Appreciating Square One: The PBS kids' show made it cool to love math

BuzzFeed News

Buzzfeed News looks back with fondness at the math-themed kids' TV show. "Square One, which was created by the Children’s Television Workshop and aired across the nation on PBS from 1987 to 1992, wasn’t as long-running as Sesame Street or Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and has never been the same kind of ubiquitous cultural touchstone," says Anne Helen Petersen. "But like the best children’s television, it implanted itself — and its attitude — into millions of children’s minds. That attitude was pretty simple: Math is weird, and cool, and filled with secrets, and fun. I loved Square One then, and I love it now, because it took math — something most kids are conditioned to think is boring, and confusing — and used it to teach me that knowledge, and curiosity, will always be cool. The show was 30 minutes long and, like Sesame Street (which was mostly targeted to younger, preschool-age kids), consisted of a series of skits, cartoons, and ongoing, loosely serialized narratives. It featured a small yet diverse cast of actors, many of whom would go on to star in other, non-kid-oriented shows (which had the effect, at least on this kid and her brother, of blowing our minds). And it excelled at enthralling young people while cleverly invoking cultural references that only made sense to our parents."