to be added this fall in Japan, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Scotland; yet there is a different teacher with differ ent children on the air each day in every city where the show is seen. It is the only TV program that is, in TV parlance, syndicated live.

Toy Bulldozers. Romper Room headquarters is in Baltimore, where the show was originated ten years ago by Bert Claster, a vaudeville impresario who had spotted longer green in TV. His wife Nancy became the first Romper Room teacher. Soon CBS made an offer to Claster, but Claster had another idea. A Norfolk, Va., TV station manager had asked if he could imitate Romper Room. “No,” said Claster in effect. “I’ll make a copy and send it to you.” He trained a teacher, sent her to Norfolk with a kit of sets and props and kept her supplied with scripts and new materials from Baltimore.

Claster has since trained more than 200 teachers. In the latest class were a girl from Chicago who was picked from 750 applicants and a girl from Japan who spent 14 hours a day trying to learn how to pronounce the name of the show: except in French Canada, where it is called La Jardiniere, Romper Room is the name of the show no matter what language the script may be translated into, and Japan’s Midori Namiki couldn’t seem to keep herself from saying Lomper Loom.

Claster’s mail-order method is an odd way to syndicate a show, but wherever it is seen it achieves a local flavor impossible on a network. In each Romper Room city, the teacher has half a dozen local five-year-olds on the air with her every day, replacing three each week. They learn the alphabet, balance baskets on their heads, shove sand around with toy bulldozers, flack for their own drawings, and learn key facts of nature, such as, say, a whale can get a sunburn and peel. It is a school, not vaudeville, to be sure, but it is a pretty good show nonetheless. Teachers crawl under tables to convince reticent little boys that their big chance is hidden in that friendly machine with the red eyes. Once in Los Angeles, the teacher asked if anyone could think of a word beginning with “U.” “Ubiquitous,” said an otherwise healthy kindergartner.

Inside Voice. The program has much of the iron charm of the schoolmarm: “Tony, you want to remember your Romper Room manners, honey.” It also has a celebrated prop, the Do Bee and Don’t Bee blackboard, with two big wooden bees on the top and a fresh message each day on the slate, for example, Don’t Bee a Street Player, Do Bee a Walk Player. (“Don’t be a street walker,” said one teacher, fluffing that one.) “Remember your Do Bee manners,” says teacher to a Lilliputian loudmouth. “Use your inside voice.” When the little Romper roommates sit down for their cookies and milk, they say, “God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food.” As for integration, it’s a local matter, according to Claster, but he says that in Baltimore, at least, the Rompers have been integrated from the outset.